Séverine

Caroline Rémy de Guebhard, depicted in today's portrait, was a French journalist with anarchist, socialist, communist, and feminist views, best known under the pen name Séverine. Throughout her life she wrote for various French papers in which she promoted women's emancipation and denounced social injustices, including the Dreyfus affair.

A staunch leftist, Rémy backed a number of anarchist causes, including the defense of Germaine Berton, and participated in the 1927 efforts to save Sacco and Vanzetti. She supported the Russian Revolution of 1917 and, in 1921 joined the Human Rights League. 

Here she was depicted by Amélie Beaury-Saurel, who (as women artists couldn't attend classes at the French Academy of Fine Arts) was a pupil of J. Lefebvre, T. Robert-Fleury, and J.P. Laurens in the private Académie Julian, which didn't have problems with teaching woman how to paint. She became a very popular portrait painter.

If you would like to learn more about other women artists, please check our Women Artists Notebook!

P.S. Here are 10 of the most famous female artist self-portraits!