Post by Admin on Feb 21, 2024 22:05:10 GMT
“The Substantiality of Spirit”
Georgiana Houghton’s Pictures from the Other Side
By Jennifer Higgie
publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-substantiality-of-spirit/
When Georgiana Houghton first exhibited her paintings at a London gallery in 1871, their wild eddies of colour and line were unlike anything the public had seen before — nor would see again until the rise of abstract art decades later. But there was little intentionally abstract about these images: Houghton painted entities she met in the spirit regions. Viewing her works through the prism of friendship, loss, and faith, Jennifer Higgie turns overdue attention on an artist neglected by historians, a visionary who believed that death was not the end, merely a new distance to overcome.
PUBLISHED
February 21, 2024
“Everybody is talking about the Spiritual pictures in Old Bond Street. I went there yesterday, and a more surprising collection of 150 paintings I never saw . . . beautiful workmanship, warmness, manual application — and the colouring is a new revelation.”
—Unattributed newspaper review of Georgiana Houghton
The details are sketchy. Born to a middle-class family in 1814 in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, Georgiana was the seventh of twelve children. Her father was a wine and brandy merchant; her mother had her hands full with her enormous brood. The family moved to London when Georgiana was small, but they lost their money. Not much is known about her childhood, apart from the fact that the family experienced genteel poverty. It’s clear, though, that Georgiana suffered great losses: her nine-year-old brother Cecil Angelo died when Georgiana was twelve, her elder brother Warrand when she was twenty-seven, her brother Sidney when she was thirty-one, and her especially beloved younger sister Zilla Rosalia when she was thirty-seven.
I suspect we assume that people in previous centuries — given the higher mortality rates — were more accustomed to death than we are. While that might be true, death is still death. To those left behind, it’s unfathomable to grasp non-existence: grief can be inarticulate. If there was even a glimmer of possibility, who wouldn’t want to try and reach those we love, to know that they were safe and well? Georgiana trained as an artist — it’s not known where — but for some reason she gave it up when Zilla, who was also an artist, died. Georgiana never married. She lived with her family, then her parents, then her mother, and then alone — although the word “alone” in her case is not one she would have agreed with. In 1859, still mourning, at the invitation of her cousin, Mrs Pearson, Georgiana attended a séance held by a neighbour, Mrs Marshall. She was not young and impressionable: she was a middle-class woman of forty-five, but she heard and saw things that day that made her believe in the veracity of supernatural communication. Her experience convinced her that death was not the end; it was more like moving into a different room and talking through a wall.
And so, it began. Spiritualism would consume her until the end of her life.
Georgiana discovered that, with persistence, she could train herself to become a medium. She was a Christian, but Christianity doesn’t preach communication beyond death. She brushed this aside. She began by sitting with her mother at twilight, discussing spiritual matters. After three months, on December 31, 1859, the table tipped and messages from the other side began to flow. So did the pictures.
Georgiana Houghton’s Pictures from the Other Side
By Jennifer Higgie
publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-substantiality-of-spirit/
When Georgiana Houghton first exhibited her paintings at a London gallery in 1871, their wild eddies of colour and line were unlike anything the public had seen before — nor would see again until the rise of abstract art decades later. But there was little intentionally abstract about these images: Houghton painted entities she met in the spirit regions. Viewing her works through the prism of friendship, loss, and faith, Jennifer Higgie turns overdue attention on an artist neglected by historians, a visionary who believed that death was not the end, merely a new distance to overcome.
PUBLISHED
February 21, 2024
“Everybody is talking about the Spiritual pictures in Old Bond Street. I went there yesterday, and a more surprising collection of 150 paintings I never saw . . . beautiful workmanship, warmness, manual application — and the colouring is a new revelation.”
—Unattributed newspaper review of Georgiana Houghton
The details are sketchy. Born to a middle-class family in 1814 in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, Georgiana was the seventh of twelve children. Her father was a wine and brandy merchant; her mother had her hands full with her enormous brood. The family moved to London when Georgiana was small, but they lost their money. Not much is known about her childhood, apart from the fact that the family experienced genteel poverty. It’s clear, though, that Georgiana suffered great losses: her nine-year-old brother Cecil Angelo died when Georgiana was twelve, her elder brother Warrand when she was twenty-seven, her brother Sidney when she was thirty-one, and her especially beloved younger sister Zilla Rosalia when she was thirty-seven.
I suspect we assume that people in previous centuries — given the higher mortality rates — were more accustomed to death than we are. While that might be true, death is still death. To those left behind, it’s unfathomable to grasp non-existence: grief can be inarticulate. If there was even a glimmer of possibility, who wouldn’t want to try and reach those we love, to know that they were safe and well? Georgiana trained as an artist — it’s not known where — but for some reason she gave it up when Zilla, who was also an artist, died. Georgiana never married. She lived with her family, then her parents, then her mother, and then alone — although the word “alone” in her case is not one she would have agreed with. In 1859, still mourning, at the invitation of her cousin, Mrs Pearson, Georgiana attended a séance held by a neighbour, Mrs Marshall. She was not young and impressionable: she was a middle-class woman of forty-five, but she heard and saw things that day that made her believe in the veracity of supernatural communication. Her experience convinced her that death was not the end; it was more like moving into a different room and talking through a wall.
And so, it began. Spiritualism would consume her until the end of her life.
Georgiana discovered that, with persistence, she could train herself to become a medium. She was a Christian, but Christianity doesn’t preach communication beyond death. She brushed this aside. She began by sitting with her mother at twilight, discussing spiritual matters. After three months, on December 31, 1859, the table tipped and messages from the other side began to flow. So did the pictures.