Anna Elizabeth Klumpke painted Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a great political organizer, in 1889, toward the end of Stanton's public career.

The artist was still relatively young, in her thirties, and in 1887 she had just finished her tenth, yes, tenth, year of traditional painting study at the Académie Julian in Paris. The school produced a large number of influential artists, such as Émile Bernard, Lois Mailou Jones, and Marcel Duchamp. 

The Académie Julian flourished, in part, because in 1880 it began admitting women who were barred from the École des Beaux-Arts due to gender discrimination. Klumpke knew several languages, and would often serve as a translator for faculty and classmates at the Académie Julian.Halfway through her studies, at age twenty-five, Klumpke began to win portrait commissions.

The year 1889 would prove pivotal for Klumpke because, in addition to painting Stanton's portrait, she would also meet the love of her life, the painter Rosa Bonheur, while serving as a translator. It is as if the anticipation of this momentous event speaks through Klumpke's disciplined brushstrokes in Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In her diary, Stanton reveals that she sat for two artists that summer: Klumpke, and the sculptor Paul Bartlett, who made a clay bust of Stanton. Sometimes she sat for both artists at once. "Each had good places in the Salon, and honorable mention that year," Stanton continues. Always thinking of the working poor, Stanton adds, "It is sad to see many American girls and boys, who have no genius for painting or sculpture, spending their days in garrets, in solitude and poverty, with the vain hope of earning distinction. Women of all classes are awaking to the necessity of self-support." Today women still do not receive equal compensation for professional labor, and Stanton's work is unfinished. At the same time, men need to understand the critical value of self-care and domestic labor.

One of the greatest organizers to emerge from the United States, Stanton will be honored with a $10 bill in the year 2020, according to the U.S. treasury.