Catharina van Hemessen

Catharina van Hemessen was a Flemish painter from Antwerp, the daughter and pupil of the painter Jan Sanders van Hemessen, and the earliest Flemish woman painter whose work can be securely identified. She painted small portraits, mostly of women, in the late 1540s and early 1550s, as well as a few religious pictures. Her self-portrait of 1548, now in the Kunstmuseum Basel, is often said to be the first painting of an artist shown at work at an easel. She later served at the court of Mary of Hungary, and is last recorded after 1565. The National Gallery in London holds a portrait by her.