Untitled (watercolor drawing, loose in album, once glued over an albumen silver print of Lady Mary Filmer (P1982.359.7B) mounted to page with metallic paint decoration with inscription) 1862 - 1888

Curator: This untitled watercolor by Mary Georgiana Caroline Cecil Filmer is mounted in an album page, overlaid on an earlier photograph. The year "1862" is inscribed beneath. My first impression is how small it is, a vignette of daily life. Editor: The woman with the green umbrella immediately strikes me as an emblem of bourgeois domesticity, a figure of contained respectability. The umbrella itself seems almost like a shield. Curator: The album format suggests a personal, almost intimate context. Albums were, after all, spaces to collect memories and to curate a personal narrative through images and keepsakes. Editor: True, and what materials! Watercolor delicately layered over a photograph, metallic paint decoration, inscription. What's the labor embedded in this arrangement? It seems a careful construction of social identity. Curator: I see the green umbrella as more than protection; it’s a vibrant, verdant pop of color, a symbol of hope and renewal against the backdrop of a likely dreary English day. Editor: I see the materials as performative; they tell a story of careful arrangement and reveal the artist's investment in the image. Curator: Indeed, together the image and the album format speak to how personal history and social identity are intertwined. Editor: A small watercolor indeed, yet it holds an entire social world.