Lettice Ramsey

Lettice Cautley Baker was born on 2 August 1898 in Guildford, Surrey, England. Her father Cecil was a surveyor and her mother Frances (née Davies-Colley) was a painter, trained at the Slade.{{cite book|last1=Kennedy|first1=S. B.|last2=Henry|first2=Paul|title=Paul Henry: With a Catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings, Illustrations|date=2007|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0300117127|page=314|quote=Frances Baker (1873-1944).}} The Baker family moved to County Sligo, Ireland, soon after Lettice's birth, where Cecil Baker had leased rights to oyster farming in the estuary near Rosses Point.{{Cite book| author = Great Britain; Parliament; House of Commons| title = Sessional papers. Inventory control record 1| date = 1903}} Ramsey's father died when she was a small child; her mother remarried in 1915. She attended Bedales, then Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied philosophy.{{cite news|title=Lettice Ramsey|work=Times|date=30 July 1985}} After working for a brief time in vocational guidance in London, she returned to Cambridge to work in the Psychology Library.{{cite web|last1=Smith|first1=Charles Saumarez|title=Lettice Ramsey|url=https://charlessaumarezsmith.com/2016/04/19/lettice-ramsey/|website=charlessaumarezsmith.com|accessdate=12 February 2018|date=19 April 2016}} In 1925, she married mathematician Frank P. Ramsey, and they had two daughters before his early death in 1930 from liver disease.

To support her family, Ramsey took a photography course at Regent Street Polytechnic. Introduced to photographer Helen Muspratt by artist F. H. "Fra" Newbery, the two women opened a studio together in Cambridge in 1932.{{cite news|last1=Marsh|first1=Jan|title=Helen Muspratt (obituary)|url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/aug/11/guardianobituaries|accessdate=7 February 2018|work=The Guardian|date=10 August 2001}}

Lettice Ramsey died on 12 July 1985 in Cambridge, England.

The photography studio, Ramsey & Muspratt, was a successful commercial venture, and the pair photographed influential social, academic, and artistic figures in Cambridge throughout the 1930s.{{cite news|title=Lettice Ramsey|work=Cambridge Evening News|date=18 July 1985}} Muspratt moved to Oxford in 1937 and opened a second studio there; Ramsey maintained the studio in Cambridge, and both retained the Ramsey & Muspratt studio name. They remained close throughout their lives.{{cite news|last1=Moorhead|first1=Joanna|title=Helen Muspratt: The woman who photographed the Cambridge spies|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/helen-muspratt-the-woman-who-photographed-the-cambridge-spies-a6925736.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220614/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/helen-muspratt-the-woman-who-photographed-the-cambridge-spies-a6925736.html |archive-date=14 June 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|work=Independent|date=12 March 2016}} In the 1930s, the Ramsey & Muspratt studio was noted for using the solarization process in some portrait work;{{cite news|title=Notice|work=Cambridge Daily News|date=25 October 1935}}{{citation needed|date=February 2018}} two of the firm's photographs were accepted in the London Salon of Photography in both 1936 and 1937.{{cite web|title=Cambridgeshire Photographers|url=http://www.fadingimages.uk/photoRa.asp|website=FadingImages|accessdate=7 February 2018}} While Ramsey's Cambridge work was primarily portraiture, she photographed on her travels, including Russia in 1933, an around-the-world trip in 1948, and later travel to Nepal, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Mexico. She visited Cambodia in the late 1960s.{{cite news|last1=Payne|first1=Sara|title=Cambridge's own first lady|work=The Times|date=c. 1969}}{{citation needed|date=February 2018}}

Fourteen of Ramsey's portraits of the Bloomsbury Group were published in a calendar by the Charleston Trust in 1990.{{cite book|last1=Miles|first1=Philip|title=Bloomsbury Portraits by Lettice Ramsey|date=1989|publisher=The Charleston Trust}} In 2012–2013, the National Portrait Gallery, London presented an exhibition of Ramsey & Muspratt work exploring Ramsey's friendship with the Bloomsbury Group poet Julian Bell.{{cite web|title=The Bloomsbury Poet & The Cambridge Photographer: Julian Bell & Lettice Ramsey|website=National Portrait Gallery|url=https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/display/2012/the-bloomsbury-poet-the-cambridge-photographer-julian-bell-lettice-ramsey.php|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20180222162956/https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/display/2012/the-bloomsbury-poet-the-cambridge-photographer-julian-bell-lettice-ramsey.php|archivedate=22 February 2018}}

Ramsey retired in 1978.

{{Reflist}}

• [http://www.stephenburch.com/lettice/letticephotos.htm Lettice Ramsey photos], Stephen Burch's Birding & Dragonfly Website.
• [https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/lettice-ramsey-nee-baker-228387 Portrait of Lettice Ramsey née Baker], by Frances Baker, Newnham College, University of Cambridge.
• [http://www.fadingimages.uk/RMCompleteV1.pdf Ramsey and Muspratt, Photographers, Cambridge]. An Analysis of Desk Diaries from the Early Years of the Firm (1932-1935).
• [https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp105218/lettice-cautley-ramsey-ne-baker Lettice Cautley Ramsey (née Baker)], National Portrait Gallery.

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Category:1898 births

Category:1985 deaths

Category:20th-century British photographers

Category:20th-century English people

Category:20th-century English women

Category:20th-century British women photographers

Category:Artists from County Sligo

Category:English women photographers

Category:Photographers from Cambridgeshire

Category:Photographers from Guildford

Category:Women film pioneers

Category:Ramsey family

Category:People educated at Bedales School