The feminization of photography and the conquest of colour: Sarah Angelina Acland, photographer

Thesis

The thesis is a study of the photographer Sarah Angelina Acland (1849 – 1930) and the wider issues her work raises for our understanding of women photographers and the early history of colour photography. Miss Acland was active in photography from 1891 to 1915. She is known primarily as a portraitist and as a pioneer of colour photography using the “Sanger Shepherd process of natural colour photography”. Her portraits of Gladstone, Lord Salisbury, Kelvin and Ruskin (who taught her art) were seen by large audiences when exhibited in public and published in the press. In 1905 and 1906 she gave four lectures on colour photography at the Royal Photographic Society, illustrated with lantern slides taken in Gibraltar. These were regarded by her peers as the finest that had ever been seen and as marking the inauguration of colour “as a process for the travelling amateur”. After its release in 1907 she then became one of the earliest women to use the Autochrome; later she experimented with Omnicolore, Dufay Dioptichrome and Paget Colour plates. Most of her portraits were taken in her Oxford home, many of her colour photographs on the island of Madeira.

The study is divided chronologically and thematically into two parts. The first, dealing with the period from 1891 to 1899, concentrates on the artistic side of Miss Acland’s work, especially interior photography and portraiture. Wider themes are explored concerning the feminization of photography (the increasing influence of women in all its branches); women’s pursuit of photography beyond the threshold of the home; and the photographic expression of the domestic ideal. The second part of the study, from 1899 to 1915, focuses on Miss Acland’s scientific photography and her efforts to conquer the problem of colour, including her work with orthochromatic plates. As well as tracing the use of the Sanger Shepherd process before 1907, particular attention is given to the following: Miss Acland’s appeal to the rhetoric of science and the Pre‑Raphaelite doctrine of “truth of nature” in her promotion of the “Spectrum plates” of the manufacturer Cadett & Neall; the significance of the Imperial narrative for the reception of her photographs of Gibraltar and her portrayal of colour photography as a tool of scientific exploration; the foundation of the institutions and instruments of colour prior to the release of the Autochrome; and the role of photography as an outlet for women’s scientific interests. A catalogue raisonné accompanies the thesis.

Authors: Hudson, GM

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-bdojgxj4d
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Sarah Angelina Acland; early colour photography; women photographers; photography; John Ruskin
• Subjects: Color photography; Photography; Oxford