From family mourning to a London exhibition
Houghton was born in the Canary Islands in 1814 and grew up in a British family. She trained in art. After the death of her younger sister, the Spiritualist promise of continuing contact with the dead acquired a personal importance. In her drawings, threads of colour loop through one another, and written explanations on the reverse identify their spiritual associations.
In 1871 she rented a Bond Street gallery and exhibited 155 drawings. Visitors could see an entire body of work and consult a catalogue giving her explanation of its origins. The expense and scale of the exhibition marked a considerable commitment for an artist working outside the established exhibition societies.
A record of photographic sittings
In 1872 Houghton began visiting Frederick Hudson’s studio. Her Chronicles, published in 1882, assembles letters, descriptions of sittings and accounts of figures that she and others recognised in the resulting photographs. Her identifications reveal what a bereaved sitter might look for in an image and how a group of believers discussed the result. The book is her testimony to those encounters.
