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Topics

Protest and civil unrest

  • Summary
Madame de Lamartine Adopting the Children of Patriots Killed at the Barricades in Paris during the Revolution of 1848
Image credit: The Bowes Museum

Madame de Lamartine Adopting the Children of Patriots Killed at the Barricades in Paris during the Revolution of 1848

François Claudius Compte-Calix (1813–1880)

The Bowes Museum

Minor instances of unrest and drunkenness appear in many scenes of everyday life, from the sixteenth-century Netherlands to those by Hogarth in the eighteenth. But larger-scale riots and demonstrations, that reflect major political and historical events and movements, have also been recognised and formally recorded in art.


The Bristol Riots of 1831 against the rejection of the second Reform Bill by the House of Lords were particularly dramatic, violent and destructive and were well recorded by local artists; officially commissioned war artists have recorded the unrest in Northern Ireland.

Read more
The French Revolutions of 1789–1799 and 1848 attracted great artistic interest and had significant impacts on the history of art, but are unfortunately not well-represented in British collections.

Artworks

  • Madame de Lamartine Adopting the Children of Patriots Killed at the Barricades in Paris during the Revolution of 1848
    Madame de Lamartine Adopting the Children of Patriots Killed at the Barricades in Paris during the Revolution of 1848 François Claudius Compte-Calix (1813–1880)
    The Bowes Museum
  • A Rake's Progress: 7 – The Rake in Prison
    A Rake's Progress: 7 – The Rake in Prison William Hogarth (1697–1764)
    Sir John Soane’s Museum
  • A Rake's Progress: 6 – The Rake at the Gaming House
    A Rake's Progress: 6 – The Rake at the Gaming House William Hogarth (1697–1764)
    Sir John Soane’s Museum
  • Mrs Richard Marsden Pankhurst (1858–1928), née Emmeline Goulden
    Mrs Richard Marsden Pankhurst (1858–1928), née Emmeline Goulden Georgina Agnes Brackenbury (1865–1949)
    Museum of London
  • Lucretia
    Lucretia André Bauchant (1873–1958)
    Southampton City Art Gallery
  • Bristol Riots: The Burning of Lawford's Gate Prison
    Bristol Riots: The Burning of Lawford's Gate Prison James Baker Pyne (1800–1870)
    Bristol Museum & Art Gallery
  • Idealogical Conflict
    Idealogical Conflict Anthony Pilbro (b.1954)
    Herbert Art Gallery & Museum
  • 93 more

Stories

  • 1936, oil on canvas by Thomas Cantrell Dugdale (1880–1952)
    Immortalising the Jarrow Crusade: marching to save a north-east town from poverty

    Jordan Butt

  • Masterpieces in Schools at Ysgol Bro Tryweryn and Ysgol Ffridd y Llyn
    Masterpieces in Schools comes to Wales: Cofiwch Dryweryn ('Remember Tryweryn')

    Laura Woodfield

  • Henri Gaudier-Brzeska's anarchist drawings: caricature and calligraphy

    Sean Ketteringham

  • Protest in print: the activist work of Paul Peter Piech

    Michelle Lewis

  • Chila Burman's 'Riot Series': protesting with printmaking

    Jessica Raja-Brown

  • Mary and John Wilkes: radical siblings

    Robert Wilkes

  • Trade union banners: kaleidoscopic symbolism and strength in unity

    Miranda Gabbott

  • Exhibitions spotlight: protest, upheaval and rebellion

    Imelda Barnard

  • Art, protest and being seen: an interview with Stephe Meyler

    Joshua Jones

  • After the Uprising
    Robert Koenig's 'After the Uprising'

    Tracy Jenkins

  • Sonia Lawson and the freedom of abstraction

    Jonathan Hajdamach

  • Write on Art: 'Greenham, Peace Vigil' by Claudia Williams

    Grace Page

  • Yma o Hyd: six works about the Welsh language

    Steph Roberts

  • Drawing as disruption: twentieth-century artists who used drawing as a protest

    Simon Coates

  • Mabel Pakenham-Walsh: activist, storyteller and craftsperson

    Alice Briggs

  • Will Maclean: assemblages, the Highlands and the sea

    Susan Mansfield

  • Comradeship, community and masculinity: miners and strikes in Wales

    Rachel Dawson

  • Entangled histories: the Highland Clearances and the transatlantic slave trade

    Harvey Dimond

  • James Crawford and Will Maclean (b.1941) and John Norgrove
    Memorials of the heroes: remembering the land struggle on the Isle of Lewis

    Andrew Eaton-Lewis

  • c.27–25 BC, bronze, eyes inlaid with glass pupils and irises of calcite, probably made in Egypt. The head was once part of a larger than life-size statue
    Appetite for destruction: a brief history of iconoclasm

    Chloë Ashby

  • Hazel Reeves in her studio with the original clay model for her statue of Emmeline Pankhurst
    Deeds Not Words: commemorating the women's suffrage movement through statues

    Anthony McIntosh

  • Elisabeth Frink: a sculptor's drawings

    Jo Baring

  • A Life in Protest: Jackie Kay's response to Ingrid Pollard at Glasgow Women's Library

    Jackie Kay

  • Penry Williams' 'Merthyr Riots'

    Benjamin Price

  • Vandalised 'Rokeby Venus', 1914
    Fighting for representation: suffragettes and art vandalism

    Victoria Ibbett

  • Edith Downing: remarkable sculptor and suffragette

    Flora Doble

  • Write on Art: Paula Figueiroa Rego's 'Triptych'

    Flora Dodd

  • A court in exile: the story of the Jacobites and the art that shaped their cause

    Jérémy Filet

  • Art and slate: the slate landscape of north-west Wales

    Mari Griffith

  • Paul Robeson: political activist, Renaissance man

    Marjorie H. Morgan

  • Still from HENI Talks' film on the Cable Street Mural
    London's Cable Street Mural: a powerful living monument to anti-fascism

    Rafael Schacter and HENI Talks

  • Hazel Reeves' sculpture of suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst

    Anthony McIntosh

  • Remember, remember the 5th of November

    Corinna Lotz

  • Julian Gould's 'Self Portrait'

    Annwen Bates

  • 'From the Watford Advertiser 1960, with my self portrait painted 1959'
    Derek Jarman: painting, protest and the AIDS pandemic

    Matthew Cheale

Learning resources

  • screenshot-2021-04-13-at-16-05-28-1.png
    Video
    Sculpture in focus: 'Woman in a Bomb Blast' by F. E. McWilliam
    • KS3 (NI)
      KS4 (NI)
      CfE L3 (SCO)
      CfE L4 (SCO)
      KS3 (WAL)
      KS4 (WAL)
      KS3 (ENG)
      KS4 (ENG)
  • spol-everyday-3-preview-1.jpg
    Lesson plan
    The Superpower of Looking: Hogarth pokes fun at corrupt Georgian MPs
    • KS2 (ENG)
      KS2 (NI)
      CfE L2 (SCO)
      PS3 (WAL)
  • aif-ckb-lw-scmu-2019-161-001-1.jpg
    Lesson plan
    Artist in focus: Chila Kumari Singh Burman
    • KS4 (ENG)
      KS4 (NI)
      CfE L4 (SCO)
      KS4 (WAL)
      KS5 (ENG)
      KS5 (NI)
      CfE Sen. (SCO)
      KS5 (WAL)
  • sw-mtm-163-990-001-1.jpg
    Lesson plan
    The Superpower of Looking: a view of a South Wales Valley town during the Miners’ Strike
    • KS2 (ENG)
      KS2 (NI)
      CfE L2 (SCO)
      PS3 (WAL)
  • lw-boa-boa-14-002-1-1.jpg
    Round-up
    Anti-racism resources
    • KS2 (ENG)
      KS2 (NI)
      CfE L2 (SCO)
      PS3 (WAL)
      KS3 (ENG)
      KS3 (NI)
      CfE L3 (SCO)
      CfE L4 (SCO)
      KS3 (WAL)
  • ss1-tj-s433-001-1-1.jpg
    Lesson plan
    Be inspired by street art
    • KS2 (ENG)
      KS2 (NI)
      CfE L2 (SCO)
      PS3 (WAL)
      KS3 (ENG)
      KS3 (NI)
      CfE L3 (SCO)
      CfE L4 (SCO)
      KS3 (WAL)

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® is a registered trade mark of the Public Catalogue Foundation.
Art UK is the operating name of the Public Catalogue Foundation, a charity registered in England and Wales (1096185) and Scotland (SC048601).