Georgiana Houghton

Born 1814 in Las Palmas - SPAIN. Died 1884 in London - Great Britain.

We have little information about the life of Georgiana Houghton before 1859. We know she was the last of a family of seven children. She studied first classical art, which she abandoned at the death of her younger sister in 1851. She spent all her life in London. She never married.
She became interested in spiritualism in 1859, first contacting the spirits by means of “table-tipping”, then, from 1861, with a sort of small board. Following the advice of her spiritual guides, she abandoned pencils and began painting : visionary works, abstract in appearance, which also represent cosmic flowers or fruit. In 1865, some of her work was selected (but not shown) for an exhibition at the Royal Academy. Houghton wrote two volumes entitled Evenings at Home in Spiritual Séance (published in 1881 and 1882 thanks to an anonymous benefactor), in which she recounted her psychic experiences. Her father died in 1863, her mother in 1869. After the death of her parents, her brothers refused to help her financially : she spent the rest of her life in a state of " aristocratic poverty". In 1871 she exhibited one hundred fifty-five watercolors at the New British Gallery. Another interesting part of her work is related to the spiritualist photographs she began making in 1872. Until 1877, she visited every week Mr Hudson – a photographer of questionable reputation. She participated in two hundred fifty photographic sessions. In 1877, Hudson’s deception was exposed and Hudson Georgiana Houghton ceased this activity.

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