BIRD, Kathleen Temple.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Portrait of Margaret Bidwell, drawn at a WSPU rally. Bird, a regular speaker at suffragette meetings, sold on-the-spot portraits at the WSPU's Christmas Fairs in 1911 and 1913, and the Summer Festival in 1913. Her sitter in this case is Margaret Bidwell, a suffragette who chaired meetings, attended demonstrations, and campaigned at by-elections. While several similar on-the-spot portraits by Bird exist, Bidwell is the only sitter who has been definitively identified.Kathleen Temple Bird (1879-1962) trained at Ipswich School of Science and Art and the Slade School of Fine Art. As a professional artist, she exhibited regularly and received commissions, often for portraits of notable women. She exhibited a "characteristic framed drawing of Miss Pankhurst" (The Suffragette, p. 560) at the 1913 WSPU Summer Festival and took orders for replicas, alongside her on-the-spot portraits. Her other suffrage activities were extensive: she was an active member of the Chelsea WSPU branch, the Tipperary League, and the Women's Municipal Party, and regularly wrote to newspapers advocating for women's rights. After her husband's death in 1927, she supported herself and her son independentlyMargaret Evelyn Bidwell (1881-1985) worked as a teacher in schools around London for over 30 years, specializing in theatre studies. She was descended from the artists John Sell Cotman and John Joseph Cotman. Her involvement with the WSPU had begun by 1908, when Votes for Women recorded her fundraising effort

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