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Mary Richardson
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Mary Raleigh Richardson (1889 – November 7, 1961) was a Canadian suffragette active in the women's suffrage movement in the United Kingdom. Considered one of the most militant suffragettes, she was arrested nine times in two years and was force fed while on a hunger strike. She persuaded the Bishop of London to support votes for women and presented a petition to King George V by leaping on the running board of his carriage.
Militant Actions
Since the beginning of the century, the suffragette movement had been organized in a number of large organizations that availed themselves of historically unprecedented tactics in order to make their cause more visible.
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Mary Raleigh Richardson (1889 – November 7, 1961) was a Canadian suffragette active in the women's suffrage movement in the United Kingdom. Considered one of the most militant suffragettes, she was arrested nine times in two years and was force fed while on a hunger strike. She persuaded the Bishop of London to support votes for women and presented a petition to King George V by leaping on the running board of his carriage.
Militant Actions
Since the beginning of the century, the suffragette movement had been organized in a number of large organizations that availed themselves of historically unprecedented tactics in order to make their cause more visible. The most important of these organizations was the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), which was founded in 1903, and was led by the charismatic Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928).
In despair over the absence of parliamentary reforms, the movement transformed itself in the period 1912-14 from a traditional campaign movement to a kind of guerrilla movement, which made use of warfare tactics. The movement concentrated on attacking private property, including breaking windows, burning letterboxes, setting houses on fire, and vandalism of paintings.
She was with Emily Davison when Emily ran in front of the King's horse at the 1913 Epsom Derby, sustaining injuries from which she later died. Just after the incident, Mary was beaten about the face and then chased by an angry crowd to Epsom Downs station, where a porter gave her refuge. Mary carried out many terrorist acts. She smashed windows at the Home Office and Holloway Prison, set fire to a country house and bombed a railway station.
Slashing the Rokeby Venus
Her most famous act of defiance occurred in March 10, 1914 when she entered the National Gallery, London and slashed the Rokeby Venus.
Mary Richardson's attack on the painting took place around 11 a.m. on 10 March 1914. A slight woman wearing a tight gray skirt and a coat had stood for some time in front of the Rokeby Venus, apparently in deep contemplation of the painting, when she suddenly smashed the protective glass in front of the canvas, and began "hacking furiously at the picture with a chopper which, it is assumed, she had concealed under her jacket." When she was apprehended by a guard on duty in the room, she calmly surrendered and allowed herself to be led to the inspector's office with the words, "Yes, I am a suffragette. You can get another picture, but you cannot get a life, as they are killing Mrs. Pankhurst." She was referring to Emmeline Pankhurst, who at the time was on hunger strike in Holloway Prison. Richardson slashed the painting seven times, particularly causing damage to the area between the figure's shoulders. However, all were successfully repaired by the National Gallery's chief restorer Helmut Ruhemann.
When she was arrested at the museum, Mary Richardson herself was only on temporary leave from prison as a part of the "Cat and Mouse Act" (prisoners were released from prison in a weakened state and brought back when they had sufficiently recovered). She wrote a brief statement explaining her actions to the WSPU which was immediately printed by the press:
"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. Justice is an element of beauty as much as colour and outline on canvas. Mrs Pankhurst seeks to procure justice for womanhood, and for this she is being slowly murdered by a Government of Iscariot politicians. If there is an outcry against my deed, let every one remember that such an outcry is an hypocrisy so long as they allow the destruction of Mrs Pankhurst and other beautiful living women, and that until the public cease to countenance human destruction the stones cast against me for the destruction of this picture are each an evidence against them of artistic as well as moral and political humbug and hypocrisy."
Social Influence of the Slashing
In court, Mary Richardson added that she cared more for justice than for art, despite having been an art student, and thus her act was understandable, if not excusable. In an interview in 1952, nearly 40 years after the deed, Mary Richardson gave yet another reason for her action: "I didn't like the way men visitors gaped at it all day long."
The feminist art historian Lynda Nead has noted that "the incident has come to symbolize a particular perception of feminist attitudes towards the female nude; in a sense, it has come to represent a specific stereotypical image of feminism more generally." She concludes on the basis of the contemporary reactions to the act of vandalism that the value of the painting was "measured in terms of its representation of a certain kind of femininity and its position in the formation of a national cultural heritage." It is interesting to note that the market value of the Rokeby Venus rose sharply following the incident. Additionally, when characterizing the event, journalists tended to assess the attack in terms of a murder (Richardson was nicknamed "Slasher Mary"), and used words that conjured wounds inflicted on an actual female body, rather than on a pictorial representation of a female body. The Times published an article that contained factual inaccuracies as to the painting's provenance and described a "cruel wound in the neck", as well as incisions to the shoulders and back.
After the attack, the National Gallery, the Wallace Collection, and the National Portrait Gallery (where a similar attack had taken place) were closed to women visitors. Later, women were only admitted in the company of men who could vouch for their good conduct.
Mary Richardson's attack in 1914 was not only a politically motivated act of vandalism, but was also a precisely orchestrated demonstration of how the art museum - as a kind of fourth or fifth State power - not only administered or controlled the individual works of art, but also took part in the perpetuation of the existing gender roles.
It is beyond doubt that the museums suffered from a collective phobia of women after the attack. A museum director, who wanted to express his sympathy after a similar attack at the National Portrait Gallery, wrote in a letter to one of his colleagues that "The fact that people of good intent were standing by, and unable to prevent the outrage, shows how much we really are at the mercy of women who are determined."
Sylvia Pankhurst contextualized Mary Richardson's actions within a time of general upheaval:
"The destruction wrought in the seven months of 1914 before the War excelled that of the previous year. Three Scotch castles were destroyed by fire on a single night. The Carnegie Library in Birmingham was burnt. The Rokeby Venus, falsely, as I consider, attributed to Velázquez, and purchased for the National Gallery at a cost of £45,000, was mutilated by Mary Richardson. Romney's Master Thornhill, in the Birmingham Art Gallery, was slashed by Bertha Ryland, daughter of an early Suffagist. Carlyle's portrait of Millais [sic] in the National Portrait Gallery, and numbers of other pictures were attacked, a Bartolozzi drawing in the Doré Gallery being completely ruined. Many large empty houses in all parts of the country were set on fire, including Redlynch House, Sommerset, where the damage was estimated at £ 40,000. Railway stations, piers, sports pavilions, haystacks were set on fire. Attempts were made to blow up reservoirs. A bomb exploded in Westminster Abbey, and in the fashionable church of St George's, Hanover Square, where a famous stained-glass window from the Malines was damaged ... One hundred and forty-one acts of destruction were chronicled in the Press during the first seven months of 1914."
Later Life
Mary Richardson joined the Labour Party in 1919 and stood for parliament in 1922 in Acton; in 1926 in Bury St Edmunds; in 1931 in Aldershot; and in 1934 in London. She was never elected. In 1934 she joined Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists and became the Organising Secretary of the Women's Section. She left them in 1935 and took no further part in politics. She adopted a boy called Roger Robert, who took the name Richardson.
Although on her first visit to Hastings in 1913 pepper was thrown in her face, it is where she later retired and wrote her autobiography, Laugh a Defiance, published in 1953.
She died in her flat at 46 St James' Road, Hastings, on November 7th 1961. After a coroner's investigation she was cremated on the 10th and her ashes were taken away by Roger to his home in south London.
See also
Bibliography
Gamboni, Dario. The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution. Reaktion Books - Picturing History, 2007. ISBN 1861893167
Nead, Lynda. "The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity, and Sexuality. Routledge, 1992. ISBN 0415026776
Prater, Andreas. Venus at Her Mirror: Velázquez and the Art of Nude Painting. Prestel, 2002. ISBN 3791327836
Polhemus, Robert M. Erotic Faith: Being in Love from Jane Austen to D. H. Lawrence. University of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN 0226673235
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