Paula Hays Harper, one of the first art historians to bring a feminist perspective to the study of painting and sculpture, and the co-author of a major biography of Camille Pissarro, died on June 3 in Miami. She was 81.

The cause was cancer, according to the University of Miami, where she taught from 1983 until her retirement last year.

In the early 1970s, Dr. Harper provided the creative spark for a project that became a milestone in women’s art. As a lecturer at the California Institute of the Arts, outside Los Angeles, where the first feminist art program at a major art school had just begun, Dr. Harper suggested that the 21 students in the original class collaborate on a project about what house, home and domesticity meant to women....