Leslie Ward ('Spy'), 'Women's Suffrage' — Miss Christabel Pankhurst

One of the rare Vanity Fair plates featuring a woman, this chromolithograph — signed 'SPY' at lower left and captioned 'Women's Suffrage' with the identification (Miss Christabel Pankhurst.) — portrays the militant suffragette co-founder of the Women's Social and Political Union mid-gesture, one hand raised as if mid-speech. Ward renders her in fashionable Edwardian dress: a green satin skirt, velvet bodice, and pale blouse with a brooch at the collar. The pose flatters rather than diminishes; there is no grotesque distortion of the kind routinely applied to male subjects. The plate acknowledges suffrage as legitimate public controversy precisely by admitting Pankhurst into the gallery of serious 'persons of the day.'