Georgiana Houghton on It Was To Be

Georgiana Houghton (1814-84) is credited with being the first abstract expressionist. A well-educated middle-class British woman, she devoted her life to spiritualism and hypnotism.

One of her practices was to create spirit paintings using watercolor and pen and ink. On the back, using automatic writing, she wrote the symbolic meaning and attributions to her spirit guides who represented famous artists. For example, “The Eye of God” was attributed to Italian Renaissance artist Correggio who “endeavored through Georgiana’s hand, to represent The Eye of God, in the Three Persons of the Trinity.”

In 1871, Houghton was encouraged to put on an exhibition of her works. Impoverishing herself, she carefully planned every element of the exhibit from the choice of frames to be rented to the production of the catalog, in which she explained her symbolism and philosophy. During the three months of the exhibition, she spent every day there, explaining to visitors how the watercolors had been created.

The exhibition, Spirit Drawings in Water Colors, was held at the New British Gallery on London’s Bond Street. It featured one-hundred-and-fifty intricate watercolors.

She recounts how the exhibit came about in her book Evenings at Home in the Spiritual Séance volume 2, published in 1882

I now received permission from my friends to invite Mr. L. to come and be present some day while I was engaged on my artistic work. He was highly delighted with the privilege to be accorded to him, and we appointed the 13^th of December, when I had the opportunity of shewing (sic) him three distinct stages of work, each of which seemed to fill him with more and more astonishment. I had two drawings in progress, and began upon one that was nearly finished, so he watched with great interest the fine lines that went on so smoothly and so unerringly under my hand, never failing to reach exactly their purposed destination, notwithstanding that I was fully engaged in conversation with him all the time; and there would be sudden changes of detail and methods of manipulation, which clearly did not require my mind to be concentrated upon them, which must have been the case had self been the operator, even supposing the possibility of my powers being equal to such perfect work.

…It certainly was refreshing to my ears to hear his rapturous exclamations of delight as some new beauty was suddenly revealed from, as it were, the undercurrent of the earlier labour…In the course of our talk, he said,– “Why do you not exhibit?” So I told him my main reason—that the religious symbolism would be out of place in a heterogeneous collection, and my Royal Monograms had not been admitted by the Academy.

“Oh!” he said, “that is not what I mean: why not have an Exhibition of your own?”

“Of my own!!! What a bewildering thought: of course it was quite impossible, even if such an idea could enter my brain:–I in my lonely life, a weak woman, with none to help me in an undertaking of such magnitude: –the very notion of such a thing seemed utter incongruity…

His farewell words were “Think on it.”

I did think on it! For much to my surprise, when I appealed to my counselors, the instantaneous response was that “it was to be” pp 29-30.