Artist

51

Single

57 Bedford Gardens (studio 1) Kensington, London

CUWFA

Evades

Myra Elizabeth Luxmoore (1860-1918) was born in Paddington, London. After a brief spell in south Wales the family moved to Devon where in 1881 Myra was described as an ‘art student’ though it is not clear where she studied. Myra was a portrait and figure painter and in 1881 exhibited as an associate with the Society of Women Artists and by 1891 had moved to London where she exhibited regularly from 1905 with the Royal Academy. Among her exhibits was a portrait of Lady Balfour (1894) and one of the daughter of Sir John Craggs MVO. Featured (images) are her paintings of the Very Reverend Edward Maclure (1895) and a painting of an unknown woman in black (dated circa early twentieth century). Myra also drew inspiration from her travels in northern France (glimpsed in a painting of a Breton harbour scene) and Palestine which inspired a biblical painting (c.1912) owned by Sister Agnes Mason (founder of the Community of the Holy Family). Myra joined the London Society for Women’s Suffrage (NUWSS) in 1909 and was also secretary of the Kensington branch of the Conservative & Unionist Women’s Franchise Association (CUWFA) for which she also produced a suffrage postcard entitled ‘Woman’s cause is Man’s: They rise or sink together’. She also held numerous suffrage meetings in her spacious studio (no.1) at 57 Bedford Gardens, Kensington. Some of the meetings were recorded by suffrage campaigner Kate Frye in her diary (see sources below) which gives some fascinating glimpses into the meetings where there was often ‘a crush of people and no end of helpers’. Although Myra belonged to law abiding suffrage societies the CUWFA and NUWSS, she likely took part in the organised suffragette boycott of the 1911 census as she is nowhere to be found on the census record. The census official noted that Myra was was the occupier of the flat but listed it as ‘unoccupied’ that night. Sources: E Crawford (Ed.) Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary (Francis Boutle, 2013) & Art and Suffrage: A Biographical Dictionary of Suffrage Artists (Francis Boutle, 2018). 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.