ABSTRACT
Perhaps nowhere in the realm of Victorian art is the boundary between materiality and immateriality more vulnerable than in Anna Mary Howitt’s drawings and watercolours on tracing paper (Fig. 16.1). These thin, translucent sheets attest to the porousness of matter, contrasting markedly with the presumption of solidity in the fine art world, where art exists as a finite object, capable of being bought, sold, possessed. In 1856 this professional artist turned spiritualist medium set aside the oil paintings she had been submitting to the Royal Academy and devoted herself to drawings and watercolours executed in spiritualist trances. Howitt’s second artistic career pivoted around one question: ‘How can art mediate between the material and immaterial realms?’ This question resonated for Victorian spiritualists as believers in communication across different planes of existence, especially for Howitt’s circle – members of London’s artistic and intellectual middle class – for whom spiritualism was bound up with questions of representation. A drawing had to translate the intangible ideas of spirits into the concrete, visual language of humans, rewrite heavenly discourse as earthly discourse, without sacrificing its sublimity. With the stakes so high, the visual emergence of spiritualist belief carried enormous possibilities and hazards. Anna Mary Howitt, Creation's Eve, c. 1856–72, pencil with pen and black ink on tracing paper; collection of The Society for Psychical Research, reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library, SPR MS 65. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315613352/0928d19c-8e36-4819-a1f6-455ed92422df/content/fig16_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
