Saturday, November 21, 2015

Eveleen Tennant

Eveleen Tennant
William Ewart Gladstone
1890
platinum print
National Portrait Gallery (U.K.)

Eveleen Tennant Myers (1856-1937) took up photography in the 1880s. She later explained her own immediate motive as a desire to record her children's quickly passing stages of growth. Yet her ambitions certainly exceeded this stated purpose. She owned prints by Julia Margaret Cameron and modeled much of her work on that of the pioneering English photographer, whose activity had ended in the early 1870s. Tennant adopted a more refined version of Cameron's trademark goose-wings (below), and more generally reproduced the earlier artist's preferred subjects and poses, including  1) meditative portraits of of her own intimates, and 2) studies of those she encountered (like Prime Minister Gladstone, above) as a society hostess. A large collection of this work is preserved at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Eveleen Tennant
Leopold Hamilton Myers as the Compassionate Cherub
1880s
platinum print
National Portrait Gallery (U.K.)

Eveleen Tennant
Mary Endicott Carnegie
1890s
platinum
National Portrait Gallery (U.K.)

Eveleen Tennant
Gertrude Barbara Rich Tennant
1890s
platinum print
National Portrait Gallery (U.K.)

Eveleen Tennant
Gertrude Barbara Rich Tennant
1890s
platinum print
National Portrait Gallery (U.K.)

Eveleen Tennant
Eleanor Butcher
early 1890s
platinum print
National Portrait Gallery (U.K.)

Eveleen Tennant
Renée Tennant
1890s
platinum print
National Portrait Gallery (U.K.)

Eveleen Tennant
Effie Stillman  
1890s
platinum print
National Portrait Gallery (U.K.)

Eveleen Tennant
Leopold Hamilton Myers with Guinea Pig
late 1890s
platinum print
National Portrait Gallery (U.K.)

Eveleen Tennant
Sylvia Constance Myers
1880s
platinum print
National Portrait Gallery (U.K.)

Eveleen Tennant
Leopold Hamilton Myers, Silvia Constance Myers & Eveleen Tennant Myers
ca. 1890
platinum print
National Portrait Gallery (U.K.)

Eveleen Tennant
Silvia Constance Myers & Eveleen Tennant Myers
ca. 1900
platinum print
National Portrait Gallery (U.K.)

Eveleen Tennant
Adelaide Passingham
early 1890s
platinum print
National Portrait Gallery (U.K.)

Eveleen Tennant
Miss Judd
1890s
platinum print
National Portrait Gallery (U.K.)

Eveleen Tennant
 Sir Henry Irving
ca. 1900
silver gelatin print
National Portrait Gallery (U.K.)