This, like most cases of these marginalised histories – was intentional. Has her image been sanitised too? Although Mary was picked up again by Suffragette’s in their cause, she was until second wave feminism in the 1970’s, lost to history a little. It’s a very different image to the famous Opie – and I wondered, is this because the Opie is more palatable? To see a feminised version of Mary? Eileen Botting in a brilliant piece on just this refers to this idea in response to the covering up of the nude on the statue to Mary on the Green as ‘Victorian prudery that had once labelled Wollstonecraft’s life and ideas too revolutionary for public consumption in mid-nineteenth-century London’. My favourite portrait of Mary is the John Williamson one – strong, stern and androgynous, although as Richard pointed out in reference to her hands- anxious and full of movement. Mary’s depiction in art has always been contentious.

Thoughts from Amy Todd – Programme Manager of the Newington Green Meeting House: Revolutionary Ideas project (although this is written in my personal capacity!) Amy has included key elements of Opie’s portrait: the hat, loose white top and thoughtful expression. The camera reveals Amy’s expression in all its subtlety, suggesting the inner life of the sitter posing as Mary Wollstonecraft. Photographic portraits are highly selective in what they include in the frame, but what is included is represented in minute detail.

The dark background focuses all our attention on the sitter. Although Liberty is dressed in Classical costume, Wollstonecraft arrives in the Temple wearing her 18th century dress and wig.Īmy’s homage to John Opie’s portrait demonstrates how much of the meaning in a portrait is conveyed by the formal elements of portraiture the lighting, composition, costume, pose and expression of the sitter. Wollstonecraft was firmly associated with the idea of women’s rights and her image had begun to take on a symbolic value of its own. This symbolic image of Mary Wollstonecraft passing a copy of ‘the Rights of Women’ to the figure of ‘Liberty’ appeared in an illustration in the ‘Lady’s Magazine in 1792, one year after Williamson’s stern portrait.