CRITICAL APPRAISAL: Georgiana Houghton

Georgiana Houghton

‘Glory Be To God’ (c 1868)

watercolour on paper 49 x 55 cm

‘…my hand has been entirely guided by Spirits, no idea being formed in my own mind as to what was going to be produced…’

These are Georgiana Houghton’s opening lines, written in the catalogue for her exhibition ‘Spirit Drawings in Water Colours’ at the New British Gallery in 1871. Although well known in spiritualist circles Houghton never received the attention she desired as an artist. Today she is having a resurrection in the Art World. I saw an exhibition of some of her drawings, ‘Glory be to God’ included, held in the Coulthard Institute of Art in the summer of 2016.

‘Glory be to God’ is one of Houghton’s spiritualist drawings among a collection held by the Victorian Spiritualists’ Union in Melbourne. It shows a remarkable layering of colourful spiralling marks, culminating in what could now be believed to be the beginnings of abstract art, decades before Kandinsky and Mondrian. Her mark making is vibrant and energetic, making patterns that might represent the essence of life and scientific imagery. Although Houghton suggests these drawings are led by spirits, I believe that her technique was not to become entranced but to empty her mind in such a way that could be considered automatic drawing. 

Her use of colour in ‘Glory be to God’ adds many dimensions to the image with yellow and green receding and red and blue in the mid-ground. In the foreground she has drawn a surface layer of spiralling white, like spun silk. This may represent the spirit, but it seems to me that this is a form of doodling in earnest, creating an unconscious, underlying sense of existence. Houghton uses the whole surface in this drawing, to the edges and deep within, suggesting an intense, frenetic and complicated cosmos.