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Ethel Smyth 1858–1944
Ethel Smyth was a prominent and gifted British composer of opera, oratorios, and concertos. She was also a celebrated singer, noted for "the rare and exquisite quality and delicacy of her voice, the strange thrill and wail, . . . and the whirlwind of passion and feeling she evoked." To convey the effect of her music, Sargent made this drawing while she sat at the piano, singing "the most desperately exciting songs" in her repertoire.
Smyth brought equal passion to the cause of women's rights. She worked with Emmeline Pankhurst and wrote "The March of the Women" (1911), the anthem of the suffragist movement. In a speech before the National Society for Women's Service, her close friend Virginia Woolf declared Smyth "of the race of pioneers, of pathmakers. She has gone before and felled trees and blasted rocks and built bridges and thus made a way for those who come after her."
Charcoal on paper, 1901
Lent by the National Portrait Gallery, London; given by the sitter's nieces Mrs. Elwes, Mrs. Williamson, and Lady Grant Lawson, 1944
This is the National Portrait Gallery sign in the exhibit. |