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Reginald W. Craigie
George Batten
[Die Kunst in der Photographie (Art Folio #5)]
1897
Photogravure-Chine-collé
19.4 x 15.0 cm
Photoseed
Photograph courtesy PhotoSeed.com
LL/15677
Heliographed (Plate) & Printed by: Meisenbach, Riffarth & Co. (Berlin)
Reginald Craigie, who died in 1930, was a member of the British Linked Ring (as were all the photographers represented in Art Folios 5-6 for the year 1897. Craigie, a clerk in the Bank of England, had a chief interest in portrait photography, at which he excelled. "He was both interested in and sympathetic towards people as evidenced in the sincerity inherent in his portrait studies. His sensitive work is characterized by purity and delicacy of tone values and by soft definition. His photographs are "straight" in the sense that they are devoid of manipulation." From 1898 he devoted a great deal of time to the duties of Secretary of both Ring and Salon which he took over from (Alfred) Maskell." source: page #149: The Linked Ring: The Secession in Photography: 1892-1910. By Margaret F. Harker: 1979: A Royal Photographic Society Publication
The subject of this photograph: George Batten, may have been the George Batten married to the former Mabel Veronica Hatch- painted by John Singer Sargent in the same year this photo was published (1897). An online website states that the former Miss Hatch...was the daughter of an upper-class military family, and grew up for a time in India. There she met and married George Batten, an older military officer, and later they moved to London. In 1908 she began a lesbian affair with the author Marguerite Radclyffe Hall. She was a talented amateur mezzo-soprano. Sargent admired her and presented her with this portrait. (http://jssgallery.org/Paintings/Mrs_George_Batten_Singing.htm)
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