Clementina Maude, Viscountess Hawarden
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Clementina Maude, Viscountess Hawarden (née Elphinstone Fleeming; 1 June 1822 – 19 January 1865), commonly known as Lady Clementina Hawarden, was a British amateur portrait photographer of the
Victorian Era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...
. She produced over 800 photographs mostly of her adolescent daughters.


Family

Clementina was born in
Cumbernauld Cumbernauld (; gd, Comar nan Allt, meeting of the streams) is a large town in the historic county of Dunbartonshire and council area of North Lanarkshire, Scotland. It is the tenth most-populous locality in Scotland and the most populated t ...
,
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on 1 June 1822, the third of five children of Admiral
Charles Elphinstone Fleeming Admiral Hon. Charles Elphinstone Fleeming (18 June 1774 – 30 October 1840) was a British officer of the Royal Navy who served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He commanded a succession of smaller vessels during the ea ...
(1774–1840), and Catalina Paulina Alessandro (1800–1880). Her father served in the Colombian war of independence, the Venezuelan war of independence, as well as the Revolutionary and
Napoleonic Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader wh ...
wars. He was a
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for
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in 1802, and died when Clementina was age 18. In 1845, she married Cornwallis Maude, 4th Viscount Hawarden, who was an Irish Conservative politician, and they lived mainly in Ireland; the couple had eight girls and two boys.


Photography

She turned to photography in late 1856 or, probably, in early 1857, whilst living on the family estate in Dundrum, Co. Tipperary, Ireland. A move to London in 1859 allowed her to set up a studio in her elegant home in
South Kensington South Kensington, nicknamed Little Paris, is a district just west of Central London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Historically it settled on part of the scattered Middlesex village of Brompton. Its name was supplanted with ...
. There she took many of the characteristic portraits for which she is principally remembered. Many include her adolescent daughters Isabella Grace, Clementina and Florence Elizabeth. The furniture and characteristic decor of an upper-class London home was removed in order to create mise-en-scene images and theatrical poses within the first floor of her home. Hawarden used mirrors to create a 'body double' and natural sunlight to light her shots, which was 'groundbreaking'. She produced her own albumen prints from wet-plate
collodion Collodion is a flammable, syrupy solution of nitrocellulose in ether and alcohol. There are two basic types: flexible and non-flexible. The flexible type is often used as a surgical dressing or to hold dressings in place. When painted on the skin, ...
negatives, a method commonly used at the time.Victoria and Albert Museum. (2015).
Lady Clementina Hawarden: Working Methods
" Retrieved 14 March 2015.
The Viscountess Hawarden first exhibited in the annual exhibition of the Photographic Society of London in January 1863 and was elected a member of the Society the following March. Her work was acclaimed for its artistic excellence, winning her the silver medal for composition at the exhibition. Sadly she then died of pneumonia before formally collecting it. She was aged 42. Works and legacy At a Grand Fête and Bazaar held to raise funds for a new building for the
Royal Female School of Art The Royal Female School of Art was a professional institution for the training of women in art and design. It was founded in 1842, as part of the Government School of Design, predecessor of the Royal College of Art. The Female School of Design wa ...
she set up a booth where she photographed guests, the only known occasion on which she took photographs in public.
Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are '' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequ ...
, an admirer of her work, brought two children to be photographed at this booth, and purchased the resulting prints.Leggatt, Robert.
A History of Photography
.
Her work is often likened or 'compared favourably' to fellow aristocratic photographer
Julia Margaret Cameron Julia Margaret Cameron (''née'' Pattle; 11 June 1815 – 26 January 1879) was a British photographer who is considered one of the most important portraitists of the 19th century. She is known for her soft-focus close-ups of famous Victorian m ...
, although their aesthetics differ widely, as Cameron put less of an emphasis on composition, backgrounds or props. Her photographic years were brief but prolific. Hawarden produced over eight hundred photographs between 1857 and her sudden death in 1864. Lady Hawarden's photographic focus remained on her children. There is only one photograph believed to feature the Viscountess herself, yet it could also be a portrait of her sister Anne Bontine. A collection of 775 portraits were donated to the
Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...
, London in 1939 by Hawarden's granddaughter Clementina Tottenham. The photographs were torn or cut from family albums. This accounts for the torn and trimmed corners which are now considered a hallmark of Hawarden's work. It also indicates that the images were produced for family pleasure not for commercial gain, which would have been considered inappropriate for 'an elite lady'.
Carol Mavor Carol Jane Mavor is an American writer and professor. Her work includes the books ''Pleasures Taken: Performances of Sexuality and Loss in Victorian Photographs'', ''Becoming: The Photographs of Clementina, Viscountess Hawarden'', and ''Blue Mytho ...
writes extensively about the place of Hawarden's work in the history of Victorian photography. She states "Hawarden's pictures raise significant issues of gender, motherhood, and sexuality as they relate to photography's inherent attachments to loss, duplication and replication, illusion, fetish."


Gallery

File:Hawarden-clem-maude-flo-1863-4.jpg, Hawarden-clem-maude-flo-1863-4 File:Clementina Hawarden, Clementina Maude.jpg, Clementina Hawarden, Clementina Maude File:Hawarden-clementina-maude-1862-3-mirror.jpg, Hawarden-clementina-maude-1862-3-mirror File:Hawarden1.jpg, Hawarden1 File:Clementina Hawarden, Clementina Maude and Isabella, 1861.jpg, Clementina Hawarden, Clementina Maude and Isabella, 1861 File:Lady Clementina Hawarden3.jpg, Lady Clementina Hawarden3


Notes


References


Further reading

*
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. ''Clementina, Lady Hawarden: studies from life, 1857–1864.'' New York: Aperture, 1999. . * Graham Ovenden (editor). ''Clementina Lady Hawarden,'' 1974 . * John Hannavy. ''Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-century Photography'' (CRC Press, 2008, ) {{DEFAULTSORT:Hawarden, Clementina Elphinstone, Viscountess 1822 births 1865 deaths Irish viscountesses English women photographers 19th-century British women artists 19th-century British photographers Photographers from London 19th-century women photographers Pioneers of photography Women of the Victorian era