Suffragettes: Deeds not words

Fascinating display at the National Portrait Gallery on suffragettes to mark 100 years since their campaign of damaging pictures in public galleries.

On the way to the display, the gallery is currently showing a lovely portrait of Christabel Pankhurst in a pale green satin evening dress wearing the suffragette purple, green and white sash. It’s almost an action shot of her proclaiming something. There is a very similar photo of her giving a speech in the display so maybe she always stood like that!

The display itself has a great selection of newspaper photographs such as the one of Mrs Pankhurst being carried off from a protest outside Parliament with her legs kicking.

The main section was given over the surveillance pictures of women in prison which were circulated to galleries to warn them these women might come in and do harm. One of the women had been force fed 236 times! The pictures often looked slightly odd until you realised the women were often being held by a guard but they had been Edwardian photos hopped out of the picture.

The display also looked at the damage that was done in the National Portrait Gallery itself including to Millais’s (nice link to the previous display I’d looked at) picture of Carlyle. A bit of a mistake on the part of the woman who damaged it as he was a hero of Mrs Pankhurst!

I particularly liked the restrictions which were put on women going to galleries at the time. They had to be accompanied by a man and leave muffs and parcels at the door! OK I could cope with leaving my muff at the door but finding random men to accompany me might hinder my current life style!

 

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