Picture the classic artist’s self-portrait: a brooding figure before an unfinished canvas, brush in hand, lost in thought. Rembrandt painted that image of himself. So did Goya, van Gogh, and Gauguin. The stereotype is so masculine that it’s hard to imagine the tradition began with a 20-year-old woman.

It did. Catharina van Hemessen painted her Self-Portrait at an Easel in Antwerp in 1548. It is considered the first self-portrait of an artist at work at an easel, and it now hangs in the Kunstmuseum Basel. Her role in shaping how we picture the artist at work has gone largely unappreciated for nearly 500 years.

Portrait of a Woman, Catarina van Hemessen, 1551, oil on wood (probably oak), 9 x 7 in., The Museum Snijders&Rockoxhuis, Antwerpen, Belgium

Born in Antwerp in 1528, van Hemessen was probably trained by her father, the painter Jan Sanders van Hemessen, whose network helped introduce her to the city’s artistic circles. She painted small, confident portraits and marked them as hers. Her Portrait of a Woman (1548) bears a Latin inscription recording that she painted it that year, and another small portrait, from 1551, carries her name and the date. The National Gallery says she is the only 16th-century Flemish woman painter known to have signed her paintings.

Her talent travelled. In 1556, Mary of Hungary, Regent of the Netherlands and a major patron of the arts, invited van Hemessen and her husband, Kerstiaen de Morijn, to work at the Habsburg court in Spain. Lodovico Guicciardini wrote about her in 1567, and Giorgio Vasari mentioned her the following year.

Portrait of a Man, Catharina van Hemessen, possibly 1552, oil on wood, 14 1/4 x 11 1/2 in., The Museum Snijders&Rockoxhuis, Antwerpen, Belgium

Now she’s getting her own show. Catharina van Hemessen: Signature Works opens next spring at the National Gallery in London. It is the first UK exhibition devoted to her, organized with the Museum Snijders&Rockoxhuis in Antwerp, and it centers on masterful small-scale paintings. 

The next time you picture an artist at an easel, remember who painted that picture first.

Portrait painters have been following Catharina van Hemessen’s lead for nearly 500 years. If you’d like to build your own skills, join Realism Live, November 11-13, 2026, an online event with a strong focus on portraiture. Register now →