Mary Raleigh Richardson; Clara Mary Lambert (Catherine Wilson)

1 portrait of Mary Raleigh Richardson

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Mary Raleigh Richardson; Clara Mary Lambert (Catherine Wilson)

by Unknown photographer
Criminal Record Office memorandum, Issued 24 April 1914
8 1/2 in. x 13 1/2 in. (217 mm x 342 mm) overall
Acquired from Criminal Record Office, 1914
Photographs Collection
NPG x136416

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Shortly before the First World War, a new type of portraiture was born: the surveillance photograph. This document was issued by Scotland Yard to the National Portrait Gallery following Richardson’s attack on the painting known as the Rokeby Venus (The Toilet of Venus) by Diego Velázquez in March 1914. Richardson described her attack as a premeditated response to the re-arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst earlier that month. Catherine Wilson (also known as Clara Lambert) attacked a glass case in the British Museum and infiltrated the male-only Houses of Parliament by dressing as a man, where she was discovered with a riding whip concealed in her sleeve and sentenced to six weeks’ hard labour. Within a year of this document, after the outbreak of war, Wilson was one of the first women to become a police officer.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Schama, Simon, The Face of Britain: The Nation Through its Portraits, 2015-09-15, p. 519

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Current affairs

Following Germany's declaration of war on France and invasion of Belgium, Herbert Henry Asquith, the British Prime Minister, declares war on the German Empire on August 4, 1914. The popular belief that the conflict would be 'over by Christmas' was soon found to be a bitter underestimate of the scale of the war.

Art and science

The fist issue of the periodical Blast is published by Wyndham Lewis, announcing the advent of Vorticism. This movement, named by Ezra Pound and taking in art and poetry, combined the vitality and dynamism of Italian Futurism with the geometric structure of Cubism. Vorticism was a direct challenge to the perceived quaint and domestic style of the Bloomsbury group and Roger Fry's Omega Workshop.

International

On June 28th 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is assassinated in Sarajevo leading to Austria's declaration of war against Serbia and triggering the First World War. Germany declared war on Serbia's ally, Russia, and then marched on France via Belgium. Soon all of Europe and most of the world was embroiled in total war.

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