Whitney Chadwick’s acclaimed study challenges the assumption that great women artists are exceptions to the rule, who ‘transcended’ their sex to produce major works of art. While acknowledging the many women whose contribution to visual culture since the Middle Ages have often been neglected, Chadwick’s survey amounts to much more than an alternative canon of women artists: it re-examines the works themselves and the ways in which they have been perceived as marginal, often in direct reference to gender. In her disussion of feminism and its influence on such a reappraisal, the author also addresses the closely related issues of ethnicity, class and sexuality.

With a new preface and epilogue from an exciting new authority on the history of women artists, this revised edition continues the project of charting the evolution of feminist art history and pedagogy in recent years, revealing how artists have responded to new strategies of feminism for the current moment.

惠特尼•查德威克（Whitney Chadwick）的这项颇受好评的研究对这样一个假设提出了质疑，即伟大的女性艺术家是该规则的例外，因为她们“超越”了自己的性别创作出了重要的艺术品。尽管查德威克的概述承认许多自中世纪以来对视觉文化做出过贡献的女性经常被忽略，但她的书归根结底不只是关于女性艺术家的另一本佳作：它重新审视了作品本身以及它们被认为不重要的几种表现（通常直接与性别有关）。在对女权主义及其对这种重新评估的影响的讨论中，作者还谈到了种族，阶级和性取向等密切相关的问题。

这个修订版继续了记录近年来女权主义艺术史和教学法的发展这个项目，揭示了艺术家们如何回应当前的新女权主义战略。一位研究女性艺术家历史的新权威为本书撰写了新的序言和后记。