Artists

46 & 45

Single

2 Campden Hill Square, Kensington

WSPU

Evades

Georgina Agnes Brackenbury (1865-1949) and her sister Marie Venetia Caroline Brackenbury (1866-1945) were portrait and landscape painters respectively. They were born in Woolwich to an army general and his wife Hilda and were two of nine siblings. Both sisters trained at the Slade school of art circa 1888 to 1900 where they met several fellow students who were also became involved in the campaign for female suffrage. After leaving the Slade Georgina has some success portrait painting. For example, her portrait of Viscount Dillon (1894) hangs in the National Portrait Gallery and she exhibited a portrait of Lord de Mauley at the Royal Academy in 1904. The sisters rented studios in Chelsea (1896 in 56 Glebe Place) and Kensington (1911 2 Hillsleigh Road) but had the use of a huge studio located in their Kensington home from 1900 at 2 Campden Hill Square where they spent the duration of their involvement in the Women’s suffrage campaign alongside a country home in Peaslake, Surrey. In 1907 through 1908, both sisters subscribed to Mrs Millicent Fawcett’s law abiding NUWSS but also in 1907 joined Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst’s militant WSPU. Soon after in 1908, Marie contributed a cartoon to a January edition of the ‘Women’s Franchise’ which was also reproduced as a postcard and a leaflet. The cartoon entitled ‘History Up to Date and more so – by a suffragette pavement artist’ made a comical play on the nursery rhyme The House that Jack Built. That same month, the sisters held a WSPU meeting at their home studio at Campden Hill accommodating 200 women. Their shift towards militancy was rapid when they were arrested just a few weeks later on the 11th of February following their part in a daring raid on the House of Commons with suffragettes attempting to force entry. Both Georgina and Marie were sentenced to six weeks in prison. Undeterred, in June, the sisters chaired platforms at the WSPU demonstration in Hyde Park (21st June) and Georgina began travelling up and down the country speaking at meetings. In 1910, and after working with Annie Kenney, she took over from Mary Gawthorpe as an organiser in Manchester. In 1911, the Brackenbury home became a haven for suffragettes boycotting the government census survey that year hosting an 'evasion'. The message scrawled across the census form read ‘Miss Marie Brackenbury in charge takes this opportunity of registering her protest against the votelessness of the women of Great Britain by refusing to fill in this form’. The census official notes there was one man, and 25 women present at the Brackenbury evasion. The following year in 1912, Marie, Georgina, and their elderly mother Hilda were all imprisoned for two weeks for taking part in the WSPU window smashing campaign. During the most turbulent final years of the militant campaign, the Brackenbury home became known as ‘Mouse Castle’ for giving refuge to suffragettes temporarily released pending rearrest under the infamous Cat and Mouse Act (see our Glossary of terms under resources). In 1914, the Brackenbury home even became temporary WSPU headquarters after its central office was raided by police. In 1927, Georgina was commissioned to paint a portrait of Mrs Pankhurst (see image) and was a pall bearer at her funeral in 1928. In 1950, the Brackenbury’s deeds for the cause were commemorated in a plaque by Ernestine Mills commissioned by the Suffragette Fellowship. Contributed by Tara Morton (Warwick University) as part of the Mapping British Women Artists 1750-1950 project & Research Group, which is affiliated with The British Art Network (led and supported by Tate and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, with public funding provided by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.