Sylvia Pankurst, The chainmaker

Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst, known as Sylvia, born in 1882, was the daughter of the famed suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. It was in her family home that the embers of change were stoked, leading to the creation of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903. Sylvia was present at all early WSPU actions, including the heckling of Winston Churchill in 1905 and the door-stopping of then Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in 1906. In October that same year, Sylvia was sent to prison for the first, but not last, time and, in a testament to her grit and mantle, survived hunger strikes and forced feedings. The WSPU was the leading organisation for women’s suffrage in the United Kingdom, and its impact and legacy continues to reverberate in the ongoing feminist struggle.

Thanks to the WSPU, the colours white, purple and green are branded in cultural memory as a symbol of female defiance and sometimes violent determination. The movement was known for spreading its cause via the use of imagery printed across daily items and fashion, and Sylvia, with her artistic aspirations, as Elizabeth Crawford writes, was one of the key ‘decorators’ of the movement.¹Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866–1928, Taylor & Francis Ltd, London, 2000, p. 521. Her most well-known design is the ‘angel of freedom’ motif, which trumpeted social change and was disseminated widely across printed ephemera, banners and even cups and saucers, of which the NGV Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family Suffrage Research Collection holds examples. The NGV also holds an example of Sylvia’s important Holloway brooch, 1909, the ‘Victoria Cross’ of the WSPU, which was awarded to members who had been imprisoned.

However, Sylvia’s artistic and political ambitions were greater than the WSPU. A staunch socialist, she also wanted to be seen as a serious artist working in service of the people. In 1904 she won a coveted scholarship to the Royal College of Art, one of the few women at the time to have been granted access to its lauded halls.

The Chainmaker, 1907, generously donated by Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family, is a rare painting previously thought lost to history. It was found in 1993 by a private collector who realised they had rediscovered one of the hidden gems of Sylvia’s artistic career. Depicting a woman at work in a forge, The Chainmaker resulted from Sylvia’s tour of industrial towns in England and Scotland in 1907. With her hair tied and her sleeves rolled up, the woman depicted is stoically unfazed by the searing heat of the fire and is singularly focused on her work, in precise control over the machinery and her craft. Sylvia was shocked by the conditions of the chainmakers, observing:

Their faces were drawn with toil, their garments flecked with small holes burnt by the flying sparks … The women were the drudges of the industry; they made only the common ‘slap’ chain, as it was called, for which speed was required but not great accuracy. The trade union prohibited them from the better work.²Richard Pankhurst, Sylvia Pankhurst, Artist and Crusader: An Intimate Portrait, Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1979, p. 76.

The suffrage movement was largely spearheaded by well-dressed and well-ribboned middle-class women ignoring the lower classes, who were considered, in the words of Sylvia’s sister Christabel, to be ‘the weakest portion of the sex … their lives were too hard, their education too meagre to equip them for the contest’.³Sylvia Pankhurst, The History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1931, pp. 516–17. It was Sylvia’s sympathy for the working class that caused a rift between herself, her sister and her mother, and eventually led to Sylvia’s expulsion from the WSPU and the formation of the East London Federation of the Suffragettes.

A lifelong socialist and internationalist, Sylvia was active during both World Wars and travelled widely, with political engagements in New York and Chicago, Europe and Soviet Russia. Everywhere she went, she chronicled observations about social welfare. She eventually settled in Ethiopia to campaign for anti-colonialism and dedicated the rest of her life to campaigning for her adopted country’s independence. She was given a state funeral upon her death in 1960.

Amanda Luo is NGV Project Officer, Curatorial and Collections.

The NGV warmly thanks Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family for their support of Silvia Pankhurst’s The Chainmaker.

To learn more about the role of art, design and visual media in the women’s suffrage movement see the Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family Suffrage Research Collection.

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