HOUGHTON, Georgiana 1814-1884

Daughter of Mary Ann Warrand and George Houghton.
Sister of  Marianne, Roberto, Warrand, George Clarence, Cecil Angelo, Charles James, Sidney Alexander and Helen.
Born in 1814 in Canaries, Georgiana died in 1884, aged 69. She was said to be a famous spiritualist and lived with her parents throughout her life. She wrote a number of books on spiritualism, including

• Chronicles of the Photographs of Spiritual Beings and Phenomena Invisible to the Material Eye Interblended with Personal Narrative,  and
• Evenings At Home In Spiritual Seance: Welded Together By A Species Of Autobiography (1882).

She left a moving account of her father's accident in April 1863 and of his death six months later in "Spiritual Séance". It is quite clear not only how fond she was of her father but also her own involement in spiritualism.
In the same book she relates how, after her father's death, she and her mother decided to move to a smaller house from 5, Upper Craven Place, Highgate road, where the family had lived since 1830. Initially they hoped for compensation as a railway planned to come through the house would have involved its demolition. In the event the railway did not touch either the house or garden but nevertheless came sufficiently close to be a decided nuisance. Her brother Clarence generously agreed to pay the landlord £100 to cancel the lease.

She is considered by art critics not only as an early Modernist, but as a forerunner to some of the more famous abstract expressionists such as Kandinsky. At least one of her drawings is in the collection of abcd (art brut, connaissance & diffusion foundation) in Paris. Another collection of thirty-five drawings exists at the Victorian Spiritualists' Union in Melbourne, Australia.


Other references
There are two references in the V&A National Art Library Catalogue:

• Letters : to Ford Madox Brown and Emma Brown, 1856 Sept. 24 - 1867 Sept. 16 / G. H. [?] Lennard and Georgiana Houghton.
• Catalogue of the spirit drawings in water colours, : exhibited at the New British Gallery, Old Bond Street. / By Miss Houghton, through whose mediumship they have been executed. May 22nd, 1871.

http://www.pd.org/Perforations/perf29/violi/violi_proof_positive.htm
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Image credits

• Portrait - family records - courtesy James CRICK
• The Eye of God - "Esoteric Art Confronting the Public Eye: The Abstract Spirit Drawings of Georgiana Houghton", Rachel Oberter; Victorian Studies; Winter 2006