Votes for Women

This Week in London – Votes for Women! and, Thai orchids…

by exploringlondon

• A portrait slashed with a butcher’s cleaver by a suffragette in the National Portrait Gallery has gone back on display for the first time in more than 20 years. The portrait of gallery founder Thomas Carlyle, painted by Sir John Everett Millais, was attacked by Anne Hunt in July, 1914, after Suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst was rearrested. Hunt later said that the painting would be “of added value and of great historical importance because it has been honoured by the attention of a Militant”. The portrait has gone on display to coincide with the opening of the Votes for Women! exhibition which features objects including a document issued by Scotland Yard to the gallery following another attack by suffragette – this time by Mary Richardson on a Velázquez painting, The Rokeby Venus (The Toilet of Venus) – in March, 1914, along with a sheet of identity photographs police gave to the gallery featuring images of women serving sentences in Holloway and Manchester prisons, a selection of the gallery’s collection of postcards produced by women’s suffrage organisations, portraits of the Pankhurst sisters and a rarely seen painting of women’s suffrage movement figures Millicent Garrett Fawcett and her husband Henry Fawcett by Ford Madox Ford (Millicent this year becomes the first woman to have a statue in Parliament Square). Votes for Women! – part of the gallery’s year-long Rebel Women season – can be seen in Room 33, Floor 1, until 13th May. Admission is free. There’s also a complementary showcase display highlighting Victorian pioneers of the women’s suffrage movement – Votes for Women: Pioneers – in Room 25. For more on the Rebel Women season, see  www.npg.org.uk/rebelwomen. PICTURE: Emery Walker’s photograph of damage to the portrait of Thomas Carlyle by Sir John Everett Millais (1877) © National Portrait Gallery, London.

• Kew Gardens’ 23rd Orchids Festival  – the first to be inspired by Thailand, home to 1,100 species of the plant – kicks off on Saturday. Held inside the Princess of Wales Conservatory, the festival features an orchid ‘palace’, a traditional Thai market boat and rice paddy and a special Thai cart on loan from the Royal Thai Embassy in London. The festival – which runs until 11th March – centres on a series of weekends featuring special food, live Thai music and talks and walks, the latter including drop-in guided walks of the floral displays. There’s also special activities at half term and a number of ‘after hours’ events which feature traditional dance performances, cooking tips, Thai-inspired cocktails and massage treatments. For more, see www.kew.org.

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This Week in London – Suffragette stories, and, recalling the “golden age” of ocean liners…

by exploringlondon

• Untold stories of suffragettes are uncovered in a new display at the Museum of London marking the centenary of women’s suffrage. Votes for Women tells the story of the likes of Emily ‘Kitty’ Willoughby Marshall – arrested six times and imprisoned three times in Holloway including once for throwing a potato at the resident of then-Home Secretary Winston Churchill, Winefride Mary Rix – sentenced to two months hard labour for smashing a window at the War Office, and Janie Terrero – a suffragist since the age of 18 who was imprisoned in Holloway for four months for window smashing during which time she twice went on a hunger strike and was force-fed. The objects on display include Emmeline Pankhurst’s iconic hunger strike medal, a pendant presented to suffragette Louise Eates on her release from prison, and a silver necklace commemorating Willoughby Marshall’s three prison terms. There’s also a newly commissioned film installation highlighting the individual commitment and courage of the lesser known suffragette women. The exhibition opens tomorrow and there’s a special family-friendly festival this weekend featuring interactive performances, workshops and special events. The exhibition Votes for Women runs until 6th January next year. For more, including the full programme of events, see www.museumoflondon.org.uk.

• The golden age of ocean liners is recreated in a new exhibition opening at the V&A this Saturday. Ocean Liners: Speed & Style showcases more than 250 objects with highlights including a Cartier tiara recovered from the doomed Lusitania in 1915, a panel fragment from the Titanic‘s first class lounge, Goyard luggage owned by the Duke of Windsor dating from the 1940s, and Stanley Spencer’s painting The Riveters from his 1941 series Shipbuilding on the Clyde. Other artists, architects and designers whose work is featured in the display include Le Corbusier, Albert Gleizes, Charles Demuth and Eileen Gary. Among the “design stories” explored in the exhibition is that of Brunel’s Great Eastern along with Kronprinz Wilhelm, Titanic and its sister ship Olympic (all known for their Beaux-Arts interiors), the Art Deco Queen Mary, Normandie and the Modernist SS United States and QE2. The display also features objects related to some of the ocean liner’s most famous passengers as well as the couturiers who saw ocean travel as a means of promoting their designs. These include a Christian Dior suit worn by Marlene Dietrich as she arrived in new York aboard the Queen Mary in 1950, a Lucien Lelong gown worn for the maiden voyage of the Normandie in 1935, and Jeanne Lanvin’s Salambo dress, which, as one of the most important flapper dresses in the V&A collection, once belonged to wealthy American Emilie Grigsby who regularly travelled between the UK and New York aboard the Aquitania, Olympic and Lusitania in the 1910s and 1920s. Runs until 10th June. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.vam.ac.uk/oceanliners.

PICTURE: Titanic in dry dock, c1911, Getty_Images (Courtesy Victoria & Albert Museum).

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