Henry Havelock Ellis
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Henry Havelock Ellis
by E.O. Hoppé
Vintage bromide print, 1922
8 in. x 6 in. (202 mm x 152 mm) overall
NPG P240
Inscriptionback to top
Signed in ink, lower left corner: ‘E.O. Hoppé’;
inscr. lower centre with sitter’s partially abraded signature.
On reverse photographer’s copyright stamp.
This portraitback to top
‘To be photographed by Hoppé signified achievement.’ [1] By the same token, celebrity sitters endorsed Hoppé’s status as a photographer during the 1920s. In this period, Ellis was famous for his frankness regarding sexuality, rather like George Bernard Shaw, another of Hoppé’s contemporary sitters, and he continued to write on sexual and personal relationships; notable among his works were an essay entitled ‘The Erotic Rights of Women’ (1918) and the popular book The Dance of Life (1923). He also possessed striking features, especially in profile, which made him an appealing subject for portraitists. From 1918 Ellis shared his life with Françoise Lafitte-Cyon, also known as Delisle (1886–1974). She was the separated wife of a Russian journalist, and the mother of two boys. They enjoyed holiday trips together in Britain and France; in her company Ellis, now over 60, ‘seemed to have forgotten his age’. [2]
According to the photographer’s records, the sitting took place in London on 17 August 1922, which was shortly after Ellis returned from a holiday in France curtailed by poor weather. Around this time, according to the recollection of a later biographer, Ellis’s most striking feature was his hair: ‘so alive and smooth and silky, so healthy, so extraordinarily thick’.[3] This is one of four poses, two others being close-up profiles to the right at slightly different angles and the last a half-length shot, profile to left, leaning back in a chair with hands clasped on lap.
Domiciled in Britain from 1902, Emil Otto (‘E.O.’) Hoppé was one of the most important art and documentary photographers of the modern era, whose artistic success rivalled those of his peers Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946), Edward Steichen and Walker Evans. Beginning art photography in 1903, Hoppé became a member of the Royal Photographic Society, where he exhibited his amateur works; he was also associated with the Linked Ring Brotherhood and fellow members Alvin Langdon Coburn, Henry Peach Robinson and George Davidson (1854–1930), through whom he maintained ties with continental and American groups including the Vienna Camera Club and the Photo Secession, New York. His strikingly modernist portraits describe a virtual Who’s Who of important personalities in the arts, literature and politics in Great Britain and the US in the 1920s and 1930s.
Hoppé’s London studio was at 7 Cromwell Place, whose previous residents included Sir John Everett Millais. At the beginning of 1922, his exhibition New Camera Work at the Goupil Gallery, featuring 221 prints, had been described thus by The Times:
It is intended to show what artistic pictures can be obtained from photography pure and simple, without any manipulation of the plates … There are portraits of men of note, in which Mr Hoppé claims to have secured, by a method of his own, the expression of the mind and character on the face … In conversation with a representative of The Times, Mr. Hoppé said: ‘I consider it futile to force a comparison between painting and photography. The two have nothing in common. To me it is a sign of weakness for photographers to try, as is often done to-day, by manipulating the various processes of photography, to obtain ultimate results resembling the products of some other form of art, such as charcoal drawing or etching. It is not after but before and while he makes his exposure that the true photographer conceives and invents. By using imagination in the control of the prosaic mechanism of the camera[,] photography can be made an unrivalled medium for the expression of character and psychological subtleties. Therefore, while I do not pretend that photography will ever displace painting or drawing, I foresee a time when it will be used, just as painting and drawing, without dissimulation or undue boosting or humility.’ [4]
This exhibition is regarded as the ‘turning-point’ in Hoppé’s career. [5]
It is not known why or how Hoppé approached Ellis, but both men shared a socio-political interest in personality ‘types’ as well as ‘psychological subtleties’ and an implicit admiration for ‘exceptional’ individuals; in addition Hoppé was fascinated by the ‘various distinctive types which one used to see in London streets’ and would accost any ‘interesting characters’ he observed.[6] His output thus included anonymous as well as eminent sitters. Taken against neutral backgrounds, the portraits were cropped to the head or bust to remove details of clothing, while the lighting, usually from above (as here), tended to ennoble the sitters’ appearance whilst subsuming their individual personalities.
An autograph print of this image is in Havelock Ellis Papers, British Library, Add MS 70566, f.54, signed on print lower right. Other vintage prints are in the Hulton-Deutsch Archive (Getty Images 3164297, where attributed to the Evening Standard and dated 29 March 1929, presumably when reproduced by that newspaper); and the Granger Collection, New York, 0017669.
Two prints of a virtually identical but reversed shot (profile to right), signed on print lower right, are in the Havelock Ellis Papers, British Library:
(a) Add MS 70566, f.50, on reverse Hoppé studio stamp ‘Millais House’, plus inscr. ‘76 or 77 years’.
(b) Add MS 70566, f.51, on reverse Hoppé studio label ‘59 Baker St / No 15727’.
Dr Jan Marsh
Footnotesback to top
1) Prodger & Pepper 2011, p.13.
2) Grosskurth 1980, p.303.
3) Collis 1959, p.84
4) ‘The Camera’s True Place’, The Times, 4 Jan. 1922, p.8.
5) Prodger & Pepper 2011, p.35.
6) Prodger & Pepper 2011, p.35.
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