Suffragette art exhibit

Some time back (was it the mid-'80s?) I stumbled across a fascinating temporary exhibition at the Museum of the City of London devoted to the history of the women's suffrage movement. Now the Times of London reports on a related event:

Paintings, sketches and designs by the suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst that have never been exhibited in this country will go on display next week in London. . .

The show at the Women’s Library in East London brings together more than 200 exhibits. . .

Works by Pankhurst, a professionally trained artist who founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) with her mother Emmeline and sister Christabel, include the design for a poster commissioned in 1905 by her close friend Keir Hardie, the Scot who founded the Independent Labour Party.

The poster, which features the slogan, “Workless and Hungry Vote for the Bill”, was commissioned to coincide with a parliamentary vote on a Bill for the unemployed. Hardie intended to plaster copies all over London, but abandoned his plan after the Bill fell. The design was used instead on a postcard. . .

Pankhurst died in Ethiopia in 1960. Keen to get her papers out of the country, her family gave them to the Dutch Embassy there, asking them to bring them back to Europe safely. They have remained in Amsterdam, at the International Institute of Social History, ever since.

Bethan Stevens, curator of the exhibition, said that art was a very important part of the suffrage movement, offering the possibility to women of public self-expression. “Pankhurst’s work as an artist was inseparable from her work as a politician,” she said. “Some of the women were very visually aware. They were also very economical with the way they used art. They would take an iconic design, such as Pankhurst’s angel with a horn, and use it in a variety of contexts, on the bindings of journals, on badges and on crockery.”

The exhibition also contains a number of the suffragette textile banners that toured the country on show after being used in demonstrations.

The Pankhurst connection with Ethiopia emerged in another recent news item, not related to women's suffrage:

A holy book seized by British soldiers in a bloody battle in Ethiopia more than a century ago is to be returned to its homeland, thanks to a group of Edinburgh campaigners. . .

Now Dr Richard Pankhurst, son of the suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst and a long-time campaigner for the repatriation of Ethiopian loot, is to take it with him when he travels to Addis Ababa later this month.

The 300-year-old book, written in the ancient Ethiopian language of Ge’ez, was part of a huge haul taken in the Siege of Magdala in 1868. British troops invaded Ethiopia after Emperor Theodore II imprisoned a number of Western diplomats and missionaries. The soldiers stormed the Emperor’s mountain fortress of Magdala to free the captives. After the battle, they loaded 200 mules and 15 elephants with gold crowns, swords, altar slabs and manuscripts before burning Magdala to the ground. The bulk of the plunder made its way into institutions such as the British Museum and Oxford’s Bodleian Library.

Posted by David on September 27, 2003 7:14 PM