A reformer by nature, Susan B. Anthony began her long career as a crusader working in the temperance and abolitionist movements. In 1852, however, when she was denied permission to speak at a temperance meeting because of her sex, Anthony became a champion of women's suffrage. Following the Civil War, that cause became her all-consuming concern, and by the end of her life, no one had spoken longer or harder in defense of giving women the vote. As her friend and ally Elizabeth Cady Stanton once remarked, "The outpourings of Miss Anthony's love . . . [had] all flowed into the suffrage movement."

The maker of Anthony's bust, Adelaide Johnson, was considered the official sculptor for the suffrage movement by the early 1900s. The original version of this portrait, along with other Johnson likenesses of suffrage leaders, was first shown in the Woman's Pavilion at Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.