A collection of beautiful portraits painted by women’s suffrage leader Sylvia Pankhurst are set to “expand the way we represent working women as subjects in art history”.

The four portraits, painted by Pankhurst when she visited the Midlands in 1907, show women working in mills and potteries in Stoke and Glasgow. They will soon enter the national art collection, having been bought by the Tate gallery.

“At a time when gender pay gaps and women’s rights at work remain urgent topical issues, these images remind us of the role art can play in inspiring social change,” Ann Gallagher, Tate’s director of collection for British art, commented.

Pankhurst had originally intended for the pictures to shine a light on the poor working conditions suffered by women at the time, including the “hot and airless” mills and the way women were forced to work as assistants to men when making pottery.

Helen Pankhurst, Sylvia’s granddaughter, described Sylvia as “an artist as well as a champion of working women’s rights, her first passion not as well known as her second”.

“In these beautiful pieces these interests are powerfully combined,” she says.

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