Laura Clay

Artist

Wallace Morgan, 1873 - 1948

Sitter

Laura Clay, 1849 - 1941

Date

1912

Type

Drawing

Medium

Pencil on paper

Dimensions

Image: 18.5cm x 14.5cm (7 5/16" x 5 11/16")

Sheet: 19cm x 16.2cm (7 1/2" x 6 3/8")

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Object number

NPG.95.55

Exhibition Label

Born Lexington, Kentucky

Laura Clay grew up in a household where injustice was not tolerated. The daughter of prominent Kentucky abolitionist Cassius M. Clay, she followed in her father’s footsteps as an activist. As founding president of the Kentucky Woman Suffrage Association, she led the organization’s successful drives for repeal of Kentucky laws that circumscribed women’s property rights. This drawing is part of a series documenting the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s forty-fourth annual convention for McLure’s Magazine. Clay thought of her suffrage work as sacred, declaring, "[T]his work is God’s cause and He is the leader of all our campaigns." Clay’s commitment to states’ rights was at times difficult to reconcile with her support of the national association, as she supported state suffrage for white women only. She complained bitterly in published articles about the organization’s concentration of power in New York, targeting convention leader Dr. Anna Shaw, as well as Carrie Chapman Catt.

Data Source

National Portrait Gallery

Carrie Chapman Catt

Artist

Mary Eliot Foote, 25 Nov 1872 - 28 Jan 1968

Sitter

Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman Catt, 9 Jan 1859 - 9 Mar 1947

Date

1927

Type

Painting

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

Stretcher: 120.7 x 89.5 x 2.5cm (47 1/2 x 35 1/4 x 1")

Frame: 132.1 x 99.7 x 7cm (52 x 39 1/4 x 2 3/4")

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the National Museum of American History; gift of the National American Woman Suffrage Association through Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, 1939

Object number

NPG.71.31

Exhibition Label

Born Ripon, Wisconsin

Carrie Chapman Catt's organizational talents are credited with making the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) an effective force in winning the struggle for women's right to vote. In NAWSA, she worked with such leaders as Susan B. Anthony to win the franchise state by state, and also for a constitutional amendment. Initially condemning America's flood of immigrants, whom she believed were influenced by their paternalistic Old World cultures to vote against women's suffrage, Catt eventually discarded such xenophobic simplifications, founded the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, and became a crusader for internationalism and world peace. In 1900 she replaced Anthony as president of NAWSA and was again elected president in 1915, leading the organization during the successful passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, which guaranteed all American women the right to vote.

Data Source

National Portrait Gallery

Alice Paul

Artist

Underwood & Underwood, active 1880 - c. 1950

Sitter

Alice Paul, 11 Jan 1885 - 9 Jul 1977

Date

c. 1923

Type

Photograph

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Dimensions

Image: 24.2 × 16.4cm (9 1/2 × 6 7/16")

Sheet: 25.8 × 17.8cm (10 3/16 × 7")

Mat: 55.9 x 40.6cm (22 x 16")

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Francis A. DiMauro

Object number

NPG.2007.288

Exhibition Label

Alice Paul was the pivotal suffragist leader in the campaign that resulted in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Following the completion of her Ph.D. in political science at the University of Pennsylvania-where she wrote a dissertation on the legal rights of women-Paul immersed herself in the women's suffrage movement. In 1916 she and Lucy Burns formed the National Women's Party and began using such public tactics as demonstrations, parades, picketing, and hunger strikes to spotlight their cause. Two years later, President Woodrow Wilson announced that women's suffrage was urgently needed as a "war measure," and strongly urged Congress to pass the necessary legislation. Having helped to secure the Nineteenth Amendment, Paul continued to support women's causes, notably as the original author of a proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution in 1923.

Data Source

National Portrait Gallery

Sara Bard Field

Artist

Johan Hagemeyer, 1884 - 1962

Sitter

Sara Bard Field, 1883 - 1974

Date

1927

Type

Photograph

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Dimensions

Image/Sheet: 23 x 16.6cm (9 1/16 x 6 9/16")

Mount: 45.7 x 35.5cm (18 x 14")

Mat: 55.9 x 40.6cm (22 x 16")

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Object number

S/NPG.2006.25

Exhibition Label

In September 1915, Sara Bard Field-newly divorced from her first husband-embarked on a cross-country automobile trip from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., with the goal of promoting women's suffrage. At each stop along her route, rallies were held and signatures were added to a petition. Field often encountered suffrage opponents who heckled and disrupted these gatherings. Equally challenging were the poor road and weather conditions she endured in her open-air Oldsmobile. Four months after her departure, Field arrived at the White House, where she and fellow supporters delivered to President Woodrow Wilson more than half a million signatures to provide for a federal suffrage amendment. While Wilson did not back the amendment, this event was well received in the press and contributed to growing support that ultimately led to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.

Data Source

National Portrait Gallery

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Artist

Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, 1856 - 1942

Sitter

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 12 Nov 1815 - 26 Oct 1902

Date

1889

Type

Painting

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

Stretcher: 101 x 81.9 x 2.5cm (39 3/4 x 32 1/4 x 1")

Frame: 116.8 x 97.8 x 7cm (46 x 38 1/2 x 2 3/4")

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the National Museum of American History; gift of the National American Woman Suffrage Association through Mrs. Harriet Stanton Blatch, 1924

Object number

NPG.71.30

Exhibition Label

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a feminist from the start, refusing to include "obey" in her marriage vows to her husband; and when she spoke of God, she used the female pronoun. Stanton helped organize the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, which was the founding moment of the American women's rights movement, and she was the longtime president of the National Woman Suffrage Association. Although Stanton's goal was to give women political power through the ballot, she also spearheaded other feminist goals, such as liberalizing divorce laws and reforming child-rearing methods. But unlike other early feminists, she always insisted on the primacy of women's right to vote over other reform objectives, including abolition. She wrote, "Our 'pathway' is straight to the ballot box with no variableness nor shadow of turning."

Data Source

National Portrait Gallery

Mary Ashton Rice Livermore

Artist

A. N. Hardy, active 1865 - 1903

Sitter

Mary Ashton Rice Livermore, 19 Dec 1820 - 23 May 1905

Date

c. 1880

Type

Photograph

Medium

Albumen silver print

Dimensions

Image: 10 × 6 cm (3 15/16 × 2 3/8")

Mount: 10.5 × 6.3 cm (4 1/8 × 2 1/2")

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Object number

NPG.81.71

Exhibition Label

Born Boston, Massachusetts

Mary Livermore’s career during the Civil War exemplified the emergence of women as both a moral and practical force for reform, a force that altered the political landscape of the late nineteenth century. Livermore, who was strongly religious, plunged into charitable and public works to aid wounded and disadvantaged soldiers. Starting as a volunteer, she became a key figure in the movement to create a national “sanitary commission” to look after these soldiers. Following the war, Livermore transferred her energies to the fight for women’s rights. She founded a suffrage newspaper and served as president of the American Woman Suffrage Association (1875–78).

Data Source

National Portrait Gallery

Anna Howard Shaw

Artist

Wallace Morgan, 1873 - 1948

Sitter

Anna Howard Shaw, 14 Feb 1849 - 2 Jul 1919

Date

1912

Type

Drawing

Medium

Pencil on paper

Dimensions

Image: 25cm x 17.3 cm (9 13/16" x 6 13/16")

Sheet: 28.9cm x 18.9 cm (11 3/8" x 7 7/16")

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Object number

NPG.95.60

Exhibition Label

Born Newcastle-on-Tyne, England

Dr. Anna Shaw triumphantly presided over a spirited gathering of elated suffragettes as "Madam Chairman" of the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s forty-fourth annual convention. After a long struggle, women had gained the vote in several states. McLure’s Magazine sent noted illustrator Wallace Morgan to Philadelphia to document the historic event’s leaders—including Shaw—who announced to her audience, "This, indeed, is the woman’s century, and the dawn of the real day of womanhood has just begun." Morgan’s drawings accompanied veteran journalist Wallace Irwin and suffragette Inez Milholland’s article, "Two Million Women Vote." A stalwart suffrage leader and a determined feminist pioneer, Shaw held her gavel and took questions from the crowd with a serious expression punctuated by "black commanding brows." She was indeed a formidable presence. Shaw was the first woman ordained in the Methodist Protestant Church, in 1880; six years later she earned an M.D. from Boston University.

Data Source

National Portrait Gallery

Lucretia Coffin Mott

Artist

Marcus Aurelius Root, 1808 - 1888

Sitter

Lucretia Coffin Mott, 3 Jan 1793 - 11 Nov 1880

Date

1851

Type

Photograph

Medium

Half-plate daguerreotype

Dimensions

Image: 11.6 x 8.9 cm (4 9/16 x 3 1/2")

Plate: 14 x 10.7 cm (5 1/2 x 4 3/16")

Case Open: 15 x 23.2 x 1 cm (5 7/8 x 9 1/8 x 3/8")

Case Closed: 15 x 11.8 x 2.3 cm (5 7/8 x 4 5/8 x 7/8")

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Object number

NPG.2009.32

Exhibition Label

Born Nantucket, Massachusetts

Lucretia Mott's commitment to ending slavery and securing rights for women became the defining features of her life. A devout Quaker whose activism proved unsettling to some members of her faith, Mott assumed a highly visible role in the abolitionist movement. After joining William Lloyd Garrison at the launch of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, she helped to found Philadelphia's Female Anti-Slavery Society. Her concern for women's rights was a natural outgrowth of her abolitionist efforts, and in 1848 Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the convention at Seneca Falls, New York, that gave birth to the women's suffrage movement.

Data Source

National Portrait Gallery

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony

Artist

Napoleon Sarony, 9 Mar 1821 - 9 Nov 1896

Sitter

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 12 Nov 1815 - 26 Oct 1902

Susan Brownell Anthony, 15 Feb 1820 - 13 Mar 1906

Date

c. 1870

Type

Photograph

Medium

Albumen silver print

Dimensions

Image/Sheet: 15.1 x 9.8cm (5 15/16 x 3 7/8")

Mount: 15.2 x 10.6cm (6 x 4 3/16")

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Object number

S/NPG.77.48

Exhibition Label

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were two of America's most important leaders in the initial quest for women's rights in the nineteenth century. Both women had been active in other aspects of antebellum reform (including the antislavery and temperance movements) before meeting in 1851. The meeting confirmed their own views that the "maleness" of the nation's laws needed to be challenged and intensified their determination to build a mass movement for women's rights. Although they did not live to see the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the vote, Stanton and Anthony built the foundation for women's suffrage in the twentieth century.

Data Source

National Portrait Gallery

Susan B. Anthony

Cast after

Adelaide Johnson, 26 Sep 1859 - 10 Nov 1955

Foundry

Modern Art Foundry

Sitter

Susan Brownell Anthony, 15 Feb 1820 - 13 Mar 1906

Date

1972 cast after 1892 original

Type

Sculpture

Medium

Bronze

Dimensions

With Socle: 60 x 41.9 x 27.9cm (23 5/8 x 16 1/2 x 11")

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Object number

NPG.72.116

Exhibition Label

Attaining a "more perfect" union required that each citizen in antebellum society strive for moral and physical perfection. Susan B. Anthony began her reform career campaigning against drink but soon realized that women could have only a limited impact on the culture if they did not attain political equality with men. After being forbidden from speaking at a temperance rally because of her gender, Anthony became a wholehearted activist for women's suffrage. For Anthony, just as slavery had divided the Union against itself, so the nation could not survive as long as full political participation was denied to half the population.

Data Source

National Portrait Gallery

Julia Ward Howe

Artist

Alice Boughton, 1865 - 1943

Sitter

Julia Ward Howe, 27 May 1819 - 17 Oct 1910

Date

1908

Type

Photograph

Medium

Platinum print

Dimensions

Image: 16.8 × 15.8 cm (6 5/8 × 6 1/4")

Sheet: 18.2 × 15.8 cm (7 3/16 × 6 1/4")

Mount: 20.4 × 17.5 cm (8 1/16 × 6 7/8")

Mat: 18 × 14 cm (7 1/16 × 5 1/2")

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Object number

NPG.88.204

Exhibition Label

Born New York City

Author of the North’s unofficial Civil War anthem, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” Julia Ward Howe balanced multiple identities as a mother, poet, playwright, peace advocate, and tireless promoter of women’s rights. While raising six children, she sought ways to participate in public life, eventually becoming a leader of the suffrage movement. Although her husband, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, head of Boston’s Perkins Institute for the Blind and an active leader in abolitionism, did not support his wife’s public activism, she made her voice heard through publishing. In 1870, she founded Woman’s Journal, a suffragist weekly magazine. Subsequently, she founded and served as president of the Association for the Advancement of Women. New York portrait photographer Alice Boughton met Howe in Boston at the end of Howe’s life for a brief portrait session. Boughton captures Howe’s keen intellect, a quality that defined her as she laid the groundwork for the feminist movement.

Data Source

National Portrait Gallery

Jeannette Pickering Rankin

Artist

L. Chase, active 1910s

Sitter

Jeannette Pickering Rankin, 11 Jun 1880 - 18 May 1973

Date

c. 1917

Type

Photograph

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Dimensions

Image: 17.2 x 11cm (6 3/4 x 4 5/16")

Mat: 45.7 x 35.6cm (18 x 14")

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Margaret Sterling Brooke

Object number

NPG.86.8

Exhibition Label

In 1916 Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to serve in the U.S. Congress. Before her milestone victory, Rankin had gained valuable political experience traveling widely on behalf of the campaign for women's suffrage. During her congressional race, she made support for this issue-together with child protection and national prohibition-the foundations of her platform. Rankin served two nonconsecutive terms and was the only member of Congress to vote against the country's entry into both world wars. In 1918 she lost her bid for election to the Senate in part because of her unpopular stance on the war. A lifelong pacifist, Rankin opposed all war "because we've never settled any dispute by fighting." Her political success owed much to the opportunities afforded many women in the West during this period.

Data Source

National Portrait Gallery