0:00:02 > 0:00:07In this series I've travelled across the Continent and down the centuries,
0:00:07 > 0:00:10from the Renaissance to the French Revolution,
0:00:10 > 0:00:15to understand just why so little of the art on display is by women.
0:00:17 > 0:00:22Time and time again ambitious female artists found their path blocked
0:00:22 > 0:00:26tied to the home, starved of training.
0:00:29 > 0:00:32Only a handful of tenacious
0:00:32 > 0:00:36and resourceful women broke through to scorch a trail for posterity.
0:00:37 > 0:00:41But finally, in the middle of the 19th century,
0:00:41 > 0:00:46here in Britain it looked as if all that was set to change...
0:00:46 > 0:00:49In 1842 the government opened its very first
0:00:49 > 0:00:53Female School of Design, right next to the men's,
0:00:53 > 0:00:54here in Somerset House.
0:00:56 > 0:01:00What a breakthrough after centuries of disapproval.
0:01:00 > 0:01:02Women finally painting
0:01:02 > 0:01:06and learning alongside their male contemporaries.
0:01:06 > 0:01:08Well, not quite.
0:01:10 > 0:01:15Just six years after it opened the female school was moved...
0:01:15 > 0:01:20to the other side of The Strand - an area then
0:01:20 > 0:01:25infamous for pornographic book shops and unsavoury pubs.
0:01:25 > 0:01:29As a journalist in 1851 Riley noted -
0:01:29 > 0:01:35"If a paternal government had studied to select the worst possible place
0:01:35 > 0:01:41"for such a school they could not have more completely succeeded."
0:01:41 > 0:01:43The message was crystal clear.
0:01:43 > 0:01:48Female artistry did not warrant the prestige of male.
0:01:48 > 0:01:50Women were segregated.
0:01:50 > 0:01:53Officially, second class.
0:01:55 > 0:01:58But whatever the art establishment believed,
0:01:58 > 0:02:02society was changing fast with women pressing on the door
0:02:02 > 0:02:05of the universities, the professions and parliament.
0:02:07 > 0:02:09In a galaxy of exploding potential,
0:02:09 > 0:02:13women were flowering in even more adventurous ways.
0:02:13 > 0:02:18As photographers, as sculptors, as architects.
0:02:20 > 0:02:23I have chosen just six,
0:02:23 > 0:02:28six women who, in unique ways, have transformed our vision of the world.
0:02:31 > 0:02:35Among them a housewife in rural Sweden who would re-invent
0:02:35 > 0:02:40our interiors and lead the vanguard of a lifestyle revolution.
0:02:41 > 0:02:44An artist whose failing eyesight would refocus
0:02:44 > 0:02:47the way we see our outdoor spaces.
0:02:49 > 0:02:53And a pioneering modernist who escaped to the austere deserts
0:02:53 > 0:02:57of New Mexico in search of a new language of painting,
0:02:57 > 0:03:01creating an entirely original artistic landscape.
0:03:02 > 0:03:05In the hundred years after 1850,
0:03:05 > 0:03:10women would take art into unexpected territories - it was not enough
0:03:10 > 0:03:14to reflect the world, female artists were bent on changing it.
0:03:21 > 0:03:25STIRRING MUSIC
0:03:30 > 0:03:33Over the centuries there was one genre of painting that had
0:03:33 > 0:03:38remained the ultimate masculine stronghold - war art.
0:03:38 > 0:03:42And rarely with more pomposity than in the age of empire.
0:03:42 > 0:03:46But what would happen when a female artist decided to join the fray?
0:03:47 > 0:03:51The battlefield reeked of testosterone.
0:03:51 > 0:03:55Any artist who wanted to capture its visceral glory needed
0:03:55 > 0:03:59an iron stomach and an imperviousness
0:03:59 > 0:04:01that angelic Victorian women
0:04:01 > 0:04:03were seen to lack.
0:04:03 > 0:04:06And yet it was a pupil of the fledgling
0:04:06 > 0:04:08Female School of Design
0:04:08 > 0:04:13who would become the most celebrated war artist of her time.
0:04:13 > 0:04:15Lady Butler was born, simply,
0:04:15 > 0:04:19Elizabeth Thompson in 1846 to a wealthy family.
0:04:19 > 0:04:24So pretty and delicate, there was no outward clue that she would
0:04:24 > 0:04:29grow up to be anything more than a textbook Victorian angel in the house,
0:04:29 > 0:04:32unless you looked inside her sketchbooks that is...
0:04:34 > 0:04:38This one, done when she was only 14.
0:04:38 > 0:04:44This is just the sort of thing you might imagine a teenage girl
0:04:44 > 0:04:46of the mid-Victorian period to be producing.
0:04:46 > 0:04:47There's two women in a drawing room,
0:04:47 > 0:04:50it has a touch of Little Women about it, but as you go on
0:04:50 > 0:04:54what this reveals to my utter amazement
0:04:54 > 0:04:57is even as a young teenager
0:04:57 > 0:05:03she was preoccupied with history, with battles, and with men.
0:05:03 > 0:05:07Look, a bayonet charge. Firing a pistol.
0:05:07 > 0:05:10Where on earth did this come from?
0:05:10 > 0:05:13Lady Butler couldn't account for it herself.
0:05:13 > 0:05:16She even reflected in her diary "how strange that
0:05:16 > 0:05:20"I should be impregnated, if that's the right word,
0:05:20 > 0:05:23"with the warrior spirit, given that there were no
0:05:23 > 0:05:26"soldiers in either my mother or my father's family".
0:05:27 > 0:05:31What I see even in these tiny sketches is
0:05:31 > 0:05:35the unusual ambition of a young woman.
0:05:35 > 0:05:40Even in something miniature she's reaching after the male,
0:05:40 > 0:05:42and the epic.
0:05:44 > 0:05:47Determined to further her ambitions, Butler,
0:05:47 > 0:05:52aged 19, enrolled herself in the new Female School of Design.
0:05:52 > 0:05:54Writing in her diary on the eve of her first day -
0:05:54 > 0:05:57"Ah! They shall hear of me some day".
0:05:59 > 0:06:02That day dawned sooner than she could have imagined,
0:06:02 > 0:06:07when in 1874 Butler submitted one of her works to the Royal Academy.
0:06:07 > 0:06:12It was here in this most male- dominated of arenas
0:06:12 > 0:06:15that her art would provoke the most startling reaction.
0:06:16 > 0:06:22When the exhibition was opened to the public she caused a sensation.
0:06:22 > 0:06:28The painting was mobbed. The police had to be called.
0:06:28 > 0:06:31She reflected it in her diary that night -
0:06:31 > 0:06:34"I awoke this morning and found myself famous!"
0:06:36 > 0:06:40So famous in fact that just a few weeks later the painting was
0:06:40 > 0:06:43bought by Queen Victoria herself
0:06:43 > 0:06:47and today it hangs in pride of place here in St James's Palace...
0:06:50 > 0:06:54It's known as The Roll Call, or to give it its more precise title,
0:06:54 > 0:06:58Calling The Roll After An Engagement In The Crimea.
0:06:59 > 0:07:05This is not a celebration of noble heroism.
0:07:05 > 0:07:09Instead it's a depiction of the costs of war
0:07:09 > 0:07:11for the ordinary soldiers.
0:07:13 > 0:07:18The carnage of the Crimean War some 20 years before was still
0:07:18 > 0:07:20raw in popular memory.
0:07:20 > 0:07:23Undeterred, Butler had chosen to expose
0:07:23 > 0:07:27the painful truth ground in mud and gore.
0:07:29 > 0:07:32They are an absolute study
0:07:32 > 0:07:35in weariness and exhaustion...
0:07:35 > 0:07:38it's suffused
0:07:38 > 0:07:41with human emotion.
0:07:41 > 0:07:45The painting went on tour across the great northern cities
0:07:45 > 0:07:49and was mobbed wherever it went.
0:07:49 > 0:07:52Arguably, this is the painting
0:07:52 > 0:07:56that touched the Victorians like no other.
0:08:00 > 0:08:04It's an irony that a women who was so effective in depicting
0:08:04 > 0:08:08the realities of war never actually saw a battlefield
0:08:08 > 0:08:12for herself, but Butler explained in her autobiography that
0:08:12 > 0:08:16a painter should be careful to keep a distance to stop the vile
0:08:16 > 0:08:21details blinding them "to the noble things that rise beyond".
0:08:21 > 0:08:24However, this distance has done nothing to diminish the impact
0:08:24 > 0:08:30of her work upon those who HAVE experienced conflict first-hand.
0:08:30 > 0:08:32Well, Butler wrote in her diary,
0:08:32 > 0:08:37"I thank God that I only paint for the pathos and not the glory of war.
0:08:37 > 0:08:40"If I had seen even a corner of one battlefield
0:08:40 > 0:08:42"I would never paint another war painting."
0:08:42 > 0:08:44But I think that makes her even more extraordinary...
0:08:44 > 0:08:48You've got to bear in mind that Butler was probably the first artist
0:08:48 > 0:08:52to actually bring the human- soldiering individual
0:08:52 > 0:08:54face of conflict onto the canvas.
0:08:54 > 0:08:56Butler didn't go to the Crimea.
0:08:56 > 0:08:59But you've been to Helmand and Afghanistan.
0:08:59 > 0:09:02Well... I have drawn enormous inspiration from her work
0:09:02 > 0:09:06because, I think, she as a woman was really trying to do exactly
0:09:06 > 0:09:09what I'm trying to do, which is...which is make the public
0:09:09 > 0:09:12aware of the reality of soldiering and the individual.
0:09:12 > 0:09:13And the human being.
0:09:16 > 0:09:21Butler's sensitive depictions of the humble soldier saw her dubbed
0:09:21 > 0:09:25the "Florence Nightingale of the Brush" but characteristically
0:09:25 > 0:09:30she didn't want to be cast as merely a "sensitive female artist".
0:09:31 > 0:09:33If her male contemporaries captured the drama
0:09:33 > 0:09:37and violence of warfare then so would she.
0:09:41 > 0:09:44A Royal Commission to paint the army's last stand
0:09:44 > 0:09:48against the Zulu at Rorke's Drift would test her
0:09:48 > 0:09:50ability to capture action to its limit.
0:09:53 > 0:09:59As a woman with no experience of war could she rise to the challenge?
0:09:59 > 0:10:04DRAMATIC MUSIC
0:10:14 > 0:10:18I think it's something to do with her natural ability as an artist.
0:10:18 > 0:10:21You FEEL this battle, you feel the moment.
0:10:21 > 0:10:26So how did a female artist achieve something like this
0:10:26 > 0:10:28because we know she never went to the front?
0:10:28 > 0:10:31The way she did that was actually to go to Portsmouth where the
0:10:31 > 0:10:34army were stationed and see people who were here at this event,
0:10:34 > 0:10:36and they re-enacted it for her.
0:10:36 > 0:10:40So, realistically they put on their uniforms and they acted it out.
0:10:40 > 0:10:44So she was making sure every button, every colour was exactly right,
0:10:44 > 0:10:46as well as the expressions on their faces.
0:10:46 > 0:10:48I think that's the exciting thing about Lady Butler.
0:10:48 > 0:10:51It's a bit, for me, like today a female director making
0:10:51 > 0:10:54an action movie saying, "I'm not going to do a romantic comedy,
0:10:54 > 0:10:56"I'm not going to play on those stereotypes."
0:10:56 > 0:10:59And she gets to the heart of the matter, and she gives us this action piece.
0:10:59 > 0:11:02This is what we think of as a history painting really...
0:11:02 > 0:11:05I really like that you used that phrase, history...history painting. That's the thing.
0:11:05 > 0:11:09That's what great artists were supposed to be creating - history paintings.
0:11:09 > 0:11:11Female artists, well, they could do flower paintings,
0:11:11 > 0:11:13they could do portraits or landscapes.
0:11:13 > 0:11:14But to do this real
0:11:14 > 0:11:17bare-knuckle history painting stuff, it wasn't thought to be
0:11:17 > 0:11:20the stuff of ladies, and yet Lady Butler is able to do it.
0:11:26 > 0:11:30Determined that her work would be as authentic as possible, she restaged
0:11:30 > 0:11:35cavalry charges, bravely standing before thundering hooves.
0:11:36 > 0:11:40She wrote - "I twice saw a charge of the Greys before painting
0:11:40 > 0:11:41"Scotland Forever!
0:11:41 > 0:11:45"and I stood in front to see them coming on."
0:11:47 > 0:11:51Lady Butler's art begun to overturn centuries of prejudice.
0:11:51 > 0:11:55She even forced the critic John Ruskin, who believed that
0:11:55 > 0:11:59"No woman could paint" to eat his words and marvel -
0:11:59 > 0:12:01"This is Amazon's work."
0:12:03 > 0:12:07Butler had triumphed on her own terms in the genre
0:12:07 > 0:12:10most esteemed by the art establishment.
0:12:13 > 0:12:16But it was the art establishment itself that was to
0:12:16 > 0:12:17come under threat now...
0:12:17 > 0:12:21Just across the Channel rebellious young painters where throwing
0:12:21 > 0:12:22out the rule book.
0:12:24 > 0:12:28Detractors sneered at them as mere impressionists.
0:12:28 > 0:12:32But they were revolutionaries, demanding that art be fast,
0:12:32 > 0:12:38instinctive, spontaneous, requiring no formal training.
0:12:38 > 0:12:43Surely, here at last, was a manifesto for women.
0:12:43 > 0:12:46Of course it could never be that simple.
0:12:49 > 0:12:53Here, at Christie's in London, there is a major auction of the
0:12:53 > 0:12:56finest impressionist paintings about to take place.
0:12:59 > 0:13:01Flicking through the sale catalogue,
0:13:01 > 0:13:06the big guys of impressionism are here - Renoir, Monet, Degas.
0:13:07 > 0:13:12But on sale there are also two paintings by a woman,
0:13:12 > 0:13:14Berthe Morisot.
0:13:14 > 0:13:19For this nude here, Lot 315, please start me at 180,000, please.
0:13:22 > 0:13:24180, 190. Thank you.
0:13:26 > 0:13:28190, 200,000...
0:13:28 > 0:13:32at 220...a bid in Texas, welcome, Texas, online...
0:13:34 > 0:13:36And 240 back in London.
0:13:39 > 0:13:41Right at the back of the room at 280...
0:13:43 > 0:13:45Any advance?
0:13:45 > 0:13:51Selling to the gentleman standing in the distance...all done...280,000.
0:13:51 > 0:13:54- Sold! Thank you, sir, well done at 280.- Business is brisk today,
0:13:54 > 0:13:58but at the first impressionist auction over a century ago,
0:13:58 > 0:14:04interest in Morisot, the only woman in the show, was feverish.
0:14:04 > 0:14:09Back in 1875 she was the one who bore the brunt of the attention.
0:14:09 > 0:14:14At a sale that the impressionists organised in Paris, it was
0:14:14 > 0:14:18Morisot's work which gained the highest bids.
0:14:20 > 0:14:22She was a phenomenon.
0:14:23 > 0:14:27Her talent, coupled with a smouldering beauty
0:14:27 > 0:14:29brought her much attention not least
0:14:29 > 0:14:33from the father of impressionism himself, Edouard Manet.
0:14:35 > 0:14:38He would go on to paint Morisot 11 times.
0:14:42 > 0:14:44There she is all in black,
0:14:44 > 0:14:50rather sleepily extending a pink-slippered foot.
0:14:51 > 0:14:54Not very proper at all.
0:14:54 > 0:14:59And that lack of propriety was noticed by critics in one painting
0:14:59 > 0:15:03in particular, Le Repos, in which Manet
0:15:03 > 0:15:07has the beautiful dark-haired Morisot
0:15:07 > 0:15:12reclining on a plush pink sofa,
0:15:12 > 0:15:15presenting herself almost
0:15:15 > 0:15:21as if she's going to sink onto that sofa, full of dreamy sensuality.
0:15:22 > 0:15:27I think all these portraits hint
0:15:27 > 0:15:30that underneath the beautiful clothes
0:15:30 > 0:15:33there's a woman chafing against the
0:15:33 > 0:15:36conventional restraints of femininity.
0:15:36 > 0:15:38Which is surprising,
0:15:38 > 0:15:42as Morisot was groomed to follow convention not defy it.
0:15:47 > 0:15:50Born in 1841 to wealth
0:15:50 > 0:15:55and privilege she grew up in the exclusive Parisian suburb of Passy.
0:15:55 > 0:15:59This was a world where women might be tutored in art, to make them
0:15:59 > 0:16:04marriage material, but not to make them professional artists.
0:16:04 > 0:16:07So, the exceptional talent betrayed by Morisot
0:16:07 > 0:16:12and her sister Edma began to raise serious concerns.
0:16:13 > 0:16:17One of their tutors, Joseph Guichard, recognised the girls'
0:16:17 > 0:16:22unusual potential so he warned their mother
0:16:22 > 0:16:24"With characters like your daughters
0:16:24 > 0:16:29"my teaching will make them painters, not minor amateur talents.
0:16:29 > 0:16:33"And do you really understand what that means?
0:16:33 > 0:16:37"In the grand society of the haute bourgeoisie in which you move,
0:16:37 > 0:16:40"it would be a revolution.
0:16:40 > 0:16:43"I would say, even a catastrophe."
0:16:48 > 0:16:51Yet the Morisot sisters were not to be put off...
0:16:51 > 0:16:55following the established path for any male artist -
0:16:55 > 0:16:57becoming copyists in the Louvre.
0:16:58 > 0:17:01However, Edma's career was short-lived,
0:17:01 > 0:17:05she succumbed to family obligation.
0:17:05 > 0:17:08Marrying a naval officer in 1869,
0:17:08 > 0:17:11she felt obliged to retire her paints.
0:17:11 > 0:17:15And her wistful regret ever after for the life of the studio
0:17:15 > 0:17:20made Morisot all the more determined not to give it up.
0:17:22 > 0:17:26Morisot's friendship with Edouard Manet drew
0:17:26 > 0:17:29her into the circle of his younger acolytes.
0:17:31 > 0:17:35Men who were striving to capture modern life on canvas.
0:17:35 > 0:17:37She was inspired.
0:17:42 > 0:17:46The impressionists, as they became known, were breaking with
0:17:46 > 0:17:49the conventions of the art establishment, but they still
0:17:49 > 0:17:55had charmingly old-fashioned ideas about the roles of women and men.
0:17:55 > 0:17:58They claimed the freedom of the streets -
0:17:58 > 0:18:02moving freely about the city, luxuriating in anonymity,
0:18:02 > 0:18:05idling and observing high life and low.
0:18:05 > 0:18:09This was the life of the flaneur, or urban wanderer.
0:18:09 > 0:18:14But a female wanderer?! A flaneuse? Impossible!
0:18:15 > 0:18:19The cafes of bohemian Montmartre have long since disappeared,
0:18:19 > 0:18:23but there's one bar remaining, La Bonne Franquette,
0:18:23 > 0:18:27which boasts of its link to impressionism.
0:18:27 > 0:18:30Here it's announcing the great artists -
0:18:30 > 0:18:32who used to gather here to drink.
0:18:32 > 0:18:39Pissarro, Sisley, Degas, Cezanne - Berthe Morisot's name is not there.
0:18:39 > 0:18:45She knew them all but, of course, the streets at night, the bars
0:18:45 > 0:18:50and cafes of bohemian Paris were no place for a lady.
0:18:53 > 0:18:56But Morisot was too determined to be defeated.
0:19:00 > 0:19:03She took the principles of impressionism and applied them in
0:19:03 > 0:19:09her own context, unconventional art in the most conventional setting.
0:19:12 > 0:19:18And this is the modern life that Morisot painted.
0:19:18 > 0:19:22She couldn't go to the bars, the cafes
0:19:22 > 0:19:28and the theatres to capture Paris of the 1870s, but she painted the world
0:19:28 > 0:19:29that she knew.
0:19:31 > 0:19:36Drawing rooms, nurseries, bedrooms and gardens.
0:19:45 > 0:19:52In 1874, aged 33, Morisot married Edouard Manet's brother Eugene.
0:19:52 > 0:19:56She longed to be a mother and had one precious daughter,
0:19:56 > 0:19:58Julie, 4 years later.
0:20:00 > 0:20:04Morisot was one of the very few women who managed to blend
0:20:04 > 0:20:07domesticity and an artistic career.
0:20:08 > 0:20:11That blend was captured on her canvases,
0:20:11 > 0:20:15creating a fresh version of modern family life.
0:20:22 > 0:20:25What she's saying here is that modern life
0:20:25 > 0:20:30and its fleeting moments are just as vivid in the private world
0:20:30 > 0:20:34of women and children as they are on the streets.
0:20:34 > 0:20:41And so, she's immortalised for all time these wonderful,
0:20:41 > 0:20:47transient, fugitive moments of what it is to be alive.
0:20:56 > 0:21:01But this shimmering originality did not establish Morisot's reputation
0:21:01 > 0:21:04alongside her fellow male impressionists...
0:21:04 > 0:21:08her wealth and privilege meant she was never driven by the same
0:21:08 > 0:21:10need to sell her works.
0:21:12 > 0:21:15So, upon her premature death of pneumonia
0:21:15 > 0:21:18in 1895, aged just 54,
0:21:18 > 0:21:21she had failed to secure a lasting legacy...
0:21:23 > 0:21:26..as her grave bears stark testament.
0:21:32 > 0:21:36I'm depressed to discover that even in death she's, quite literally,
0:21:36 > 0:21:42overshadowed by the celebrity of her more famous brother-in-law.
0:21:42 > 0:21:44Edouard Manet up there.
0:21:44 > 0:21:49Down here, her husband, and then Berthe Morisot,
0:21:49 > 0:21:51"Veuve D' Eugene Manet".
0:21:51 > 0:21:56So, "widow". That is her only attribution.
0:21:56 > 0:22:01As her fellow impressionist Camille Pissarro lamented on hearing
0:22:01 > 0:22:04news of her death - "Poor Madam Morisot.
0:22:04 > 0:22:07"The public hardly knows of her."
0:22:16 > 0:22:19And yet, some 120 years later
0:22:19 > 0:22:23the art-buying community certainly knows her name today.
0:22:24 > 0:22:26Morisot's delicate female nude,
0:22:26 > 0:22:32fetched an impressive £280,000 but there's no escaping the fact
0:22:32 > 0:22:36her fellow male impressionists raise far greater sums.
0:22:37 > 0:22:40Well, I think there is a sense in the art market that the
0:22:40 > 0:22:44blue-chip artists that one immediately thinks of-of Monet and
0:22:44 > 0:22:48Renoir, but also Picasso and Chagall and Matisse and so forth.
0:22:48 > 0:22:50Has there ever been a blue-chip female?
0:22:50 > 0:22:52Er, there are starting to be.
0:22:52 > 0:22:56I mean most of the big prices for female artists have been
0:22:56 > 0:22:58made in the last five to ten years,
0:22:58 > 0:23:02so for Morisot the world-record auction price was
0:23:02 > 0:23:05made in February of this year when Christie's sold a...
0:23:05 > 0:23:09a wonderful early masterpiece by her for nearly £7 million.
0:23:09 > 0:23:12And that's a world record for any female artist.
0:23:12 > 0:23:18- To put that in context, Renoirs can go for 20 million...- Hm.
0:23:18 > 0:23:20..and Monets for 40 million.
0:23:20 > 0:23:24Are you and the buyers saying "she is not as good"?
0:23:24 > 0:23:25I don't think so...
0:23:25 > 0:23:27I think she is very ground-breaking, you know,
0:23:27 > 0:23:31we still see a painting like this and think that it's...
0:23:31 > 0:23:34that it's quite revolutionary, um, you know particularly in
0:23:34 > 0:23:37figure painting as opposed to landscape painting
0:23:37 > 0:23:38but I think, you know,
0:23:38 > 0:23:41she was, er, certainly, in my view she was
0:23:41 > 0:23:43la impressionist par-excellence,
0:23:43 > 0:23:48and I think her reputation, um, certainly should be larger today.
0:23:51 > 0:23:54For all its picture-postcard prettiness
0:23:54 > 0:23:58impressionism cast off the dead hand of tradition
0:23:58 > 0:24:02and grasped anew, the immediacy of existence.
0:24:05 > 0:24:08But there is more to art than two dimensions...
0:24:08 > 0:24:12Open your eyes wider and broaden your definition and new
0:24:12 > 0:24:16worlds of creativity are revealed far beyond the walls of galleries.
0:24:19 > 0:24:23Here, nestled in bucolic Surrey, a female artist would take inspiration
0:24:23 > 0:24:28from the impressionists and take her art into an entirely new territory.
0:24:28 > 0:24:31She would work on a far bigger canvas.
0:24:33 > 0:24:36Gertrude Jekyll is one of the most celebrated
0:24:36 > 0:24:39garden designers in history.
0:24:39 > 0:24:43But to see her as a mere horticulturalist is to miss
0:24:43 > 0:24:45the flavour of her genius.
0:24:45 > 0:24:48She was first and last an artist.
0:24:48 > 0:24:54She saw the garden as a canvas on which the gardener paints or
0:24:54 > 0:24:58embroiders his picture more or less formed in his mind,
0:24:58 > 0:25:02using, for his pigments, the plants that best suit his purpose.
0:25:04 > 0:25:08Gertrude Jekyll was born in 1843, just two years after Berthe Morisot.
0:25:09 > 0:25:15In a career that spanned 60 years, she would design over 400 gardens,
0:25:15 > 0:25:19publish 14 books and write over 1,000 articles.
0:25:20 > 0:25:24She was determined to make the public to see the potential
0:25:24 > 0:25:27lying just outside the window.
0:25:28 > 0:25:32But long before she picked up the spade she held a paintbrush.
0:25:34 > 0:25:36Jekyll was, in fact,
0:25:36 > 0:25:39a student of the Female School of Design just like her
0:25:39 > 0:25:42contemporary Lady Butler.
0:25:42 > 0:25:45She was intent on becoming a professional artist -
0:25:45 > 0:25:49but her career was to be threatened before it had even begun.
0:25:51 > 0:25:53Like all professional artists,
0:25:53 > 0:25:58Gertrude Jekyll partly trained by copying the paintings of others,
0:25:58 > 0:26:02and here's her version of Turner's Ancient Rome.
0:26:03 > 0:26:08I think you can see her personal fascination with Turner's
0:26:08 > 0:26:14sublime use of subtle colour contrasts, and light.
0:26:15 > 0:26:20But she faced a terrible handicap -
0:26:20 > 0:26:26short sight of the severest kind, inadequate and painful.
0:26:26 > 0:26:30She admitted "my natural focus is just two inches".
0:26:33 > 0:26:36What a handicap in a woman who had the ambition to
0:26:36 > 0:26:38paint on this scale.
0:26:40 > 0:26:42Jekyll was forced to find a different way
0:26:42 > 0:26:44to channel her creativity.
0:26:45 > 0:26:49Embroidery, embossing, photography,
0:26:49 > 0:26:52glass making, collage.
0:26:52 > 0:26:56These crafts where dignified as never before by the
0:26:56 > 0:26:59Arts and Crafts movement of the later 19th century.
0:27:01 > 0:27:04Arts and Crafts rejected mass-produced industrial design
0:27:04 > 0:27:09as soulless, and proposed the recovery of handicraft skills
0:27:09 > 0:27:13and the protection of rural traditions.
0:27:13 > 0:27:18So, Jekyll's blend of art and rural craft led the zeitgeist.
0:27:18 > 0:27:22And she saw that one arena was ripe for reinvention -
0:27:22 > 0:27:25the garden.
0:27:25 > 0:27:31She broke, absolutely, with the formal conventions of the Victorian flowerbed...
0:27:31 > 0:27:34the kind of thing you can still see today in corporation parks
0:27:34 > 0:27:36or at the seaside.
0:27:36 > 0:27:42Here, she seems to have dabbled the white on with a painterly eye
0:27:42 > 0:27:48in these flowing free drifts of white and pastel pink.
0:27:48 > 0:27:52I can really see now why she claimed to be inspired
0:27:52 > 0:27:53by the impressionists.
0:27:54 > 0:27:58Jekyll approached a garden like a painting, as she wrote,
0:27:58 > 0:28:03"plants were like having a box of paints from the best colourman"
0:28:03 > 0:28:05and she used them to sparkling effect.
0:28:12 > 0:28:16It's only when you see one of her gardens in all its glory that
0:28:16 > 0:28:18you appreciate what she was trying to do...
0:28:25 > 0:28:29While many of Jekyll's gardens have long since vanished
0:28:29 > 0:28:32one, in particular, here at Upton Grey in Surrey,
0:28:32 > 0:28:36has been restored by following her instructions to the letter.
0:28:39 > 0:28:43She argued that creating a beautiful garden was harder than
0:28:43 > 0:28:45creating a beautiful painting.
0:28:45 > 0:28:50Her gardens were designed to be seen from many different vistas.
0:28:50 > 0:28:53They changed over the course of the day.
0:28:53 > 0:28:58This white would really scintillate and sparkle in the evening.
0:28:58 > 0:29:00They changed over the seasons,
0:29:00 > 0:29:04and she battled and responded to the elements.
0:29:04 > 0:29:08This is art wrested from living nature, art in 3D.
0:29:14 > 0:29:19Jekyll defied convention and liberated an entire nation
0:29:19 > 0:29:22of amateur gardeners to experiment with plants and
0:29:22 > 0:29:25colour harmonies in their own back yard,
0:29:25 > 0:29:28a legacy that is still with us today.
0:29:34 > 0:29:37No other garden designer has had such a lasting impact
0:29:37 > 0:29:39on our landscape.
0:29:40 > 0:29:45Her obituary in The Times acclaimed her as a pioneering gardener,
0:29:45 > 0:29:50but also as a true artist with an exquisite sense of colour.
0:30:05 > 0:30:08Just as it inspired Gertrude Jekyll to reveal the artistic
0:30:08 > 0:30:12potential of the English country garden, the Arts and Crafts movement
0:30:12 > 0:30:17was to light the touch paper for a revolution INSIDE our homes.
0:30:18 > 0:30:22Four hours north of Stockholm deep in the Swedish pine forest
0:30:22 > 0:30:25an artist was to turn interior decoration
0:30:25 > 0:30:29and lifestyle into a family-friendly art form.
0:30:38 > 0:30:40Karin Larsson was not a revolutionary
0:30:40 > 0:30:42in the conventional sense at all.
0:30:42 > 0:30:48She embraced the traditional roles of wife, mother, and homemaker.
0:30:48 > 0:30:52Yet it was in the very role of homemaker,
0:30:52 > 0:30:56and in the lifestyle that she crafted in this house,
0:30:56 > 0:31:01that she did so much to influence the way we see our own.
0:31:04 > 0:31:09Karin was blessed with affluent parents who supported her education.
0:31:09 > 0:31:13She studied as a painter at the Swedish Academy of Art.
0:31:15 > 0:31:18Karin might have become a professional artist herself
0:31:18 > 0:31:22had she not met and fallen in love with another Swedish painter -
0:31:22 > 0:31:27the impoverished, insecure but ambitious Carl Larsson.
0:31:29 > 0:31:33They married in 1883 and Karin stopped her own painting -
0:31:33 > 0:31:34and started a family.
0:31:37 > 0:31:42Looking at this self portrait of Carl he's clearly the artist of
0:31:42 > 0:31:47the family. You'd be forgiven for not seeing Karin at all and yet,
0:31:47 > 0:31:50if you look a little closer you can see that she is,
0:31:50 > 0:31:52in fact, busily sewing.
0:31:52 > 0:31:54Her creativity had not ceased.
0:31:55 > 0:32:00Karin was crafting a family home and Carl's paintings offer
0:32:00 > 0:32:03an intimate window into that private world.
0:32:15 > 0:32:19The Larssons moved to this house in 1901 and Karin
0:32:19 > 0:32:22set about transforming it from a dark old farm
0:32:22 > 0:32:24into a warm family home.
0:32:38 > 0:32:42What a cheerful, vibrant family dining room,
0:32:42 > 0:32:49this is not a palace, clearly Karin Larsson's interior decoration
0:32:49 > 0:32:52is on a domestic scale
0:32:52 > 0:32:56and everything is decorated with her own hand.
0:33:09 > 0:33:13Karin was rejecting outright the pervasive weight
0:33:13 > 0:33:17and gloom of 19th century interior decoration.
0:33:17 > 0:33:21With a joyful combination of bright colours, mismatched furniture,
0:33:21 > 0:33:27abstract patterns... and loose bunches of flowers.
0:33:28 > 0:33:31We are so familiar with this informal look,
0:33:31 > 0:33:35it's easy to forget that it was once shockingly new.
0:33:35 > 0:33:40This was cutting edge as design and as a way of life.
0:33:45 > 0:33:49The house here at Sundborn is certainly remote,
0:33:49 > 0:33:55but, as this study reveals, she was anything but cut off.
0:33:57 > 0:33:59I see it especially
0:33:59 > 0:34:03in the periodicals that Karin kept up with -
0:34:03 > 0:34:08Art and Decoration from France, The Studio, an Arts and Crafts
0:34:08 > 0:34:11magazine from England
0:34:11 > 0:34:16and Culture and Decoration, a German periodical.
0:34:17 > 0:34:24Karin Larson was engaged with international aesthetic debate.
0:34:24 > 0:34:29This is not some artless recreation of peasant life,
0:34:29 > 0:34:33this is intellectually informed, exciting and new.
0:34:35 > 0:34:38This is the counterpart of the Arts and Crafts movement
0:34:38 > 0:34:40in England you will find here what we call
0:34:40 > 0:34:44the National Romantic, romanticism the National Romantic movement,
0:34:44 > 0:34:51when, not only artists, you have authors, poets, composers, everyone
0:34:51 > 0:34:55taking an interest in that genuine Swedishness and the countryside.
0:34:55 > 0:34:57So it seems to be everything from the way
0:34:57 > 0:35:00she arranged her flowers to the simple clothes
0:35:00 > 0:35:05she dressed her children in to the beauty of the entire environment?
0:35:05 > 0:35:08Yeah. And it has become really an iconic...
0:35:08 > 0:35:13it has got an iconic status amongst Swedes and in the national identity.
0:35:13 > 0:35:16I mean, look in a magazine for interior design
0:35:16 > 0:35:19in Sweden for instance you'll find milieus that
0:35:19 > 0:35:21look like, you know, Karin could have made them.
0:35:21 > 0:35:23You have that same mixture,
0:35:23 > 0:35:26you have the light, the flowers in the window and all that...
0:35:26 > 0:35:30Interior decoration sounds kind of frilly,
0:35:30 > 0:35:34but, in fact, she has helped define national identity?
0:35:34 > 0:35:35Definitely so, yeah.
0:35:37 > 0:35:41Looking at this rustic family home with fresh eyes,
0:35:41 > 0:35:45you can appreciate the modernity of Karin's vision.
0:35:49 > 0:35:53A heady combination of bold experimentation
0:35:53 > 0:35:55and artistic freedom.
0:36:02 > 0:36:05There is nothing of grandma about her weaving
0:36:05 > 0:36:08with its weird and wild motifs.
0:36:13 > 0:36:17I think here we have something really rather disturbing...
0:36:17 > 0:36:23it's like a cartoon image out of manga.
0:36:23 > 0:36:29There is a stylised animal here gripping on with nasty teeth.
0:36:29 > 0:36:33What an earth is this creature?
0:36:33 > 0:36:35But also there is something charming
0:36:35 > 0:36:37and hidden here.
0:36:37 > 0:36:39Here in the corner...
0:36:40 > 0:36:43..is a lovely little pear
0:36:43 > 0:36:47and family tradition has it that her little daughter Brita
0:36:47 > 0:36:51came in eating a pear while he mother was at the loom and said
0:36:51 > 0:36:56"Please, put my pear... in your weaving."
0:36:56 > 0:36:59Karin Larsson is absolutely
0:36:59 > 0:37:06turning her back on the bourgeois conventions of Victorian art and
0:37:06 > 0:37:10at the same time putting children
0:37:10 > 0:37:14at the centre of her production.
0:37:16 > 0:37:19Larsson's vision of a home was informal,
0:37:19 > 0:37:24imaginative and playful but it amazes me to reflect that without
0:37:24 > 0:37:31Carl Larsson's paintings we might never have realised HER originality.
0:37:31 > 0:37:38The fresh, unpretentious, easy-going, family-centred
0:37:38 > 0:37:45interior design of Karin Larsson - Lifestyle as art, for every woman.
0:37:45 > 0:37:46Even today.
0:37:49 > 0:37:53She had created the perfect model of the modern home but it would
0:37:53 > 0:37:57take more than half a century for the rest of us to catch up.
0:37:57 > 0:38:02Finally in the 1950s and '60s her vision for our domestic interiors
0:38:02 > 0:38:06would take hold and one Swedish firm has seen it circle the globe.
0:38:16 > 0:38:20The way she did her home taught us to break convention, dare to
0:38:20 > 0:38:24break conventions and furnish your home according to your own needs.
0:38:24 > 0:38:28The philosophy is such, I'm daring to use colour much more.
0:38:28 > 0:38:30It doesn't have to be perfect.
0:38:30 > 0:38:32If there is one word. I think it's freedom,
0:38:32 > 0:38:35freedom of body, freedom of mind and-and family...
0:38:35 > 0:38:39- is... was quite revolutionary.- Hm.
0:38:47 > 0:38:50It's ironic that a woman who gave up a professional career
0:38:50 > 0:38:55as a painter and pursued no personal recognition
0:38:55 > 0:39:01has nevertheless left an artistic legacy more palpable, tangible
0:39:01 > 0:39:06and relevant to modern commerce and the way we live now than any
0:39:06 > 0:39:10painting hanging in any museum in the world.
0:39:14 > 0:39:18The female artists I have chosen were all trailblazers...
0:39:18 > 0:39:21finding new ways for their art to shape our lives.
0:39:22 > 0:39:24In the early years of the 20th century,
0:39:24 > 0:39:27women were fighting for legal freedoms
0:39:27 > 0:39:30and political rights.
0:39:32 > 0:39:36Meanwhile, in Paris, a handful of designers
0:39:36 > 0:39:40were determined to emancipate women in a most practical way.
0:39:43 > 0:39:47How could women ever be free when they were physically bound?
0:39:47 > 0:39:51Unable even to dress themselves?
0:39:52 > 0:39:56Here at a fashion retrospective, at the Hotel de Ville, there is
0:39:56 > 0:39:59one designer that stands out from all the others.
0:39:59 > 0:40:01Known as the "Sculptor of Fashion",
0:40:01 > 0:40:06she would offer women a whole new design aesthetic.
0:40:06 > 0:40:08Now, perhaps the name of Vionnet is not
0:40:08 > 0:40:11so familiar to you as the others in this exhibition -
0:40:11 > 0:40:14Dior, Givenchy, Chanel,
0:40:14 > 0:40:18but in fact it's Vionnet who's the true revolutionary.
0:40:18 > 0:40:21You look at this dress and you think,
0:40:21 > 0:40:23"Looks pretty simple to me."
0:40:23 > 0:40:26But, in fact, it's deceptively simple.
0:40:26 > 0:40:31Vionnet threw away the corset, stiffenings, the buttons,
0:40:31 > 0:40:32the petticoats.
0:40:32 > 0:40:37She cut the fabric in such a way that it sensuously clung to
0:40:37 > 0:40:40every curve of a woman's body.
0:40:40 > 0:40:44Vionnet had mastered the art of both
0:40:44 > 0:40:47celebrating and liberating femininity.
0:40:53 > 0:40:58The daughter of a tax collector Madeleine Vionnet was born in 1876.
0:40:59 > 0:41:02She began as a seamstress at the age of 11,
0:41:02 > 0:41:05but by 18 she was struggling to reconcile
0:41:05 > 0:41:10the demands of a husband and young baby with her ambitions.
0:41:10 > 0:41:14The tragic death of her child at only nine months seemed to make
0:41:14 > 0:41:18the decision for her. Divorcing her husband she threw herself
0:41:18 > 0:41:20into her career...
0:41:23 > 0:41:27..working her way up through the couture houses of Paris.
0:41:27 > 0:41:32But she grew frustrated. In her eyes, there was nothing more
0:41:32 > 0:41:35old-fashioned than fashion itself.
0:41:35 > 0:41:38She had a bold NEW vision.
0:41:41 > 0:41:45Her approach is really similar to sculpture and architecture,
0:41:45 > 0:41:49and goes towards the idea that the most important
0:41:49 > 0:41:54thing in fashion creation is the cut, the structure.
0:41:54 > 0:42:00Madeleine Vionnet is very famous about the invention of the bias cut.
0:42:00 > 0:42:03For example, if you take a piece of cloth, like this
0:42:03 > 0:42:08in the tradition before Vionnet, you were using the textile like this,
0:42:08 > 0:42:12you know, following the straight line... and you were cutting
0:42:12 > 0:42:16the dress following this thread.
0:42:16 > 0:42:19With Vionnet you take the piece of material like this.
0:42:19 > 0:42:21- On the diagonal. - Yes, absolutely.
0:42:21 > 0:42:23You cut across?
0:42:23 > 0:42:25Yes, and you drape on the body like this
0:42:25 > 0:42:27and you see the effect.
0:42:27 > 0:42:32You know, it floats around the body, it's fluid as water...
0:42:32 > 0:42:36- and that is light as a cloud.- Yes.
0:42:36 > 0:42:37It is very sensual
0:42:37 > 0:42:40it is the discovery of sensuality.
0:42:45 > 0:42:48Her clothes were artful in their simplicity.
0:42:48 > 0:42:52With a sculptor's appreciation of form, she worked with the female
0:42:52 > 0:42:54body, not against it.
0:42:55 > 0:42:59Vionnet's approach wasn't just audacious, it was scandalous.
0:43:00 > 0:43:03She had not just ditched the need for a corset,
0:43:03 > 0:43:06even undergarments were unnecessary.
0:43:06 > 0:43:10She gave the new generation of women freedom of movement
0:43:10 > 0:43:12and sensuality...
0:43:12 > 0:43:16as she later reflected, her success was like an explosion.
0:43:16 > 0:43:19By the 1920s, the House of Vionnet
0:43:19 > 0:43:23was the grandest fashion atelier in Paris.
0:43:23 > 0:43:27All that remains now is the grand facade,
0:43:27 > 0:43:33but THEN this hid the factory out the back where there was
0:43:33 > 0:43:39a toiling hive of 1,200 workers, mainly women.
0:43:39 > 0:43:42A humble seamstress from Abbeville has scaled the
0:43:42 > 0:43:45very heights of the French fashion industry.
0:43:45 > 0:43:50Now a woman was not just the lead designer, she owned the business!
0:43:50 > 0:43:54And she used her power to improve the lives of her staff.
0:43:54 > 0:43:58An industry that had been notoriously exploitive
0:43:58 > 0:44:01of its seamstresses was to find in Vionnet
0:44:01 > 0:44:03a very different style of boss.
0:44:03 > 0:44:08Vionnet took extraordinarily special care of her, predominantly,
0:44:08 > 0:44:10female workforce.
0:44:10 > 0:44:14There was a free onsite doctor, dentist,
0:44:14 > 0:44:19and podiatrist open to all her workers and their parents.
0:44:19 > 0:44:23There was an onsite creche and a fund
0:44:23 > 0:44:28so that every baby born to the workshop, be they legitimate
0:44:28 > 0:44:33or illegitimate, would receive a 500-franc note in the cradle.
0:44:33 > 0:44:39The world that Vionnet made was as women-friendly as her clothes.
0:44:41 > 0:44:44But how can such a creative visionary
0:44:44 > 0:44:49and social pioneer not be seared on our cultural consciousness?
0:44:49 > 0:44:54While Coco Chanel's ubiquitous suit lives on through endless imitations,
0:44:54 > 0:44:58Vionnet absolutely resisted the notion of mass production.
0:44:58 > 0:45:01She refused to give up her creative control.
0:45:01 > 0:45:04Her entire production was photographed.
0:45:07 > 0:45:11A clear record of every single design that came out of her house.
0:45:11 > 0:45:15Someone like Gabrielle Chanel who always said to be copied is
0:45:15 > 0:45:18a great flattery, Madeleine Vionnet was against copying and these
0:45:18 > 0:45:24copyright albums are very important in showing how ferociously
0:45:24 > 0:45:26she guarded her designs.
0:45:26 > 0:45:29She did consider that she invented something
0:45:29 > 0:45:33and this invention not only should be paid for but,
0:45:33 > 0:45:35more importantly, respected.
0:45:35 > 0:45:40This even can be found in her label, her label is her own signature
0:45:40 > 0:45:42so it is a very personal signature
0:45:42 > 0:45:47but she will push that to the limit in including her thumb print.
0:45:47 > 0:45:50That is extraordinary, that hadn't occurred to me, that she
0:45:50 > 0:45:55- is signing it just like a painter signs his work.- Yes.
0:45:55 > 0:45:59I can see that it is structural to the fabric but nevertheless it's not
0:45:59 > 0:46:02quite as simple as I'd expected from reading about her.
0:46:02 > 0:46:06It is not a question of simple, it is a question of pure.
0:46:06 > 0:46:09Because when a woman wore this type of dress
0:46:09 > 0:46:13- she could actually just slip it on.- I see.
0:46:13 > 0:46:18Up until then she needed a helper to button up, to put it in the
0:46:18 > 0:46:22right direction, this actually was the most modern of dresses
0:46:22 > 0:46:25because you could dress yourself.
0:46:25 > 0:46:29If you feel comfortable in your dress you can say
0:46:29 > 0:46:34"Thank you, Madeleine." It's really her that took the shackles out
0:46:34 > 0:46:40of the female wardrobe and also made it quite luxurious and beautiful.
0:46:43 > 0:46:48In just 80 years women had opened up entirely new territories of art
0:46:48 > 0:46:52and grasped social, political and economic freedoms.
0:46:53 > 0:46:57But as my journey comes to a close I want to return to painting
0:46:57 > 0:47:01and celebrate a woman who demonstrates, above all others,
0:47:01 > 0:47:02how far we have come.
0:47:06 > 0:47:11America - the fastest-growing economy of the early 20th century,
0:47:11 > 0:47:16looking for an artistic identity to match its global power
0:47:16 > 0:47:18and cultural dynamism.
0:47:18 > 0:47:21That challenge would be met by a woman
0:47:21 > 0:47:26who blazed her own trail and became the first great American artist.
0:47:29 > 0:47:34To say that Georgia O'Keeffe was single-minded is putting it mildly.
0:47:34 > 0:47:38Born in 1887 to dairy farmers in Wisconsin, by the
0:47:38 > 0:47:42age of 14 she had already proclaimed that SHE would be an artist!
0:47:45 > 0:47:48But by her early twenties, after stints at art school
0:47:48 > 0:47:51she survived by taking teaching jobs across the Midwest.
0:47:53 > 0:47:57It was only when a friend showed several of her early sketches
0:47:57 > 0:48:01to Alfred Stieglitz at his New York Gallery, 291,
0:48:01 > 0:48:03that her career was to take off.
0:48:04 > 0:48:07He was electrified...
0:48:07 > 0:48:08he wrote to O'Keeffe,
0:48:08 > 0:48:13"They're the purist, finest, sincerest things that have
0:48:13 > 0:48:16"entered 291 in a long while."
0:48:16 > 0:48:22O'Keeffe responded - "I make them just to express myself,
0:48:22 > 0:48:26"things I want and feel but don't have words for..."
0:48:27 > 0:48:32So, at last, O'Keeffe felt that someone else understood...
0:48:32 > 0:48:37thereby forging a creative partnership between an impresario
0:48:37 > 0:48:41and an artist that would change the future of American art.
0:48:44 > 0:48:47Stieglitz became obsessed by the young artist.
0:48:47 > 0:48:51Despite being 23 years her senior, he realised he had met
0:48:51 > 0:48:53his intellectual
0:48:53 > 0:48:57and physical match. His passionate desire to possess her is documented
0:48:57 > 0:49:02in the hundred of photographs he took of every little bit of her.
0:49:07 > 0:49:12He sought to capture her strong handsomeness,
0:49:12 > 0:49:15her steely self possession,
0:49:15 > 0:49:19her smouldering sensuality...
0:49:20 > 0:49:24..but also the beauty of her languorous body.
0:49:24 > 0:49:31She had no prudish fear of nudity which is pretty staggering
0:49:31 > 0:49:35for a young woman in 1918.
0:49:36 > 0:49:39O'Keeffe's sensual self-confidence
0:49:39 > 0:49:41would be reflected even more
0:49:41 > 0:49:46arrestingly in her work, especially in one subject to which
0:49:46 > 0:49:51she would return to time after time - the flower.
0:49:51 > 0:49:54But she would give it new meaning and power.
0:49:56 > 0:49:59Look at that whirlpool of purity sucking you in...
0:50:01 > 0:50:03..but what's new about it?
0:50:03 > 0:50:06For centuries women had painted flowers,
0:50:06 > 0:50:11botanical art was seen as decorative, feminine, miniature
0:50:11 > 0:50:17and unthreatening but there is nothing tame about this bloom.
0:50:17 > 0:50:21Inspired by the telephoto lens Georgia O'Keeffe has magnified
0:50:21 > 0:50:24her flower into a monument.
0:50:24 > 0:50:27She wrote - "I decided that if I could
0:50:27 > 0:50:33"magnify a flower on to a huge scale you could not ignore its beauty".
0:50:33 > 0:50:36Gorgeous is too weak a word, I think,
0:50:36 > 0:50:39to describe its dreamy seductiveness.
0:50:42 > 0:50:44Ever the provocative publicist,
0:50:44 > 0:50:49Stieglitz mounted a series of exhibitions of O'Keeffe's flowers
0:50:49 > 0:50:52in the 1920s, associating them
0:50:52 > 0:50:55with his own frank photographs of her.
0:50:55 > 0:50:58The combination was combustible.
0:50:58 > 0:51:01Giddy on Freud, one critic said -
0:51:01 > 0:51:07"Here is a long, loud blast of sex."
0:51:07 > 0:51:11In this context, her flower abstractions
0:51:11 > 0:51:16were seen as unambiguous celebrations of female genitalia.
0:51:17 > 0:51:19Another critic, Paul Rosenfeld,
0:51:19 > 0:51:25trumpeted in 1921, "Her art is gloriously female.
0:51:25 > 0:51:30"Her painful and ecstatic climaxes give us to understand
0:51:30 > 0:51:35"something man has always wanted to know.
0:51:35 > 0:51:39"The organs that differentiate the sex, speak."
0:51:40 > 0:51:46O'Keeffe was furious to have her art reduced to gynaecology.
0:51:48 > 0:51:52O'Keeffe insisted that the critics were talking rubbish -
0:51:52 > 0:51:56projecting their own views, not her intentions.
0:51:56 > 0:52:00While such controversy did not stop her being a commercial success
0:52:00 > 0:52:04O'Keeffe felt her art was compromised.
0:52:04 > 0:52:09By late 1929 O'Keeffe found her professional life increasingly
0:52:09 > 0:52:13unfulfilling and faced crisis in her personal life.
0:52:13 > 0:52:15Stieglitz had
0:52:15 > 0:52:19taken up with a younger woman - she felt close to breakdown.
0:52:19 > 0:52:23In an all-American move, she headed west to escape, to the
0:52:23 > 0:52:26barren, desert landscape of New Mexico.
0:52:43 > 0:52:47"The country seems to call one in a way that one has to answer it"
0:52:47 > 0:52:49she wrote.
0:52:49 > 0:52:53"This is my world and it fits me exactly."
0:53:05 > 0:53:08O'Keeffe spent five months here that first summer
0:53:08 > 0:53:13but she would return almost every year for the rest of her life.
0:53:14 > 0:53:18She just drank in the landscape, the people, the culture, feathers,
0:53:18 > 0:53:22birds, all these things that were new to her.
0:53:22 > 0:53:26She created 23 paintings during that five-month period
0:53:26 > 0:53:30and it's astonishing to me that she had the power to rise to that.
0:53:30 > 0:53:33And instead if it being crushing it became the
0:53:33 > 0:53:34second great opening in her career.
0:53:34 > 0:53:38Do you think she is an icon for women today because of that
0:53:38 > 0:53:41steely self-reliance?
0:53:41 > 0:53:46I think so. One of the things that I didn't imagine coming to work here
0:53:46 > 0:53:50as the curator is how people respond to her.
0:53:50 > 0:53:53I thought it would be about the artwork, I actually think
0:53:53 > 0:53:57the iconicity of O'Keeffe is that she lived the life she wanted to live.
0:53:57 > 0:54:01And I think there are very few men or women who can say that...
0:54:01 > 0:54:02In any era?
0:54:02 > 0:54:04Yes, at any time, right now, for instance.
0:54:10 > 0:54:14It was here that O'Keeffe fostered the image that would become
0:54:14 > 0:54:19so iconic - alone, strong, independent.
0:54:19 > 0:54:24Seemingly as harsh as the rocky desert around her.
0:54:27 > 0:54:33For her this was such a beautiful, lonely-feeling place,
0:54:33 > 0:54:37such a fine part of what I call the "faraway".
0:54:37 > 0:54:43It spoke to her deeply about what she thought was her mission in life.
0:54:44 > 0:54:50"I must show the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it."
0:54:59 > 0:55:03The move to New Mexico was a tectonic shift for O'Keeffe's art
0:55:03 > 0:55:07and therefore the history of American modernism.
0:55:07 > 0:55:10American abstraction would now draw
0:55:10 > 0:55:13on the grandeur of America itself
0:55:13 > 0:55:16not on European Civilisation,
0:55:16 > 0:55:19and nowhere is that clearer than in her colours.
0:55:23 > 0:55:25Look at these singing tones.
0:55:27 > 0:55:31Her desert palette - the light is different here.
0:55:37 > 0:55:40O'Keeffe's work in the desert was prolific
0:55:40 > 0:55:42and hugely significant.
0:55:42 > 0:55:46The woman who was famed for her flower abstractions
0:55:46 > 0:55:48now found inspiration in the landscape,
0:55:48 > 0:55:53architecture and Native American culture of the west.
0:55:53 > 0:55:56Georgia is not looking to other examples -
0:55:56 > 0:55:59she is a radical individual. She is painting these at a moment
0:55:59 > 0:56:04when almost every artist in America is anxious about how to make
0:56:04 > 0:56:07American Art - in part because so many of them have trained in
0:56:07 > 0:56:09Europe and they feel,
0:56:09 > 0:56:11they know they are doing things that are derivative.
0:56:11 > 0:56:15- Yeah.- She isn't. She is creating something that is unique and
0:56:15 > 0:56:19original and hers...and that becomes part of the modernist vision.
0:56:19 > 0:56:23She opens America's eyes to a new way of painting
0:56:23 > 0:56:27and a new way of understanding what art can do to help us
0:56:27 > 0:56:30think beyond what is merely in front of our face.
0:56:34 > 0:56:39Georgia O'Keeffe wasn't a "female" artist, she was an artist,
0:56:39 > 0:56:40full stop.
0:56:40 > 0:56:43And the greatest American artist of her era.
0:56:45 > 0:56:48We've come from the Renaissance where women barely left
0:56:48 > 0:56:54the home, to a lone woman refusing to follow in anyone's footsteps
0:56:54 > 0:56:58and taking inspiration from the widest skies on earth.
0:57:00 > 0:57:04When asked what it took to become a female artist
0:57:04 > 0:57:06O'Keeffe answered bluntly -
0:57:06 > 0:57:09"Nerve"!
0:57:09 > 0:57:10And it's nerve that fuelled
0:57:10 > 0:57:15so many of the women I've encountered down the centuries.
0:57:15 > 0:57:20The nerve of Artemisia Gentileschi to cast off the victimhood
0:57:20 > 0:57:24of sexual abuse, to forge an international career.
0:57:24 > 0:57:28The Nerve of Maria Sybilla Merian to leave husband
0:57:28 > 0:57:31and home voyaging to the remotest rainforest to capture
0:57:31 > 0:57:35the tropics in monstrous Technicolor.
0:57:35 > 0:57:40The nerve of Rose Bertin to claw her way up from a humble shopkeeper
0:57:40 > 0:57:43to define the glamour of the Ancien Regime.
0:57:44 > 0:57:48And it was Georgia O'Keeffe's nerve that brought her here
0:57:48 > 0:57:51to paint a new language for America.
0:57:53 > 0:57:58It is courage that inspires me most across the centuries and the women
0:57:58 > 0:58:03who remade the world in their image
0:58:03 > 0:58:06had that in dazzling abundance.