b. 1822; d. 1865
In the summer of 1999 the Victoria and Albert Museum in London put on an exhibition of Lady Clementine Hawarden's photography. As one critic put it, it was difficult not to think of Tennyson's "Lady of Shalott" as one saw these pictures. In his poem, the Lady was imprisoned in a tower, and she could only see life indirectly, using a mirror. Unable to experience the real world, she had to recourse to weaving tapestries of the inverted image. The story of Lady Clementina Hawarden is very similar, for she was a prisoner of Victorian conventions, and sought to express herself using photography.
There are relatively few early women photographers, for reasons outlined
here. Little is known about the early life of Clementina
Hawarden, except that her father died when she was seventeen, leaving her
a fortune. In 1845 she married Viscount Hawarden, and left Scotland to live
in South Kensington, London.
In London, her photographic work flourished, and she was able (like Julia
Margaret Cameron) to persuade many friends and relatives to pose for
her photographs. These predate the work of Cameron.
Though she took landscapes and portraits, her best work consisted of photographs
which showed the Pre-Raphaelite influence in her kind of work, and art historians
maintain she was influenced, in her photography, by the portraiture by James
Whistler.
One of her strongest supporters was Charles Dodgson, more commonly known
as Lewis Carroll.
Despite her relatively short life Lady Clementina took a large number of pictures widely differing variety. The majority of her photographs can be found in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
She was awarded a medal by the (then) Photographic
Society, though she died before receiving the award.
Those wishing to read further would find an excellent account in "Lady
Celementine Hawarden: studies of life 1857-1864" by Virginia Dodier
(ISBN 0-89381-815-1).
© Robert Leggat, 2000