SUFFRAGE ATELIER.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

"What a Woman may be, and yet not have the Vote. What a Man may have been, & yet not lose the Vote". A wry poster produced by the Suffrage Atelier, printed in their signature woodblock style, favoured for its fast reproducibility and effectiveness in spreading their message. Founded in 1909 by Laurence and Clemence Housman and Alfred Pearse, the Atelier was the most political of the suffrage art collectives."Unlike the ASL's lithographed posters, those of the Atelier used wood or linocuts, in black and white or with colour added by hand, giving a strong, urgent stamp to their message. In style the SA posters, with their bold, simple designs using flat images and silhouettes recall the work of the Beggarstaffs, who had in the 1890s transformed the art of the poster. All the printing of the posters was done by women, for the Atelier was keen to teach its members the hand-printing processes necessary to produce its publications" (Crawford, pp. 26-7). The Atelier's formal goal was "to encourage Artists to forward the Woman's movement, and particularly the enfranchisement of women, by means of pictorial publications" (Crawford, p. 22). The Atelier moved to Stanlake Villas - the home of the artists Ethel Willis and Hope Joseph - in 1912.We have traced three hand-coloured variants: one in which the figures' clothes and shields are coloured in pink, green, yellow, and blue (held at the London Museum and the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University); one with red and green background

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