Elizabeth Cady Stanton's genteel appearance belied her unswerving militance as a leader of this country's early feminist movement. To her mind, all issues of the day were subordinated or related to the inequities suffered by women. A prime mover behind America's first women's rights convention in 1848, she was the first to identify the vote for women as the key to winning all other rights for her sex. After the Civil War she joined Susan B. Anthony in founding the National Woman Suffrage Association. Her writings and speeches, however, extended well beyond the franchise question to include arguments for liberalizing divorce laws, reforming child-rearing practices, and correcting the Bible's relegation of women to secondary status. When Stanton prayed to God, she used a feminine pronoun.

In 1887 Stanton visited her fourth son, Theodore, in Paris. While there, she sat for two American artists, sculptor Paul Wayland Bartlett and painter Anna Klumpke. Klumpke, a student of Rosa Bonheur, did not finish her likeness of the notable feminist until two years later.