With the recent trend to ‘discover’ women artists who have been previously overlooked and underappreciated in the history of art, many are finally getting the recognition they deserve. However, we are not the first generation to undertake this task, and some artists being ‘rediscovered’ have in fact never been lost. What then, if anything, can be learnt about such artists as Gwen John (1876–1939), who was brought to the fore during the first wave of feminist art history in the 1970s and 1980s?

A painting of Susanna and the elders in the Royal Collection, in storage and misattributed for well over a hundred years, is here identified as the picture by Artemisia Gentileschi recorded in the Queen’s Withdrawing Chamber at Whitehall Palace c.1639. Documentary and technical evidence suggest that it was painted for Henrietta Maria during the artist’s years in London.