Georgiana Houghton was a spiritual artist whose extraordinary, abstract drawings emerged not from the conventions of 19th-century art, but from a deep engagement with spirit communication and divine inspiration. Long before abstraction was formally recognised in the art world, Houghton was producing vibrant, intricate compositions that she believed were guided by spirits, angels, and deceased artists. Her work was not art in the traditional sense—it was a sacred record, a visual trace of her connection with the spiritual realm.
Born in 1814 in Las Palmas, Canary Islands, and raised in England, Houghton came of age during a time when spiritualism was rapidly gaining popularity across Europe. She became involved in the movement in the 1850s and quickly developed a practice of mediumship that focused not only on automatic writing and spirit communication, but also on drawing. What makes Houghton remarkable is that she channelled these energies into an intensely visual form, producing hundreds of watercolours that she claimed were directed by divine and spiritual forces.
Her technique was highly unusual for her time. Working mainly in watercolour and coloured pencils, she created swirling, layered compositions that appear startlingly modern—filled with curving lines, vibrant colour fields, and organic forms. These works bore no resemblance to conventional Victorian art or the spiritualist portraiture common in séances. Instead, they were pure abstraction, rooted in a belief that colours and forms could express spiritual truths beyond language or figuration.
Houghton described her drawings as “spirit drawings,” often naming the spiritual entities she claimed were responsible for each piece. These included not only angels and biblical figures, but also the spirits of great painters such as Titian and Correggio, whom she believed were helping her to create these works from beyond the grave. She saw her role not as a creative individual, but as a medium—a vessel for divine expression.
Her spiritual framework was complex, blending Christianity, spiritualist doctrine, and a personal belief in the ability of colours and shapes to transmit sacred meaning. She often annotated the backs of her works with detailed descriptions of their spiritual significance, including the identity of the guiding spirit and the symbolic function of each colour and form. In her view, art could serve as a kind of visual scripture, opening a pathway to the invisible realms.
In 1871, Houghton courageously organised an exhibition of her spirit drawings in London, titled Spirit Drawings in Water Colours, presenting 155 works. Though the exhibition baffled and unsettled many visitors at the time, it now stands as a landmark moment in the history of abstract and visionary art.
For many decades, her work was forgotten or dismissed, but recent reevaluation has placed her at the forefront of a lineage of spiritual abstraction that includes Hilma af Klint and Emma Kunz. Unlike these later artists, however, Houghton worked in a time when women were even more severely marginalised in the art world—and in society at large—making her achievements all the more astonishing.
Georgiana Houghton’s art is not about visual pleasure or formal innovation; it is about divine encounter. Her work reminds us that abstraction can emerge not from theory or rebellion, but from reverence—from a need to give form to the formless, to translate the language of spirit into lines, colours, and rhythm. Her legacy is that of a quiet but radical visionary, who saw beyond the world and had the courage to show what she found.
