Name Clementina Viscountess | ||
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Died January 19, 1865, South Kensington, London, United Kingdom People also search for Cornwallis Maude, 1st Earl de Montalt, Donald Cameron, 24th Lochiel, Graham Ovenden | ||
Clementina Maude, Viscountess Hawarden, née Clementina Elphinstone Fleeming (1 June 1822 – 19 January 1865), commonly known as Lady Clementina Hawarden, was a noted English portrait photographer of the Victorian Era, producing over 800 photographs mostly of her adolescent daughters.
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Family
Clementina was one of five children of Admiral Charles Elphinstone Fleeming (1774-1840), and Catalina Paulina Alessandro (1800-1880). In 1845, she married Cornwallis Maude, 4th Viscount Hawarden; the couple had eight children.
Photography
She turned to photography in late 1857 or early 1858, whilst living on the estate of her husband's family 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. There she took many of the characteristic portraits for which she is principally remembered, many of which 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 produced albumen prints from wet-plate collodion negatives, a method commonly used at the time.
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 widely acclaimed for its "artistic excellence", winning her the medal for composition at the exhibition. Hawarden was considered an amateur photographer and while appreciated for her work, never became widely known as a photographer. Her photographic years were brief but prolific. Hawarden produced over eight hundred photographs from 1857-1864 before her sudden death. During this time she gave birth to three of her eight children. Lady Hawarden's photographic focus remained on her children. There is only one photograph believed to feature the Viscountess Hawarden, yet it could also be a portrait of her sister Anne Bontine.
Lewis Carroll, also a photographer, was an admirer of Hawarden's work. Her work is also likened to Julia Margaret Cameron, another Victorian female photographer.
A collection of 775 portraits were donated to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London in 1939 by Hawarden's granddaughter, Clementina Tottenham. The photographs were ripped, or cut, from family albums for reasons that are still unclear. This accounts for the torn or trimmed corners now considered a hallmark of Hawarden's work.
Carol Mavor writes extensively about the place of Hawarden's work in the history of Victorian photography as well as contemporary interpretations of the work. 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."