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‘More Beautiful than Words & Pencil Can Express’: Barbara Bodichon's Artistic Career at the Interface of her Epistolary and Visual Self Projections

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1827–1891) was a mid-Victorian watercolour painter and one of the leaders of the women’s movement in England. This article problematises the construction of historical knowledge about Bodichon via an examination of her artistic career through her letters and paintings. Conceived as an alternative to empirical readings of primary sources, it teases out the mediated nature of epistolary and visual narratives. By focusing on two examples of first-person documentation, it addresses the epistemological question of what historical knowledge about Bodichon’s artistic career we can gain through her letters and paintings. Ultimately, this article claims their significance as insightful sources of historical knowledge despite their partial, perspectival and mediated ontology. In an attempt to make the most of the (very often scarce) primary sources available, biographers make use of a combination of records to provide the most comprehensive analysis of historical figures. Memoirs, personal correspondence, contemporary newspapers and official documents are among the most frequently used historical evidence. Bodichon’s life is documented from first-, secondand third-person perspectival texts. Her letters, paintings and publications are articulations of her subjectivity. Letters written to her reveal how Bodichon was perceived and addressed by her correspondents and display a second-person dimension of her identity. Letters exchanged among acquaintances referring to her, newspaper reviews commenting on her feminist and artistic endeavours, as well as official records provide additional layers of information about her. Each of these types of primary source is a genre, with its own regulatory codes