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Lettice Ramsey

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Lettice Ramsey
Photographer Lettice Ramsey
Portrait of Lettice Ramsey by PAL Brunney, c.1970
Born2 August 1898
Guildford, Surrey, England
Died12 July 1985(1985-07-12) (aged 86)
Cambridge, United Kingdom
Alma materNewnham College, Cambridge
Known forphotography
SpouseFrank P. Ramsey

Lettice Ramsey (2 August 1898 – 12 July 1985) was a British photographer.

Life

Lettice Cautley Ramsey (née 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

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

  1. ^ 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).
  2. ^ Great Britain; Parliament; House of Commons (1903). Sessional papers. Inventory control record 1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ a b c "Lettice Ramsey". Times. 30 July 1985.
  4. ^ Smith, Charles Saumarez (19 April 2016). "Lettice Ramsey". charlessaumarezsmith.com. Retrieved 12 February 2018.
  5. ^ Marsh, Jan (10 August 2001). "Helen Muspratt (obituary)". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
  6. ^ "Lettice Ramsey". Cambridge Evening News. 18 July 1985.
  7. ^ Moorhead, Joanna (12 March 2016). "Helen Muspratt: The woman who photographed the Cambridge spies". Independent. Archived from the original on 14 June 2022.
  8. ^ "Notice". Cambridge Daily News. 25 October 1935.
  9. ^ "Cambridgeshire Photographers". FadingImages. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
  10. ^ Payne, Sara (c. 1969). "Cambridge's own first lady". The Times.
  11. ^ Miles, Philip (1989). Bloomsbury Portraits by Lettice Ramsey. The Charleston Trust.
  12. ^ "The Bloomsbury Poet & The Cambridge Photographer: Julian Bell & Lettice Ramsey". National Portrait Gallery. Archived from the original on 22 February 2018.
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