From Catharina van Hemessen, a 16^th-century artist and pioneer of the self-portrait, to Suzanne Valadon’s early 20^th-century paintings, self-portraits have spanned epochs and remain a favoured subject among women artists. Since they were excluded from model and nude classes for so long, they fell back on using their own bodies as examples, thus documenting various stages of their lives, such as Paula Modersohn-Becker’s pregnancy (Self-Portrait on Her Sixth Wedding Anniversary, 1906), or Frida Kahlo’s infirmity and confinement to bed (The Broken Column, Self-portrait, 1944). Whether realistic or abstract (Pat Steir’s Waterfall self-portraits), self-portraiture has often represented a form of emancipation for women painters.