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Life changed dramatically for the family after the
death of Maude’s father in 1856, at which time he
inherited the large family estate Dundrum in County
Tipperary, Ireland and ascended to the rank of 4th Vis-
count Hawarden. Now secure in the ranks of the Britain’s
wealthiest landowners, the family moved to Dundrum
in 1857 where the time, money and space afforded by
their new position in society relieved Hawarden from
many of her domestic duties and allowed her to begin
taking photographs.
Hawarden’s earliest photographs were landscape
views of the grounds at Dundrum, portraits of the
estate’s laborers and costume pieces of family members
posed as laborers taken with a stereoscopic camera. For
the most part, these early pieces are artistically deriva-
tive and were not exhibited during her lifetime, yet they
demonstrate Hawarden’s knowledge of both art history
and modes of art photography. The depictions of labor-
ers at Dundrum, posing with their gardening and farm
implements recall earthy Dutch baroque genre paintings
and the costume pieces that artifi cially echo these more
naturalistic photographs are reminiscent of Thomas
Gainsborough’s eighteenth-century fancy pictures as
well as contemporary Henry Peach Robinson’s ambi-
tiously contrived narrative tableaux. From the beginning,
then, Hawarden positioned herself within the second
generation of amateur art photographers including such
fi gures as Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)
and Julia Margaret Cameron.
In 1859 the family took up residence at 5 Princes
Garden in the South Kensington section of London. It
is in this house that Hawarden spent the remainder of
her short life and developed her mature photographic
style, converting the second fl oor of the house, withHAWWARDEN, VISCOUNTESS CLEMENTINA ELPHINSTONE
Hawarden, Lady Clementia.
Photographic Study.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Gilman Collection, Purchase,
Harriette and Noel Levine Gift,
2005 (2005.100.23) Image © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art.