Minnie O'Brien & Sylvia Pankhurst
Minnie O'Brien was my grandmother's older sister and in a separate post I'll speak of some of the family stories passed down about her and the family, who were deeply involved in the political life of London's east end at the turn of the last century. The paintings came into the family as a gift to my great-grandfather, Frederick Henry O'Brien from Sylvia Pankhurst but more of that another day.
We travelled down for the auction, and I would have loved to have kept one of the paintings in the family. Sadly the prices were beyond our reach. One picture is now in the House of Commons.
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DAILY TELEGRAPH 14/02/2002
The suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst is remembered today as a militant campaigner for women's votes but her skill as an artist was largely forgotten until the discovery of a remarkable archive of watercolours and drawings. Sylvia Pankhurst's painting of women at work in a pot bank
Ten previously unknown works by Miss Pankhurst revealing that she used the talent which won her a scholarship to the Royal College of Art to promote her campaign for women's rights are to be auctioned in London next month.
Their survival is a miracle. The watercolours and drawings, depicting British women's grim working conditions in the early 1900s, were once thrown away by the present owner's grandmother who believed that they were worthless.
"My grandmother threw them out and said that we didn't need them, " said Molly Cook."They would have been burned but I and my husband-to-be went and got them back."
Now Mrs Cook, 61, from Northamptonshire, has decided to sell them at Bonhams on March 5 where they are expected to fetch up to £32,000.
Miss Pankhurst, the second daughter of the founder of the suffragette movement Emmeline Pankhurst, is believed to have given the watercolours and drawings to Mrs Cook's great aunt Minnie O'Brien.
Miss O'Brien grew up in the East End of London where Miss Pankhurst had founded the East London Federation of Suffragettes after breaking away from her mother's Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) because she considered it too middle class.
In her autobiography Miss Pankhurst refers to "little Minnie O'Brien with her bent little legs and pinched face showing childhood's rickets." But this frail child apparently grew up to become one of Miss Pankhurst's most reliable campaigners.
Miss Pankhurst studied at Manchester School of Art and then won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London in 1900 before taking an arts diploma in Venice.
From 1906 to 1907 she toured Britain producing the images of women's working conditions which are to be sold at Bonhams. They include On a pot bank Staffordshire - apprentice thrower and his baller at work should fetch £5,000 to £8,000 while Scouring and stamping the maker's name on the biscuit china is estimated at £4,000 to £6,000.
Shirley Harrison, who is writing a biography of Miss Pankhurst, said: "She always dreamed of devoting her art to the underprivileged. Her work was very, very highly thought of at the time."
1 comments:
I'm mentioning the Pankhursts briefly in my forthcoming book on Altrincham Baptist Church 1872-1905 as follows in a chapter about the role of women in the Church and how, in Baptists and Congregational churches, they were allowed a vote without discrimination:
"In 1866 John Stuart Mill made the first attempt to extend the franchise to women, but failed. In 1868 the first ever public meeting in favour of womens’ suffrage was held at the Free Trade Hall. The cause was particularly promoted by the Baptist and radical Liberal (and later Socialist), Dr Richard Pankhurst, and Emmeline Pankhurst. There was a meeting in Altrincham in 1874 which was reported to have had a good attendance, but not to have been crowded. There was a suffragette meeting in 1880 in Stretford. This was early days however. It was only after the First World War however that women would be allowed to vote."
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