A spilled ink pot, a quill pen and the lifeless hand of a woman are representative of Olympe de Gouges, a French playwright and activist during the French revolution. Her most famous work was the manifesto, “Declaration of the Right of Women and Female Citizen”. Modelled after the 1789 “Declaration of the Right of Man and Citizen”, de Gouges asserted equal rights of citizenship to women in all aspects of public and private life. A revolutionary feminist well ahead of her time, de Gouges was sent to the guillotine in 1793 for her outspoken views and radical ideas. I created this painting specifically for the French Revolution show. The text in the painting is the first paragraph to her manifesto. The piece is rendered in acrylic, charcoal and ink on masonite.