Artist/Maker Dorothy Eisner (1906 - 1984)

Votes for Women

1917 and ca. 1973

Graphite on beige paper, laid on another sheet, with a darker collaged banner lettered in black ink

Overall: 11 × 15 1/2 in. (27.9 × 39.4 cm)

Gift of Christie McDonald and Joan McD Miller

2016.41.1

"Votes for Women," began as a drawing in 1917 by the then eleven-year old artist, at a time when the issue of a woman’s right to vote was hotly debated across the country. New York State had passed such a law as early as 1917; the nation would follow with the Nineteenth Amendment three years later. As a handwritten inscription on the reverse of the panel attests, young Dorothy accompanied her mother in a women’s suffrage parade in 1917. The work is comprised of a graphite sketch detailing a procession of women adorned in elaborate garb and hats of the period. The figure to the far left, seemingly at the head of the procession, carries a flag with the inscription “vots [sic] for women” written in childlike scrawl. The artist later added her signature and attached the drawing to another paper with an ink banner “VOTES FOR WOMEN” in bold capital letters placed at the top of the composition, perhaps a fragment of an actual sash worn by a marcher. Eisner also inserted a pencil outline and decorative ornamentation surrounding the original image. She executed this enhancement in the early 1970s (ca. 1973), during another pivotal period in women’s history: the consideration of the Equal Rights Amendment. Born in New York in 1906, Eisner was a painter and photographer, and worked in an amalgam of styles influenced by the artists and art movements of her time, including the work of European modernists such as Matisse, and the photographer Walker Evans, with whom she was a close friend. Although she considered herself to be non-political, Eisner was avowedly left-wing in her sympathies, and even painted portraits of Leon Trotsky. The Suffragette movement particularly ignited her enthusiasm, and she remained committed to women’s causes throughout her life.

ClassificationsDRAWINGS