Suffrage and the Arts re-establishes the central role that artistic women and men—from jewellers, portrait painters, embroiderers, through to retailers of ‘artistic’ products—played in the suffrage campaign in the British Isles. As political individuals, they were foot soldiers who helped sustain the momentum of the movement and as designers, makers and sellers they spread the message of the campaign to new local, national and international audiences, mediating how suffrage activism was understood by society at large. Published to coincide with the centenary of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, which granted the vote to women over the age of thirty meeting a property qualification, this edited collection offers a range of new perspectives and readings of the outpouring of creative responses to the campaign.
Contributors, who include historians, art historians, curators, museum professionals and suffrage experts, call upon the historiographical developments of the last thirty years, alongside new archival discoveries, to showcase the vibrancy of ongoing research in this area. Throughout, chapters investigate the wider socio-cultural backdrop to suffrage and the women’s movement, the difficult choices that were made between professional, artistic aspirations and political commitment, and how institutional and informal networks influenced creative expression and participation in feminist politics. From shining light on the use of portraiture to bolster the cultural cachet of the militant Women’s Social and Political Union, uncovering the links between Victorian interior design, enterprise and suffrage, through to questioning the supposed conservativism of women’s art institutions during the campaign and in the inter-war era, Suffrage and the Arts is a timely and important collection which will contribute to a number of scholarly fields.
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Foreword by Jane Beckett and Deborah Cherry Introduction by Miranda Garrett and Zoë Thomas Part One: Institutional politics Chapter One: Zoë Thomas, ‘I loathe the thought of suffrage sex wars being brought into it’: Institutional conservatism in early twentieth-century women's art organizations Chapter Two: Liz Arthur, The artistic, social and suffrage networks of Glasgow School of Art's women artists and designers Chapter Three: Tara Morton, ‘An Arts and Crafts society, working for the enfranchisement of women’: Unpicking the political threads of the Suffrage Atelier, 1909–1914 Part Two: Enterprise and Marketing Chapter Four: Miranda Garrett, Window smashing and window draping: Suffrage and interior design Chapter Five: Elizabeth Crawford, ‘Our readers are careful buyers’: Creating goods for the suffrage market Chapter Six: Kenneth Florey, English suffrage badges and the marketing of the campaign Part Three: Paintings on display Chapter Seven: Rosie Broadley, Painting suffragettes: Portraits and the militant movement Chapter Eight: Krista Cowman, Suffrage attacks on art, 1913–1914 Part Four: Representing suffrage Chapter Nine: Joseph McBrinn, The spectacle of masculinity: Men and the visual culture of the suffrage campaign Chapter Ten: Janice Helland, An Irish harp and sleeping beauty: The politics of suffrage in the textile art of Una Taylor and Ann Macbeth Chapter Eleven: Chloe Ward, Images of empathy: Representations of force feeding in Votes for Women
Miranda Garrett is based at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. In addition, she is a freelance museum professional and has previously worked at the Society of Antiquaries of London, Historic Royal Palaces and Leighton House Museum, all in the UK. Zoë Thomas is Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the Wider World at the University of Birmingham, UK.
Reviews for Suffrage and the Arts: Visual Culture, Politics and Enterprise
This insightful edited collection extends and enhances our understanding of the relationships between artistic endeavour, commercial enterprise and political activism ... An invaluable contribution to understandings of visual and material culture and art and business history, as well as to suffrage and women's studies. * History Today * A fascinating collection of engaging and informative essays that extend our knowledge about the centrality of the arts to the women's suffrage movement. * June Purvis, Emerita Professor of Women's and Gender History at the University of Portsmouth, UK * This collection transforms our understanding of artistic contributions to the women's suffrage campaign by detailing the experiences of artists, consumers, campaigners and propagandists. A genuinely pioneering work, it illuminates how women balanced their professional lives as artists with their feminist activism, as well as bringing to life the variety of visual culture designed and made during this period across Britain and Ireland. This innovative and timely collection should find a wide and appreciative audience. * Senia Paseta, Professor of Modern History at St Hugh's College, University of Oxford, UK *
