Photograph of Eva Barrett (source unknown)

To celebrate International Women’s Day this month at Bishop’s Stortford Museum, we would like to shine a light on the work of several notable Bishop’s Stortford women! Make sure to keep an eye out for a new blog post each week during the month of March.

Eva Elbourn Barrett:

Alfred Barrett’s wife, Eliza Ann, was the only daughter of Mr and Mrs Charles Dodd, Mr Dodd being a partner in the North Street grocery and clothing store Dodd & Burls before it was sold to William Holland and Alfred to become Holland & Barrett. Living at Chantry Villa, Alfred and Eliza Ann had ten children – three girls and seven boys – the eldest son, Alfred, being killed in action in France. Of their daughters, Eva became a photographer and lived in Rome, and Elsie May later became the first woman Chairman of the local Urban District Council.

Eva Elbourn Barrett (1879–1950) was born in Bishop’s Stortford in 1879. Early on in life she wanted to become a painter but was unhappy with the quality of her work and began to study photography believing that it was “better to be a first-rate photographer than a second-rate painter”. She moved to Rome and, in the 1920s and 1930s, became well known as a photographer of the Italian royal family, Italian nobility, foreign ambassadors, and members of other European royal families and their children.

Photograph taken by Eva Barrett of Princess Anne of Aosta (Princess Anne of Orléans – Wikipedia)

With only a small half-plate camera, she created her own photographic method that resembled hand-drawn sketches, developing a personal version of the so-called “pastel portraiture“. She achieved her effect by retouching the photograph with a few very light pencil strokes, managing to create subdued images but with particularly dense blacks, thus maintaining the characteristics of photography and portraiture. Her slogan was: “Your friends can buy everything you can give them except your photograph”.

She died on 20 August 1950, and her obituary featured on the front pages of newspapers worldwide.

For more information about the Barrett family, please follow the link below:

Boardmans -Bishop’s Stortford and Thorley – A History and Guide