[Cavorting by the Pool at Garsington]

Lady Ottoline Violet Anne Cavendish-Bentinck Morrell

ca. 1916 · Gelatin silver prints · Photographs

Rebelling against the narrow values of upper-class Edwardian society, Lady Ottoline Morrell, an eccentric hostess to Bloomsbury, surrounded herself in London and on her estate at Garsington with a large circle of friends including Bertrand Russell, W. B. Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, and E. M. Forster. These images of an improvised dance show Lady Ottoline’s ten-year-old daughter, Julian, and her slightly older companions embroiled in a naked whirl, pagan in its exuberance, that reflects the emancipated attitudes of the photographer’s circle.

Artist

Lady Ottoline Violet Anne Cavendish-Bentinck Morrell

Date

ca. 1916

Medium

Gelatin silver prints

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gilman Collection, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2005