Lady Hawarden, 'Clementina and Isabella Grace Maude, 5 Princes Gardens', photograph.

Sepia photograph, mounted on green card, of two young women in 18th century costume.

5 Princes Gardens, interior: first floor, front: left window: screen: floor-boards: Clementina (right profile), in fancy dress (breeches), eyes closed, seated on folded mattress on floor, left hand fingering brim of Isabella Grace's hat and right hand holding tricorn hat on Isabella Grace's lap, and Isabella Grace, in fancy dress (eighteenth-century shepherdess style), eyes closed, seated, arms folded across waist. Reflection of her left side in window. Visible through window: balustrade; houses east side of Princes Gardens.

Given by Lady Clementina Tottenham

From departmental notes

'Clementina, Lady HawardenUntitled) Photographic Study (or) Study from Life (D.724) c. 1863-c.1864 5 Princes Gardens, interior: first floor, front: left window: screen: floor-boards: Clementina (right profile), in fancy dress (breeches), eyes closed, seated on folded mattress on floor, left hand fingering brim of Isabella Grace's hat and right hand holding tricorn hat on Isabella Grace's lap, and Isabella Grace, in fancy dress (eighteenth-century shepherdess style), eyes closed, seated, arms folded across waist. Reflection of her left side in window. Visible through window: balustrade; houses east side of Princes Gardens. Inscription (verso): No 150; Inscription (verso of mount): (X614-)150 238 x 273 mmPH 356-1947 Series 145 Literature: Microfilm: 3.18.102; V&A Picture Library negative no. HG 210. Windows, Fox Talbot Museum, 1985; Masterpieces, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1986. Whether or not the participants were aware of it, some of Lady Hawarden's photographs reverberate with romantic, even sexual, feeling. Such are the models' powers of persuasion that it seems not to matter that this eighteenth-century tableau is set, not on a mossy rock in a wooded glade, but on a rolled-up mattress on a bare wooden floor. The elegant line of Clementina's legs, revealed by her Cherubino-like knee­breeches, thrusts her toward Isabella Grace. Foiled by her crossed arms, the lover does not enfold the beloved. Rather, in a gesture epitomizing the scene's pervasive delicacy, Clementina merely fingers the brim of Isabella Grace's hat. A shadow hangs over the pair, though it serves to draw them closer.'

Reason For Production: Exhibition
Reason For Production: Retail

Lady Hawarden made many tableaux, using her two eldest daughters as her models. They often play out courtship scenes, dressed in 18th-century costume. Hawarden’s main interest in these scenes was perhaps as a stimulus to her sense of composition. She would arrange the figures into satisfying dramatised poses, together with fixed elements of the studio such as the casements of the windows, the wooden floors and the reflections. Transitory effects such as the play of light and shadow across the figure grouping also have a part to play in the composition.

356-1947