We're standing on the shoulders of wonderful women from the past

Wendy Wood featured, and I heard a story I hadn’t heard before, and can’t see in any notices about her. Yes, she did tear down the Union flag at Stirling Castle, but the story I heard was that she painted a Union flag on the floorboard, presumably in her last home, shared with her partner Florence St John Cadwell at Whinmill Brae here in Edinburgh. She then covered it over. Carpet? Lino? Rug? The story wasn’t that detailed. But every day, every party, birthday, Hogmanay, it got a good stomping on. From what I’ve read of Wendy Wood, I kind of believe it.

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For some folks, Wendy Wood might be “history”, but let’s face it, history is populated by women who are forgotten, lost, ignored, or falsely portrayed. Perhaps they’re there as an appendage; daughter of, married to, consort, victim. From past to present, unsung and unremembered. Butchers, bakers, yes, candlestick makers, linguists, lollipop women, mathematicians, chefs, scientists.

And artists like Artemisia Gentileschi (approx 1593-1656), passed over, with her work attributed to other named artists (male, obviously). And if she is at all remembered, then it is as a rape victim. Her paintings still resonate with the passion she poured onto the canvasses; the pain, torture, the injustices she survived. Her works are only now to be given a first exhibition in London. How many generations has it taken to be recognised?

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Due to social requirements of the days past, so-called good manners, decency and respectability made it unimaginable for women to be playwrights, authors, public figures. From the known like Aphra Benns to the Brontes and George Elliot. But here, too,do we remember and honour the likes of Anne Hume, 1644, translator, poet, writer, Scottish? She wasn’t alone with her skills, talents and contributions to Scottish herstory. But neither is she alone in the wilderness, which is heavily populated by women.

It was in that wilderness that I found Harriet Powers, illiterate, a “folk” artist. Not a real artist, you understand, because of her background as an African-American slave and illiteracy. Merely a quilt maker from rural Georgia. Nothing “special”, nor “innovative”, just “traditional craft”, “women’s work”, depicting “local legends” and Bible stories. And by that as she was perceived, and in her time, so was determined her status, or lack of, by others. It’s not surprising that only two of her many wonderfully pictorial, historical pieces from 1886-1898 remain, and then the bombshell as late as 2009 when a letter was discovered that showed Harriet was in fact literate and had lovingly quilted the stories she’d read into her creations, those glowing, imaginative, practical quilts.

Having begun with a personality such as Wendy Wood, if I come full circle, how much do I admire Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, whose artistry and design helped define the Glasgow Style of the 1890s and beyond. Her inspiration was not least that of Rosetti and Morris, but came from her love of Celtic poems, her roots. A recent Glasgow exhibition contained her work, as well as that of her husband Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who had the grace to say: “Margaret has genius, I have only talent”.

So please can we hear it, regularly, not just annually for the mammies, the grannies, aunties, sisters, cousins. The women who pioneered our health service, our trades unions, who worked and fought to begin dismantling the societal barriers that many still refuse to see. Women whose inventiveness and determination transcends the hardships, wars, famines, refugee camps, inequalities, to do their best and more for their families, their communities. It would be such a wrong for us to ignore them. Let’s face it, we’re standing on the shoulders of all those wonderful women who went before us.

Selma Rahman
Edinburgh