19thC; Hawarden C, D 187, Dundrum House, grounds, Clementina and Lord Hawarden, c. 1859-61

Sepia photograph, mounted on green card, of a girl and a man posing with brooms and mops.

Given by Lady Clementina Tottenham

From departmental notes

'Clementina, Lady Hawarden (Untitled) Photographic Study (or) Study from Life (D.187) c.1861-c.1861 Dundrum House, grounds: photography booth: Clementina (right profile), eyes down, standing, left hand resting on shoulder of Lord Hawarden, who is seated. Both in fancy dress (peasant style). She is miming pouring from kettle into jug he is holding. Props arranged around booth: brooms, basket, jugs, mop, wheelbarrow, bottle, kettle, twigs. 117 x 93 mm PH 457-1968:166 Series 32 Literature: Microfilm: 3.19.49; V&A Picture Library negativ no. GG 4956. Also: ed. Graham Ovenden, Clementina Lady Hawarden, 1974, p.22. Lady Hawarden's treatment of the scene recalls the fact that she termed her photographs 'studies' when she exhibited with the Photographic Society of London in 1863 and 1864. Many early photogaphers, most notably Oscar G. Rejlander, also used this term, long established in painting tradition. This focus on detail, the isolation of a figure group, and the lack of narrative combined with uncomplicated action are characteristic of artists' sketches for the components of full-scale paintings. By adopting art terms and art practices, photographers of the 1850s and 1860s announced that they were artists, not simply technicians, a claim frequently disputed by those who wished to preserve painting's domination of High Art: '[ ... l we have speculator after speculator publishing photographic "studies", so called [ ...] l posed in commonplace ways, farcical to artists--who know that what is valuable to themselves in life-model studies is not the things, but the practice of making them--'. [Quoted from The Athenaeum in Journal of the photographic Society, 15 July 1862, 321.) In Lady Hawarden’s photographs, the value of ‘the practice of making’ is evident.'

Reason For Production: Exhibition
Reason For Production: Retail

This is a tableau set outdoors on the family’s Irish estate at Dundrum in County Tipperary. Viscount Hawarden and his eldest daughter appear to be dressed as estate workers. They pose on a low dais with a backdrop, surrounded by cleaning tools: a brush, a broom and a mop. Clementina holds a kettle and her father a jug. Beside him is an open beer bottle. A flowerpot and a wheelbarrow suggest that they are meant to represent gardeners as well as general maintenance staff. If she had exhibited this photograph, Lady Hawarden would perhaps have cropped the print to remove signs of the dais and the backdrop.

Impersonations of workers by aristocratic or wealthy photographers were not uncommon at this period. Robert Crawshay, for example, posed his daughter as a fishwife in a photograph in the V&A Collection.

457:166-1968