Acknowledgements
From the Art Canada Institute
The Art Canada Institute gratefully acknowledges the generosity of the Title Sponsor of this book, Alexandra Bennett in memory of Jalynn Bennett.
We thank the Founding Sponsor of the Art Canada Institute: BMO Financial Group.
From the Author
As always, I must thank Joseph Mulholland for welcoming me into his extraordinary archive of Margaret Watkins’s photographs and documents, for gifting the documents to McMaster University, and for allowing us to reproduce many photographs here in this book. I thank Tobi Bruce at the Art Gallery of Hamilton for her interest in Margaret Watkins and for encouraging me to write this book. But the book could not have been written without the foundational research and writing Katherine Tweedie has done with me over the years on Watkins, primarily for our 2007 McGill-Queen’s University Press book Seduced by Modernity: The Photography of Margaret Watkins. The work we did together on our 2022 film Archive Traces: Margaret Watkins Photographer prepared me to dive into the writing of this ACI publication. Thanks also to Katherine for the original scans of the images. Thank you to Rick Stapleton and the McMaster University William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections for making the handling of Watkins’s papers so easy and comfortable, and a big thank you to the ACI team and all their detailed and creative work behind the scenes: Sara Angel, Jocelyn Anderson, Emma Doubt, Tilman Lewis, Olivia Mikalajunas, Tara Ng, Claudia Tavernese, Simone Wharton, and all other members of the ACI team who worked on this book. Thanks to my family, Gaby and Sarah Moyal, for their love and support, and to many friends for listening to me go on and on about the life and photographs of Margaret Watkins.
IMAGE SOURCES
Every effort has been made to secure permissions for all copyrighted material. The Art Canada Institute will gladly correct any errors or omissions.
The Art Canada Institute would like to thank the following for their assistance: Amon Carter Museum of American Art (Selena Capraro); Art Gallery of Hamilton (Bo Shin); Boris Ignatovich Estate; Canada Post (Joy Parks); CentroCentro; diChroma Photography (Anne Morin and Tessa Demichel); McGill-Queen’s University Press (Paloma Friedman); McMaster University Library (Kyle A.D. Pugh); Nailya Alexander Gallery (Nailya Alexander); National Gallery of Canada (Raven Amiro and Philip Dombowsky); Princeton University Art Museum (Kelly Flaherty); Ralph Steiner Estate (William Oram); and The Hidden Lane Gallery (Carole Dunlop and Joseph Mulholland).
The ACI recognizes the additional private collectors who have given permission for their works to be published in this edition.
Credit for Cover Image
Margaret Watkins, The Tea Cup [advertisement for Cutex], 1924. (See below for details.)
Credits for Banner Images
Biography: Frances Bode, Clarence H. White School of Photography, Margaret Watkins, 1921. (See below for details.)
Key Works: Margaret Watkins, Study for an advertisement [Woodbury’s Soap], 1924. (See below for details.)
Significance & Critical Issues: Margaret Watkins, The Builder, “Peter the Great,” 1933. (See below for details.)
Style & Technique: Margaret Watkins, Phenix Cheese, 1923. (See below for details.)
Sources & Resources: Margaret Watkins, The Negative, 1919. (See below for details.)
Where to See: Installation view of Margaret Watkins: Black Light, curated by Anne Morin, produced by diChroma Photography, Kutxa Kultur Artegunea, San Sebastian, Spain, 2021. (See below for details.)
Credits: Margaret Watkins, Untitled [Poppies], c.1920. (See below for details.)
Credits for Photographs and Works by Other Artists
Advertisement for the Photo-Secession exhibitions at the Little Galleries, January 1906, designed by Edward Steichen. Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly no. 13, January 1906. Courtesy of arthistoricum.net.
Advertisement for Woodbury’s Soap, “The first time you use it,” in the New York Times, April 13, 1924. Courtesy of The Hidden Lane Gallery, Glasgow.
Brochure for the Seguinland School of Photography, Clarence H. White, Fifth Season, 1914. Clarence H. White Collection, Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey, Photography Archives, Assembled and organized by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., Given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr., and Jane Felix White (CHW A151). Courtesy of the Princeton University Art Museum.
Centenary Methodist Church Choir (front row, first on the left: Margaret Watkins), 1904. Photographer unknown. Collection of The Hidden Lane Gallery, Glasgow. Courtesy of The Hidden Lane Gallery.
Cover of Margaret Watkins’s address book, 1938–69. The William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University, Hamilton, Margaret Watkins Fonds, Box 5, f.20. Courtesy of McMaster University.
Cover of Margaret Watkins’s pocket diary, 1915. The William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University, Hamilton, Margaret Watkins Fonds, Box 5, f.4. Courtesy of McMaster University.
Cover of Margaret Watkins: Domestic Symphonies by Lori Pauli (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2022). Courtesy of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo credit: NGC.
Cover of Seduced by Modernity: The Photography of Margaret Watkins by Mary O’Connor and Katherine Tweedie (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007). Courtesy of McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal and Kingston.
Cover of Traumerei sheet music owned by Margaret Watkins, date unknown (Boston: Oliver Ditson Company). Private collection.
Cutex advertisement “The Well Groomed Woman’s Manicure,” Ladies’ Home Journal 42, no. 2, February 1925, 37. Collection of The Hidden Lane Gallery, Glasgow. Courtesy of The Hidden Lane Gallery.
Design for the flag of the Soviet pavilion, Pressa exhibition, Cologne, 1928, by El Lissitzky. Courtesy of arthive.com.
Detail from Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers by Arthur Wesley Dow, seventh edition (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1913), 25. Courtesy of hank_b on archive.org.
Douglass Lighters, 1928, by Edward Steichen, printed by George Tice. Courtesy of Gallery 270, Westwood, New Jersey.
Group portrait of the Tarbox and Houghton families outdoors, in front of Eastlawn, their family home (later Watkins’s “Clydevia”), c.1878. Collection of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge (MC602-8.12v-25). Courtesy of Harvard University.
The Horse Fair, 1852–55, by Rosa Bonheur. Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Cornelius Vanderbilt, 1887 (87.25). Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Kitchen Table: a Study in Ellipses, by Paul Outerbridge, Jr., featured in Vanity Fair 18, no. 5, July 1922, 52. Courtesy of View: Theories and Practices of Visual Culture, Warsaw.
Magazine advertisement for Edison Mazda Lamps (light bulbs), 1920s. Courtesy of Mariangela Buch Restoration on archive.org.
The Manger, 1899, by Gertrude Käsebier. Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Mina Turner (1973.40). Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Margaret Watkins, c.1919, by Alice Boughton. Collection of The Hidden Lane Gallery, Glasgow. Courtesy of The Hidden Lane Gallery.
Margaret Watkins’s A Portrait [Bernard S. Horne], 1921, featured in Shadowland no. 8.5, July 1923, 62–63. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., on archive.org.
Margaret Watkins’s Studio Card, 1919–28. Collection of The Hidden Lane Gallery, Glasgow. Courtesy of The Hidden Lane Gallery.
Max Weber, 1914, by Arthur D. Chapman. Collection of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Prints and Photographs Division, Warren and Margot Coville Collection, Purchase, Coville Photographic Art Foundation, 2000 (DLC/PP-2000:090). Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Morning, 1905, by Clarence H. White. Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933 (33.43.315). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Mrs. Herbert Duckworth as Julia Jackson, 1867, by Julia Margaret Cameron. Gilman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Alfred Stieglitz Society Gifts, 2005 (2005.100.26). Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Newspaper clipping from the Sun and Globe (New York), October 24, 1923. Collection of The Hidden Lane Gallery, Glasgow. Courtesy of The Hidden Lane Gallery.
Oumayagashi, from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei), 1857, by Utagawa Hiroshige. Courtesy of Galerie Christian Collin, Paris.
“Photography Comes into the Kitchen,” Vanity Fair 17, no. 2, October 1921, 60. Collection of The Hidden Lane Gallery, Glasgow. Courtesy of The Hidden Lane Gallery.
Portrait of a Female Donor, c.1455, by Petrus Christus. Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1961.9.11). Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art.
Photograph of women with cameras at Lanier Camp, date unknown. Photographer unknown. Collection of The Hidden Lane Gallery, Glasgow.
Portrait of Frederick W. Watkins, 1896, photographer unknown. Collection of The Hidden Lane Gallery, Glasgow. Courtesy of The Hidden Lane Gallery.
Postcard of 41 Westbourne Gardens, date unknown. Photographer unknown. Collection of The Hidden Lane Gallery, Glasgow. Courtesy of The Hidden Lane Gallery.
Poster for the film Archive Traces: Margaret Watkins Photographer, poster design by Sarah Dinnick, film directed by Mary O’Connor and Katherine Tweedie, 2022, funded by the Art Gallery of Hamilton and diChroma Photography, Madrid.
Poster for Pressa (World Press Exhibition), Cologne, 1928. Courtesy of thecharnelhouse.org.
Pratt & Watkins store, Hamilton, 1893. Photographer unknown. Baldwin Collection of Canadiana, Toronto Public Library (SOUV_PIC-R-922). Photo credit: Hamilton: The Birmingham of Canada (Hamilton: Times Printing Company, 1893), 122.
Clarence H. White (seated centre) and Gertrude Käsebier (seated right), with students, Summer School of Photography, Five Islands, Maine, c.1913. Photograph by Gertrude L. Brown. Collection of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Prints and Photographs Division (PH – Brown [G]), no. 1 (A size [P&P]). Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
“Take a Kodak with you,” date unknown, by Eastman Kodak Company. Collection of the George Eastman Museum, Rochester (2005.001.03.3.093). Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum.
Untitled (Anna Romana Wright reading by candlelight), c.1795, by Joseph Wright of Derby. Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Gift of Alina Cade in memory of her husband Joseph Wright Cade, 2009 (2009.562). Courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria. Photo credit: Digitisation Champion Ms. Carol Grigor, Metal Manufactures Limited.
Untitled [Two women under a tree], c.1910, by Alice M. Boughton. Collection of the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, Purchase (1973.0023.0005). Courtesy of the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., on flickr.com.
Mary O’Connor is Professor Emerita in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. Learn More
More Online Art Books
Read online or download the ACI’s incredible library of art books for free in French and English. Learn More
Read from Beginning
Margaret Watkins (1884–1969) lived in relative obscurity in Glasgow for her last decades; but she is now recognized as a pioneering modernist photographer. Learn More
About the Author
More Online Art Books
Read from Beginning