On the morning of 10 March 1914, ‘a small woman… attired in a tight-fitting grey coat and skirt’ entered the National Gallery in London. Wandering through the rooms, she stopped occasionally to sketch the paintings. She came to Velásquez’s The Toilet of Venus (known as the Rokeby Venus), and stood in front of the painting for several moments, appearing to examine the work more closely. Moments later, the sound of breaking glass rang out. The woman had produced a butcher’s chopper, which she had concealed up her sleeve, and was attacking the painting. The gallery attendant rushed to restrain her, but slipped on the recently polished floor, giving the woman time to strike the painting several more times. However, she was soon detained by a constable on duty at the museum, and calmly taken into custody.
The woman’s name was Mary Richardson. She had joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1910; an act which she later described as enlisting in ‘a holy crusade’. By 1914, she was already considered ‘notorious’ for her militant actions, and had been evading re-arrest since her release from Holloway Prison in October 1913 under the ‘Cat and Mouse Act’. Following the incident, she released a statement in which she declared:
“I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government for destroying Mrs Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history”.
The previous evening, Emmeline Pankhurst had been arrested amid violent scenes in Glasgow and returned to Holloway Prison.
The slashing of the Rokeby Venus came during a period of escalating suffragette militancy, and Richardson was not the only suffragette to attack a piece of art. In April 1913, three suffragettes had smashed the frames of thirteen paintings at Manchester Art Gallery. Following the Rokeby Venus, similar attacks took place throughout the spring and summer of 1914. Incidents took place at the British Museum, the Royal Academy, the Royal Scottish Academy, the National Portrait Gallery and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
Museums responded to this line of protest in various ways. Royal Holloway’s own picture gallery was closed in April 1913, following the first attack, and did not reopen until 1915. At the National Gallery, police constables, such as the one who detained Richardson, had been engaged in response to the threat of suffragette action. Furthermore, in May 1914, the British Museum announced that women would only be admitted ‘on production of a satisfactory recommendation from a person willing to be responsible for their behaviour.’
While the attacks succeeded in their aim of bringing publicity to the cause, they led to significant backlash from the public and further cemented the belief that suffragettes were suffering from hysteria. Richardson was depicted as irrational and depraved; the Daily Mirror labelled her act as ‘crazy’, while the Illustrated London News described her actions as a ‘dastardly outrage’. Richardson – an image of female deviancy – was contrasted with the painting, which was held up as a symbol of perfect femininity. The press referred to the painting as Richardson’s ‘victim’ and focused on the ‘cruel wounds’ she had inflicted, including ‘a ragged bruise’.
Although many works of art were maimed during the suffrage campaign, the attack on the Rokeby Venus is the one which is best remembered, and this is likely due to Richardson’s choice of target. Decades later, Richardson stated in an interview that she had chosen to target the Rokeby Venus not only due to its financial value, but also because she was tired of women being used cheaply as nudes, and she had seen how men ogled at the painting. Yet, in choosing this painting, Richardson also damaged a work of art which many people felt a personal connection to, as the £45,000 for its purchase in 1906 had been donated by the public through the recently established National Art Collections Fund (now known as the Art Fund).
In the aftermath of the incident, the painting was swiftly restored, and Richardson’s handiwork erased. Richardson, meanwhile, received the maximum sentence of six months’ imprisonment for the attack. While Christabel Pankhurst claimed that Richardson’s act meant, ‘For ever more, this picture will be a sign and a memorial of women’s determination to be free’, the accuracy of her prediction is uncertain. Today, the work remains on display at the National Gallery, yet the accompanying label makes no mention of Richardson, and many visitors are unaware of the role it played in the fight for women’s right to vote.
By Michaela Jones.
Michaela is a PhD researcher at Royal Holloway, University of London.
