Portrait photograph signed by WSPU organiser Constance lytton c1912

LYTTON, Lady Constance (1869-1923). Signed photographic portrait.
 
London: Lafayette Ltd., no date (circa 1912).
 
Gelatin silver photograph (image size 150 x 210 mm), mounted on original photographer’s card mount. Signed by Constance Lytton in dark ink to the upper left of the image. The photograph in very good condition, with only a miniscule chip to the lower edge. The mount worn, with rubbing and chipping to edges and loss, most noticeably at the lower margin.
 
A formal studio portrait of Constance Lytton, a leading figure in the militant phase of the suffrage movement. Lytton, the daughter of the Earl of Lytton, became closely associated with the Women’s Social and Political Union and is particularly noted for her imprisonment and her decision to adopt the alias “Jane Warton” in order to not be given any different treatment to her working-class comrade suffragettes. Her subsequent force-feeding and public account of prison conditions became an important episode in exposing inequalities within the penal system.
 
Signed photographic portraits of this quality, produced by the Lafayette studio and signed directly to the image, are uncommon.