John Sloan, England's Daughters

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England's Daughters, 1915
John Sloan (1871–1951)
Crayon on paper
16 5/16 × 10 3/8 in. (41.4 × 26.4 cm)
Delaware Art Museum, Bequest of Helen Farr Sloan, 2014

The 1915 drawing England's Daughters uses a similar technique as One of These May Vote in New York State, Which Is It? and Socialist Party Suffrage for Women Campaign Fund to advocate for women's suffrage. The several women depicted in crayon have robust, sturdy bodies, are dressed in worker's uniforms, and are performing hard physical labor with dedication and ease. Only the slight curves of their busts, smaller waists, and feminine features distinguish them from men's bodies. If women were just as capable of physical labor as men, the drawing asks, why not the mental labor of citizenship and voting?

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Sloan avidly followed news of leftist politics in the United States and Europe, and remarked in his diary about England's suffragette movement on December 6, 1908, saying, "[I] had a discussion on the votes for women question, which at present is being agitated in England by the 'Suffragettes,' and has started in this country. I feel that it would be well to give them votes."

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He recorded that he met English suffragette Mary Keegan on June 19, 1910, calling her "the real article, who served six years in prison for the cause."

You can click on Sloan's diary pages for a closer look.