Artists' Suffrage League Postcards

Professional women artists played a significant role in the fight for women’s suffrage in Great Britain. Lisa Tickner chronicles their contributions in her excellent book The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign 1907-14 (The University of Chicago Press, 1988). Tickner argues that what linked the more moderate National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) and the more militant Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) “was the use of a new kind of political spectacle, and a production of an iconography of their own. . . . Pictorial leaflets, cartoons, posters and postcards, like processions and banners, were used by suffragists of all complexions on a scale unprecedented in any Victorian pressure group” (p. 10).

One group in particular is worthy of note. Founded in 1907, the Artists’ Suffrage League was organized by professional women artists to help with the planning for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) February demonstration. Although located in Great Britain, the posters and images produced by this group were shared with their U.S. counterparts, and played a role in U.S. campaigns. Although most know for the banners and posters they produced, the League also generated a number of postcards.