British art is filled with influential artist couples: just think of Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, or Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Yet this isn't always a story of equals. In recent years, in line with a broader impulse to reframe art-historical narratives, much work has been done to centre women artists, and this often means moving them out of the shadows of their male husbands or partners.
This includes women such as Celia Paul, for example, whose own artistic voice was often drowned out by her lover Lucian Freud so that she is wrongly seen as a muse first – she sat for numerous portraits – and painter second. Or Tirzah Garwood, whose current exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery is titled 'Beyond Ravilious' which suggests how this talented English artist and designer was essentially forgotten beyond being Eric's wife.
There are, however, many artist couples with richly overlapping artistic lives, those whose practices are intertwined or whose romantic entanglements have inspired creative collaboration. This includes queer couples whose stories have recently come to light, including Patricia Preece and Dororthy Hepworth, or Glyn Philpot and Vivian Forbes. Sometimes, one half of the couple takes a backseat – another reason to amplify them here – while others are arguably more well-known or have gained more recognition in recent years.
Vicken Parsons and Antony Gormley
While maintaining their own practices, Antony Gormley and Vicken Parsons have frequently collaborated. Soon after they met at the Slade in 1979, they made Bed, a sculpture made from slices of Mother's Pride bread now in the Tate collection. Parsons drew around Gormley and he then ate through the bread so that his bodily imprint remained.
Parsons has said of the sculpture: 'I didn't feel I needed crediting. It was Antony's idea, although we developed the techniques together. As an artist, I always want to keep my identity separate, even though we have done a lot of collaborative work. Bed was great for our relationship, it was exciting building this mad thing together.'
She also made it clear that in the early years, while continuing to paint, she worked more as Gormley's assistant than collaborator, a practical decision based on the fact the couple had a young family and little money.
Parsons's intimate, semi-abstract paintings are noticeably quieter than Gormley's often large-scale sculptures and installations which probe the relationship between the body and space.
Gormley, who won the Turner Prize in 2004, is known for casts of himself – most of those in his early career were made by Parsons – which he often places in public sites – including, famously, the Angel of the North.
Antony Gormley (b.1950) 
Parsons's focus is on interior or architectural details, painted on wood panels using thin layers of oil, although it's clear both artists share an interest in spatial representation.
Parsons has had solo exhibitions at Tate St Ives, Kettle's Yard, and Alan Cristea Gallery, which staged 'Iris' in 2016, the largest showing of her paintings at that time. Her works are well represented in UK collections, including Tate, Government Art Collection and Jerwood. The latter's work from 2011, Untitled, was included in Parsons' most recent exhibition 'Time' at the Cristea Roberts Gallery, which highlighted how her small-scale canvases nevertheless suggest expansive imaginative possibilities.
Mary Fedden and Julian Trevelyan
Mary Fedden first met Julian Trevelyan while a student at the Slade, becoming his second wife in 1951 – by this point he was an established artist and she had developed her vibrant still-life and flower paintings. They worked in the same studio in Durham Wharf on the Thames for more than 30 years, a dynamic hub for artists and writers and the scene of their famous boat-race parties.
Fedden used to incorporate some of Trevelyan's discarded etchings into her collages but he had a profound impact on her art more widely. She took up her husband's advice to simplify her imagery and credited her later paintings' compositional innovation to his knowledge of the European modernists; in the 1930s, Trevelyan had moved to Paris, becoming assistant to master etcher S. W. Hayter and working alongside Picasso and Ernst.
The couple also travelled widely together – Trevelyan's 1960 Self-portrait with Mary depicts one of their trips – and both held teaching posts, with Fedden becoming the first female tutor in the Painting School at the Royal College of Art (1956–1964).
When Trevelyan became ill from a meningitis virus in 1963, which affected his movements and speech, Fedden's care enabled him to return to work. After his illness, however, Fedden often worked as his assistant and there's some sense that she worked in the wings, his reputation in the 1960s and '70s eclipsing hers. Yet, after his death in 1988, Fedden's popularity soared and, in fact, her works are perhaps better known today.
Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines
Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines were partners in both life and art, sharing their lives together for 60 years after they first met on Armistice Night in 1918. Beyond their individual practices, they jointly founded the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in 1937 – first in Dedham and then at their home in Benton End, Suffolk – which significantly transformed art education.
A painter and keen plantsman, Morris is known for his images of the natural world, in particular flowers. He is arguably the more famous of the two, consistently producing work, including portraits and still lifes, whereas Lett-Haines was instrumental in promoting Morris' career at the expense of his own.
Regarded as one of Britain's first surrealists, it was only later in life – he dedicated most of his energy to the running of the School – that he focused on his art. Like Morris, Lett-Haines was inspired by his experience in Paris, similarly drawing on what he learned from the European modernists; his early works, such as Powers in Atrophe (1922) remain significant contributions to the British avant-garde.
His later works from the mid-1950s onwards draw on natural forms but are much darker and stranger than Morris' approachable images.
Phyllida Barlow and Fabian Peake
Sculptor Phyllida Barlow and artist and writer Fabian Peake met while students at the Chelsea School of Art and in 1976 they shared an exhibition at St Catherine's College, Oxford. They married in 1966 and had five children, with Barlow taking a break from teaching when their first child was born in 1973; she said that raising children and making art were 'completely incompatible', although she also said the experience gave her and Peake the urgency to grab every available moment to make work.
Barlow gained recognition in the late 2000s following a decades-long teaching career (including 23 years at the Slade), where she mentored masses of artists such as Rachel Whiteread and Tacita Dean. Fame came quickly once she was represented by Hauser & Wirth: in 2011 she was made a Royal Academician and in 2015 a CBE for her services to arts.
Barlow, who died in 2023, is celebrated for her anti-monumental yet large-scale sculpture made out of cheap, simple materials such as wood, plaster, cement and scrim. Following her Tate Britain Duveen commission in 2014, for which she made the exuberantly haphazard dock, a jumble of timber and scaffolding, she went on to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2017.
Peake began his artistic career as a painter – he was influenced by Surrealism – but his practice has since expanded to include textile, sculpture, drawing, photography and writing. A recent exhibition in 2023 at Hauser & Wirth Somerset to celebrate the artist's 80th birthday made clear his multifaceted, theatrical approach and his broader interest in probing how meaning is made – much like Barlow's interest in exploring the possibilities of sculpture.
Sheila Girling and Anthony Caro
Sheila Girling and Anthony Caro worked alongside each other in the same building, describing their marriage as 'a 64-year conversation about art'. Abstract painter Girling met Caro – known for his abstract steel sculptures – when they were both studying at the Royal Academy and they married in 1949. Following the birth of their sons in the 1950s, Girling committed herself to raising them while supporting Caro's practice – his reputation soared.
Speaking to the Guardian about an exhibition staged in Fife last year to celebrate the centenary of Girling's birth, the couple's son Paul Caro said: 'My parents were totally equal [...] They didn't regard his work as more important than hers. They worked in the same building, and they would wander in and out of one another's studios and look at one another's work and suggest things.'
Girling famously suggested some of the colours of Caro's sculptures, including the red in Early One Morning (1962). The work was shown at the Whitechapel exhibition in 1963 which catapulted him to fame.
Yet it's clear her work has been overlooked – perhaps a consequence of a famous partner and the male-dominated art world at that time – despite her important contribution to British abstract painting.
Having moved to the US with Caro, Girling met Kenneth Noland (who encouraged her to use acrylics), Jules Olitski and Helen Frankenthaler, and the conversations she had spurred on the more experimental work she made from the late 1960s. That her work was shown by the New York-based Acquavalla in the 1980s was validation of her own successful, individual practice.
The collage Light Lunch (2006) was acquired by the Yale Center for British Art in 2006.
Gillian Wearing and Michael Landy
A current exhibition, 'Art Lovers' at Thomas Dane Gallery in Naples presents works by Gillian Wearing and Michael Landy that reflect their relationship – including paintings depicting each other in quiet domestic moments. It comes more than 20 years after the couple's joint show 'Hand Jobs' at London's Approach Gallery in 2000. Wearing and Landy met while students at Goldsmiths in the late 1980s, both rising to prominence in the 1990s as part of the YBAs.
Landy is especially known for destroying all his 7,227 possessions in the 2001 performance piece Break Down; a drawing of the same name in the British Council collection shows Landy attempt to reclaim these belongings by detailing them in meticulous detail. Much of his work since has been of a social and political bent, concerned with consumerism and the commodification of the art world.
Wearing's first solo show at City Racing in South London included work from one of the series she is most associated with, Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say (1992–1993), for which she asked strangers to write their inner thoughts onto a piece of paper, and then photographed them.
Gillian Wearing (b.1963) 
Her wider interest in public and private personas is examined in her family series from 2003, in which Wearing – who won the Turner Prize in 2007 – disguises herself as members of her family based on old photographs. Her exhibition in Naples includes images of her disguised as famous Italian women. In 2018 she was commissioned to create a public sculpture of suffragette Millicent Fawcett – the first ever statue of a woman to stand in Parliament Square.
Also included in the Naples show are two portraits by Wearing – during lockdown she began painting again for the first time since art school – of both her and Landy, hung as though they are looking at each other and a poignant symbol of their personal and artistic relationship.
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Gilbert & George
The life and work of few artists is as intertwined as that of Gilbert & George. Gilbert Prousch and George Passmore met at St Martin's School of Art in 1967, after which they began working and living together – they still live on Fournier Street in London's East End and the area has inspired many of their works. Describing their partnership, the pair have said 'It's not a collaboration... We are two people, but one artist'.
Their belief that art and life is intertwined is played out in their presentation of themselves as 'living sculptures'. They are known for their often-shocking graphic work – in particular, their Dirty Words and Naked Shit series – that seems in opposition to their outwardly formal appearance. They often appear in their works wearing their trademark suits, as seen in TO THE FALLEN (1982).
Their Gingko Pictures series from 2005, made for their exhibition at the Venice Biennale, refers to the Gingko species of tree (they were attracted by the odour; griminess is a hallmark of their art) as well as the symmetrical nature of the leaves which may be read as indicative of their identity as an artistic duo.
Imelda Barnard, Commissioning Editor, modern and contemporary British art at Art UK
This content was supported by Jerwood Foundation
