Katy Hessel on iconic female sitters at the National Portrait Gallery

Katy Hessel is one of the UK’s best-known art historians and the author of the bestselling The Story of Art without Men and How to Live an Artful Life.

Known for championing women artists and overlooked female perspectives in art history, Katy joined us at the National Portrait Gallery for a series of films exploring some of her favourite portraits of women from the collection.

Across the series, she discusses portraits of Nobel Prize-winning chemist Dorothy Hodgkin, novelist Mary Shelley, pioneering Pop artist Pauline Boty and Romani women—revealing the stories behind both the sitters and the artists who portrayed them.