Lettice Ramsey
Lettice Ramsey | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Lettice Ramsey by PAL Brunney, c.1970 | |
| Born | 2 August 1898 Guildford, Surrey, England |
| Died | 12 July 1985 (aged 86) Cambridge, United Kingdom |
| Alma mater | Newnham College, Cambridge |
| Known for | photography |
| Spouse | Frank P. Ramsey |
Lettice Ramsey (2 August 1898 – 12 July 1985) was a British photographer.
Life
[edit]Lettice Cautley Baker was born on 2 August 1898 in Guildford, Surrey, England. Her father Cecil was a surveyor and her mother Frances (née Davies-Colley) was a painter, trained at the Slade.[1] The Baker family moved to County Sligo, Ireland, soon after Lettice's birth, where Cecil Baker had leased rights to oyster farming in the estuary near Rosses Point.[2] Ramsey's father died when she was a small child; her mother remarried in 1915.[1] She attended Bedales, then Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied philosophy.[3] After working for a brief time in vocational guidance in London, she returned to Cambridge to work in the Psychology Library.[4] In 1925, she married mathematician Frank P. Ramsey, and they had two daughters before his early death in 1930 from liver disease.[3]
To support her family, Ramsey took a photography course at Regent Street Polytechnic.[3] Introduced to photographer Helen Muspratt by artist F. H. "Fra" Newbery, the two women opened a studio together in Cambridge in 1932.[5]
Lettice Ramsey died on 12 July 1985 in Cambridge, England.
Work
[edit]The photography studio, Ramsey & Muspratt, was a successful commercial venture, and the pair photographed influential social, academic, and artistic figures in Cambridge throughout the 1930s.[6] Muspratt moved to Oxford in 1937 and opened a second studio there; Ramsey maintained the studio in Cambridge, and both retained the Ramsey & Muspratt studio name. They remained close throughout their lives.[7] In the 1930s, the Ramsey & Muspratt studio was noted for using the solarization process in some portrait work;[8][citation needed] two of the firm's photographs were accepted in the London Salon of Photography in both 1936 and 1937.[9] While Ramsey's Cambridge work was primarily portraiture, she photographed on her travels, including Russia in 1933, an around-the-world trip in 1948, and later travel to Nepal, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Mexico. She visited Cambodia in the late 1960s.[10][citation needed]
Fourteen of Ramsey's portraits of the Bloomsbury Group were published in a calendar by the Charleston Trust in 1990.[11] In 2012–2013, the National Portrait Gallery, London presented an exhibition of Ramsey & Muspratt work exploring Ramsey's friendship with the Bloomsbury Group poet Julian Bell.[12]
Ramsey retired in 1978.
References
[edit]- ^ a b Kennedy, S. B.; Henry, Paul (2007). Paul Henry: With a Catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings, Illustrations. Yale University Press. p. 314. ISBN 978-0300117127.
Frances Baker (1873-1944).
- ^ Great Britain; Parliament; House of Commons (1903). Sessional papers. Inventory control record 1.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ a b c "Lettice Ramsey". Times. 30 July 1985.
- ^ Smith, Charles Saumarez (19 April 2016). "Lettice Ramsey". charlessaumarezsmith.com. Retrieved 12 February 2018.
- ^ Marsh, Jan (10 August 2001). "Helen Muspratt (obituary)". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
- ^ "Lettice Ramsey". Cambridge Evening News. 18 July 1985.
- ^ Moorhead, Joanna (12 March 2016). "Helen Muspratt: The woman who photographed the Cambridge spies". Independent. Archived from the original on 14 June 2022.
- ^ "Notice". Cambridge Daily News. 25 October 1935.
- ^ "Cambridgeshire Photographers". FadingImages. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
- ^ Payne, Sara (c. 1969). "Cambridge's own first lady". The Times.
- ^ Miles, Philip (1989). Bloomsbury Portraits by Lettice Ramsey. The Charleston Trust.
- ^ "The Bloomsbury Poet & The Cambridge Photographer: Julian Bell & Lettice Ramsey". National Portrait Gallery. Archived from the original on 22 February 2018.
External links
[edit]- Lettice Ramsey photos, Stephen Burch's Birding & Dragonfly Website.
- Portrait of Lettice Ramsey née Baker, by Frances Baker, Newnham College, University of Cambridge.
- Ramsey and Muspratt, Photographers, Cambridge. An Analysis of Desk Diaries from the Early Years of the Firm (1932-1935).
- Lettice Cautley Ramsey (née Baker), National Portrait Gallery.
- 1898 births
- 1985 deaths
- 20th-century British photographers
- 20th-century English people
- 20th-century English women
- 20th-century British women photographers
- Artists from County Sligo
- English women photographers
- Photographers from Cambridgeshire
- Photographers from Guildford
- Women film pioneers
- Ramsey family
- People educated at Bedales School