GEORGIANA HOUGHTON SPIRIT DRAWINGS GEORGIANA HOUGHTON SPIRIT DRAWINGS Simon Grant, Lars Bang Larsen and Marco Pasi edited by Ernst Vegelin van Claerbergen and Barnaby Wright First published to accompany GEORGIANA HOUGHTON: SPIRIT DRAWINGS The Courtauld Gallery, London, 16 June – 11 September 2016 Organised in collaboration with Monash University Museum of Art CONTENTS The Courtauld Gallery is supported by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (hefce) 6 Director’s Foreword 8 “Works of art without parallel in the world” Georgiana Houghton’s Spirit Drawings Copyright © 2016 simon grant and marco pasi Texts copyright © the authors All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any storage or retrieval system, without the 24 Spectres of Art prior permission in writing from the copyright holder and publisher. lars bang larsen and marco pasi isbn 9781 911300 02 1 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library 34 CATALOGUE Produced by Paul Holberton publishing 89 Borough High Street, London se1 1nl 36 Catalogue Introduction www.paul-holberton.net Designed by Laura Parker ernst vegelin van claerbergen and barnaby wright Printing by Gomer Press, Llandysul front cover: Detail of cat. 7, The Eye of God; frontispiece: Detail of cat. 19, The Eye of the Lord; page 7: Detail of cat. 4, 82 List of Works Flower of William Harman Butler; page 8: Detail of cat. 12, The Risen Lord; page 17: Detail of verso of cat. 15, The Eye of the Lord; page 24: Detail of cat. 6, Flower of Samuel Warrand; pages 34–35: Detail of cat. 10, The Glory of the Lord photographic credits Fig. 2 reproduced by kind permission of the Fyndics of Cambridge University Library; fig. 3 © Bethlam Museum of the Mind; fig. 4 © Archives, Charmet/Bridgeman Images; fig. 6 © ABCD Collection, Paris; cat. 3–15, 17–21 Courtesy of Victorian Spiritualists’ Union, Melbourne, Australia; cat. 16–16.6 Courtesy of College of Psychic Studies, London DIRECTor’s FOREWORD In 1871 a gallery in London’s Old Bond Street hosted what are deeply grateful to Gill Matini, Leslie Price and Vivienne must surely have been one of the most extraordinary art Roberts for their generous enthusiasm, encouragement and exhibitions of the entire Victorian era. It consisted of 155 expertise. Thanks are also due to John Rust and Lucie Forder, works, chiefly watercolours, which the accompanying as well as to Sarah Turner. catalogue described as having been produced by the medium The exhibition is organised in collaboration with Monash Georgiana Houghton under the direct influence of spirits. University Museum of Art, where it was shown in a different These ‘spirit drawings’ are remarkable not only for the form in 2015. We are greatly indebted to Charlotte Day and purported manner in which they were created but also for her staff at MUMA for facilitating the project so professionally. their outstanding visual qualities. Characterised by a striking For The Courtauld Gallery, this exhibition forms part of a combination of rich colours and densely layered forms and strand of programming which concerns itself with alternative patterns they are technically highly accomplished. These histories of drawing. Such projects, by their nature outside the complex non-figurative arrangements of fluid open designs mainstream, are especially reliant upon philanthropic support and minutely controlled surfaces are as original as they are and in the present case, as so often before, that support has creatively persuasive. been provided by the International Music and Art Foundation. The majority of Houghton’s surviving oeuvre is preserved in An additional grant was gratefully received from the Richard the Victorian Spiritualists’ Union in Melbourne, Australia – one McDougall Fund. We thank them both for their generosity. of the oldest institutions of its kind. We extend our sincere Finally, I extend my warm personal thanks to the curators thanks to the Union’s members, and especially to Alan Bennett of the exhibition and authors of this publication: Simon Grant, and Lorraine Lee Tet, for entrusting their works to our care. Lars Bang Larsen and Marco Pasi, all of whom have had a long- The Victorian Spiritualists’ Union shared our ambition to standing interest in Georgiana Houghton’s work. It has been present Houghton’s watercolours once more in London for a pleasure for The Courtauld Gallery to join in their efforts to the consideration of new audiences with fresh perspectives on bring Houghton’s remarkable narrative to wider scholarly and their qualities and the many questions they raise. An important public attention. additional group of works has been lent from the archives of the College of Psychic Studies, London, where they are ernst vegelin van claerbergen beautifully preserved in an early album of spiritualist art. We Head of The Courtauld Gallery EXHIBITION SUPPORTERS Georgiana Houghton: Spirit Drawings is sponsored by The International Music and Art Foundation Further generous support has been provided by The Richard McDougall Fund “WORKS OF ART WITHOUT PARALLEL IN THE World” GEORGIANA HOUGHTon’s SPIRIT DRAWINGS simon grant and marco pasi Georgiana Houghton (1814–1884) spent most of her life her loss. Houghton was still grieving for Zilla in 1859 when in Victorian London as a single woman (fig. 1). She came her cousin put her in touch with a neighbour, Mrs Marshall, from an ordinary, respectable middle-class English family, who, it transpired, was a well-known spirit medium. and apart from her active involvement in spiritualism Through her, she took part in her first séance. – then at the height of its popularity – led a relatively The experience astonished her. unremarkable, quiet life. After her death, she was soon After just one session with Marshall, Houghton felt forgotten and, until recent times, her name was rarely that what she had seen and heard was “all sufficient” to mentioned by historians, even in well-documented studies convince her that she was capable of doing it herself, and of spiritualism.1 Yet, during her life she produced some spent the following three months in rigorous training, with of the most astonishing works of art that have reached us help, involvement and encouragement from her mother. from that period – in her own words, “Works of art without Houghton was spurred on by her deeply held Christian parallel in the world”.2 These seemingly abstract and richly faith, and validated her purpose in those terms. Her great symbolic works were hardly appreciated or understood aim was, as she wrote in Evenings at Home, “to show ‘What during her life and were as soon forgotten as their author. the Lord hath done for my soul’ by granting me the Light After more than a century of oblivion, this exhibition and now poured upon mankind by the restored power of catalogue seek to bring Houghton’s remarkable works to communion with the unseen”.4 the attention of a new audience. She soon began with the practice of ‘table tipping’ Houghton was born on 20th April 1814 in Las Palmas, (a process in which, like a ouija board, a table was used to on the island of Grand Canary, the seventh child of George receive ‘messages’ from spirits) and after hearing in July and Mary Houghton. In London she lived in genteel 1861 about the spirit drawings of Mrs Elizabeth Wilkinson poverty, her merchant father having lost money in a series (on whom more below) she turned to drawing. Having of unlucky trading ventures.3 We know surprisingly little of initially made a small number of images with the aid of her biography before her work as spirit artist and medium, a tool known as a planchette, she began the first of her though from her two-volume memoirs, Evenings at Home in free-hand images of spiritual flowers and fruit, led by a Spiritual Séance, we know that she had trained as an artist, growing number of ‘spirit guides’.5 The first of these was but renounced art on the death of her beloved younger a man called Henry Lenny, described as a “deaf and dumb sister Zilla Rosalia, herself a “charming artist”, who had artist”. Later guides included great artists from the past, died in 1851 aged 31. She was deeply affected by her sister’s such as Titian and Correggio. By October 1861 she had death, which had come some years after the loss of her her first communication with her “appointed guardians”, younger brother Cecil Angelo, aged nine in 1826. Like many Zacharias, John and Joseph. At the end of 1862 she began of her generation who witnessed death in the family, she in earnest her “Sunday evening pen and ink drawings”,6 looked to any means to find explanations and comfort for under the direction of a larger group of these “high spirits”. 9 HOUGHTON AND BRITISH SPIRITUALISM More ambitious (and unexplained) apports from other sought to contact her husband Albert after his premature In order better to appreciate Houghton’s artistic activity reports included the appearance of, variously: a six foot death in 1861.15 and the context in which it took place, it is important to sunflower, “sea water and live star fishes”, “three ducks Spiritualism’s ascendancy also came at a time when say something about the development of spiritualism in prepared for cooking”, a pile of snow, and, perhaps most Victorian society was undergoing immense social and Victorian Britain, and also about its social and cultural famously, the transportation of Houghton’s friend and cultural