The artist presents herself to us as a scholar and an elegant figure of note – approachable and intelligent. And while the monocle draws our attention to her eye, it also reminds us that this was a woman who observed the world, rather than simply inhabiting it – studying it, articulating it, painting it. Perhaps she’s even observing you, the viewer?

The Anna Dorothea Therbusch — A Berlin Woman Artist of the Age of Enlightenment exhibition marks the 300th anniversary of one of the most important female painters of the 18th century. Anna Dorothea Therbusch (1721–1782), the daughter of the Prussian court painter Georg Lisiewsky, received her initial instruction as a painter from her father. In 1767 she was one of the few women to be accepted into Europe’s most important art school of the time, the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in Paris.

The exhibition, at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in the Gemäldegalerie (3 December 2021 — 10 April 2022), brings together almost all of her works in Berlin around the famous self-portrait, an artwork that draws much attention in the permanent collection of the Gemäldegalerie.