National Portrait Gallery reveals how painting of founder was slashed with a cleaver by a suffragette

Emery Walker photograph of damage to the portrait of Thomas Carlyle by Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Bt, 1877 © National Portrait Gallery, London

Thomas Carlyle by Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Bt, 1877 © National Portrait Gallery, London

A portrait slashed with a butcher's cleaver by a suffragette in the National Portrait Gallery will go back on display there for the first time in over twenty years.

A photograph showing the damage will be included for the first time in a complementary display devoted to the suffrage movement that inspired the attack in July 1914.

The portrait of one of the Gallery's founders, Thomas Carlyle, by Sir John Everett Millais, goes on display as part of the Gallery's year-long Rebel Women season to coincide with the new display Votes for Women opening 29 January 2018.

The National Portrait Gallery has revealed the fascinating archival accounts of the incident that was carried out by Anne Hunt following the re-arrest of Suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst.

On the morning of the attack, which occurred on a student day, meaning all non-students paid an entry fee, gallery staff attendant David Wilson recognised Anne Hunt from the previous day; he had thought her American ‘from the closeness from which she then examined the pictures.' Wilson's suspicions were aroused because ‘no American would have paid the 6d entrance fee twice over'. Unable to follow her beyond his post, he then heard glass shatter. Two female students were copying portraits when Hunt struck at least three times, slashing Carlyle's portrait. One student, followed by an attendant, rushed to restrain her.

Prompted by unsympathetic press coverage that characterised Hunt as a ‘Hatchet Fiend', ‘Wild Woman' and ‘Fury with a Chopper,' a member of the public immediately wrote to offer a replacement portrait of Carlyle. The Gallery set about restoring the work but despite efforts to safeguard the Collection, the Deputy Chairman of the Trustees said: ‘we really are at the mercy of women who are determined.'

At her trial Anne Hunt said: ‘This picture will be of added value and of great historical importance because it has been honoured by the attention of a Militant.' She was sentenced to six months imprisonment, complained of forcible feeding in custody, and was released on July 27. Hunt revisited the Gallery on August 31 and Assistant Keeper Milner afterwards reported: ‘Wilson said he got quite a shock when he saw her, she smiled and nodded to him… if Carlyle's mutilator should return she is not to be admitted…'.

With a response ‘to keep the Gallery open outrage or no outrage,' records show a lack of engagement with the political aims underlying militant attacks with senior staff often preoccupied with everyday business. This is shown by a letter Milner wrote parodying the long process of printing Gallery publications on 21 August 1914. All slept, ‘until some gentle lady came along with a hammer, smashed some glass and woke up the whole house. Then all went to sleep again'.

From as early as January 1913, however, fear of Suffragette action at museums and public buildings meant female visitors were instructed to leave bags, muffs and parcels in cloakrooms in case of concealed weapons. Following a second attack on paintings at the National Gallery in May 1914, Assistant keeper James Milner wrote:

If women are to be admitted to public galleries there seems no alternative but to handcuff their hands behind their backs and to put up a grille to prevent them butting or barging into the pictures. Only under these conditions do I think it safe to admit them.

Votes for Women (29 January– 13 May 2018) contains the document issued by Scotland Yard to the National Portrait Gallery following Mary Richardson's attack on Velázquez's painting The Rokeby Venus (The Toilet of Venus) at the National Gallery in March 1914. The display also includes the sheet of identity photographs issued to the National Portrait Gallery by Scotland Yard of women serving sentences in Holloway and Manchester prisons, many taken undercover in prison exercise yards.

A selection of the Gallery's Collection of postcards produced by suffrage organisations to promote membership and to inspire loyalty towards their leaders also go on display for the first time. In these images the sitters appear well-dressed, elegant and demure, providing an antidote to press photographs, in which Suffragettes often appeared dishevelled or distressed.

As well as portraits of the Pankhurst sisters, the display includes a rarely seen and intimate painting by Ford Madox Ford of Millicent Garrett Fawcett with her husband and fellow ‘suffragist', Henry Fawcett, who had been blinded in a shooting accident in 1858. As president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies from 1897, Millicent Garrett Fawcett was one of the most influential figures in the campaign for women's suffrage and favoured political lobbying and peaceful protest.

This year she becomes the first women represented by a statue in Parliament square, in a work by the artist Gillian Wearing.

Votes for Women is part of Rebel Women a year-long season of events at the Gallery to mark the centenary of women's suffage including lectures, discussions, talks and tours. A new Gallery book 100 Pioneering Women will feature portraits of women from its Collections. From Elizabeth I to Zaha Hadid, the book celebrates the accomplishments of women throughout history, highlighting not only well-known figures but also women whose stories have been forgotten.

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.