Blanche Ames (American, 1878-1969)
Portrait of Francis Plimpton, n.d.
Oil on canvas 24 x 18 in.
While artist Blanche Ames was well known as a portraitist, political cartoonist, and creator of botanical drawings and etchings, she was perhaps better recognized as an outspoken feminist and activist for woman’s suffrage and access to birth control. Ames founded and was the first president of the Birth Control League of Massachusetts, was an editor of The Woman’s Journal (the longest-running woman’s suffrage-rights magazine), President of the Easton Woman Suffrage League, Treasurer of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage League, a lobbyist for women’s voting rights at the Republican National Convention, and President of the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston. She also was an author and inventor, working late into her long life: her last book was published when she was 80, and her last patent was issued when she was 90 years old. And her connection to the subject of this painting? She was Francis Plimpton’s mother-in-law.
More information on the long and remarkable life of Blanche Ames can be found here: