Of course the women were important, but it was because they were our muses. They weren’t artists’ – so claimed Roland Penrose, husband of Lee Miller, to legendary feminist Whitney Chadwick, during her visit to his home in the 1980s. When Chadwick later asked artist Leonora Carrington for her thoughts on the Surrealist muse, she replied, ‘I thought it was bullshit. I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse … I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.’
