{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} thumb|Margaret Watkins by Frances Bode, 1921 '''Margaret Watkins''' (1884–1969) was a Canadian photographer who is remembered for her innovative contributions to advertising photography.<ref name=rmg >[http://www.robertmann.com/artists/watkins/about.html "Margaret Watkins"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121010054606/http://www.robertmann.com/artists/watkins/about.html |date=2012-10-10 }}, Robert Mann Gallery. Retrieved 17 March 2013.</ref> She was also a pioneering modernist photographer; her still-life images of household objects arranged in compositions influenced by abstract art were highly innovative and influential.<ref name=":2 " >{{Cite book |last=O'Connor |first=Mary |url=https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/margaret-watkins/biography/ |title=Margaret Watkins: Life & Work |publisher=Art Canada Institute |year=2024 |isbn=978-1-4871-0330-9 |location=Toronto}}</ref>
She lived a life of rebellion, rejection of tradition, and individual heroism; she never married, she was a successful career woman in a time when women stayed at home, and she exhibited eroticism and feminism in her art and writing.<ref name=":1 " >{{Cite web|url=http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Margaret+Watkins,+photographer%253A+seduced+by+the+modern.-a0182932263|title=Margaret Watkins, photographer: seduced by the modern. - Free Online Library|website=www.thefreelibrary.com|access-date=2016-06-26|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160812204114/http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Margaret+Watkins,+photographer%253A+seduced+by+the+modern.-a0182932263|archive-date=2016-08-12|url-status=live}}</ref>
==Early life== The daughter of an Ontario businessman and his Scottish wife, Watkins was born in Hamilton, Ontario on November 8, 1884.<ref name=NGC >{{cite web|url=http://www.gallery.ca/en/see/collections/artist.php?iartistid=5798|title=Margaret Watkins|publisher=National Gallery of Canada|accessdate=14 October 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131017173516/http://www.gallery.ca/en/see/collections/artist.php?iartistid=5798|archive-date=17 October 2013|url-status=live}}</ref> Growing up, Watkins exhibited a keen eye for design and craftsmanship, and by age 15 she was selling her own crafts in her father's department store. She also played piano and sang in the Centenary Methodist Church Choir. In 1908 Watkins left home to work at the Roycroft Arts and Crafts community and Sidney Lanier Camp. It was at these two rural utopian communities in northeast United States where she would start to learn photography.<ref name=":0 " >{{Cite web|url=http://www.ngcmagazine.ca/exhibitions/margaret-watkins-of-sight-and-sound|title=Margaret Watkins: Of Sight and Sound|website=www.ngcmagazine.ca|access-date=2016-06-26|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160708210039/http://www.ngcmagazine.ca/exhibitions/margaret-watkins-of-sight-and-sound|archive-date=2016-07-08|url-status=live}}</ref>
In 1913, she moved to Boston, where she worked as an assistant in a commercial photography studio.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Seduced by modernity the photography of Margaret Watkins|last1=O'Connor|first1=Mary Elizabeth|last2=Tweedie|first2=Katherine|publisher=McGill-Queen's University Press|year=2007|isbn=9780773575660|location=Montreal|pages=45}}</ref> Outside of her photography job, she wrote poetry and sang Mendelssohn and Wagner with the Temple Israel Choir. Later she landed a job with photographer Alice Boughton, in New York and she began studying with Clarence H. White at his schools in New York and Maine,<ref name=":0 " /> where Alfred Stieglitz was one of the instructors.<ref name="parsons " >{{cite book |last1=Parsons |first1=Sarah |title=article, Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Movement |date=2021 |publisher=McMichael Canadian Art Collection |location=Kleinburg, Ontario |page=197|url=https://ago.ent.sirsidynix.net/client/en_GB/agolibrary/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fSD_ILS$002f0$002fSD_ILS:135543/ada?qu=sarah+milroy&d=ent%3A%2F%2FSD_ILS%2F0%2FSD_ILS%3A135543%7EILS%7E10&te=ILS&lm=EXCLUDERARE |access-date=4 September 2023}}</ref> Her courses at the Clarence H. White Summer School of Photography in Maine, was where her interest in photography was solidified and later on she would teach there.<ref name="ngc " >[http://www.gallery.ca/en/about/1356.php Lori Pauli, "Margaret Watkins: Domestic Symphonies. National Gallery of Canada presents first major retrospective of this Canadian photographer’s work"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130203131240/http://www.gallery.ca/en/about/1356.php |date=2013-02-03 }}, National Gallery of Canada, 3 October 2012.</ref>
==Career== thumb|Margaret Watkins: ''The Kitchen Sink'', 1919 Watkins opened a studio in Greenwich Village, New York City, and in 1920 became editor of the annual publication ''Pictorial Photography in America''. She worked successfully as an advertising photographer for Macy's and the J. Walter Thompson Company and Fairfax, becoming one of the first women photographers to contribute to advertising agencies. She also produced landscapes, portraits, nudes and still lifes. Her portrait subjects included many figures from the art world of New York of the time, including Sergei Rachmaninov, Ezra Winter, and Kenneth Hayes Miller.<ref name=":2 " /> While teaching at the Clarence White school from 1916 to 1928, her students included Margaret Bourke-White, Laura Gilpin, Paul Outerbridge, Ralph Steiner and Doris Ulmann.<ref name=cwa >[http://cwahi.concordia.ca/sources/artists/displayArtist.php?ID_artist=5610 "Watkins, Margaret"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130613172928/http://cwahi.concordia.ca/sources/artists/displayArtist.php?ID_artist=5610 |date=2013-06-13 }}, Canadian Women Artists History Initiative. Retrieved 17 March 2013.</ref>
One of the earliest art photographers in advertising, her images of everyday objects set new standards of acceptability. In 1928, Watkins embarked on a planned three-month holiday to Europe, which ended with her moving permanently to Glasgow, Scotland to care for three ailing aunts.<ref name=":2 " /> From 1928, when she was based in Glasgow, she embarked on street photography in Russia, Germany and France, specializing in store fronts and displays.<ref name=rmg /><ref name=ngc /> She died in Glasgow in 1969,<ref name="NGC " /> largely forgotten as a photographer.
==Legacy== Watkins' legacy exists in her exemplary work left behind, but also her example as an independent, successful woman. The ''Queen's Quarterly'' suggests her life is an inspiration for single women, who are fulfilled by their careers, rather than the traditional gender roles women face of fulfillment through marrying and having children.<ref name=":1 " />
Before she died, Watkins handed over a sealed box of all her work to her neighbor and executor of her will, Joseph Mulholland.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Anon |title=In pictures: The hidden world of Margaret Watkins |work=The Scotsman |date=27 November 2009}}</ref> She gave him strict instructions not open it until after she died.<ref name=":0 " /> Though it took more than a decade, several solo exhibitions were subsequently held in Britain and North America, most notably the Light Gallery in New York (1984).<ref name="rmg " /><ref name="cwa " /> When she died in November 1969, she left most of her estate to music charities.<ref name=":0 " />
In October 2012, a retrospective exhibition of Margaret Watkins' work titled "Domestic Symphonies" opened at the National Gallery of Canada.<ref name=ngc /> This exhibition showcased 95 of her photographs dating from 1914 to 1939, including portraits, landscapes, modern still lifes, street scenes, advertising work, and commercial designs. Music was a vital inspiration for Watkins, as can be seen from the title of the exhibition.<ref name=":0 " />
A stamp depicting Watkins' photograph, ''The Kitchen Sink'' was issued on March 22, 2013 by Canada Post as part of their Canadian Photography series. The image is a still life of a sink with dishes.<ref>{{cite web|title=New photography stamp series gives an appreciation of Canada's best |url=http://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/aboutus/news/pr/2013/2013_canadian_photography.jsf |publisher=Canada Post |accessdate=14 October 2013 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20131017015608/http://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/aboutus/news/pr/2013/2013_canadian_photography.jsf |archivedate=17 October 2013 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Canadian Photography |url=http://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/personal/collecting/stamps/2013/2013_mar_photography.jsf |publisher=Canada Post |accessdate=14 October 2013 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20131017025736/http://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/personal/collecting/stamps/2013/2013_mar_photography.jsf |archivedate=17 October 2013 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Photographer Margaret Watkins honoured with Canada Post stamp|work=BBC News |date=21 March 2013 |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-21885274|accessdate=2 February 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140802091819/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-21885274|archive-date=2 August 2014|url-status=live}}</ref>
In 2021, one hundred and fifty of her photographs were included in the PhotoEspana exhibition in Madrid, Spain<ref>{{Cite news|date=2021-08-12|title=A fresh angle: The revolutionary gaze of Margaret Watkins – in pictures|language=en-GB|work=The Guardian|url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2021/aug/12/a-fresh-angle-the-revolutionary-gaze-of-margaret-watkins-in-pictures|access-date=2021-08-12|issn=0261-3077}}</ref> and in November 2022 her work featured in the GLEAN exhibition at Edinburgh's City Art Centre of 14 early women photographers working in Scotland.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Stephen |first=Phyllis |date=2022-11-10 |title=At the City Art Centre – Glean – an exhibition of films and photographs |url=https://theedinburghreporter.co.uk/2022/11/at-the-city-art-centre-glean-an-exhibition-of-films-and-photographs/ |access-date=2022-11-19 |website=The Edinburgh Reporter |language=en-US}}</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== *''[https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/margaret-watkins/ Margaret Watkins: Life & Work]'' by Mary O'Connor, published by the Art Canada Institute *[https://web.archive.org/web/20140114164845/http://www.robertmann.com/artists/watkins/image_01.html Examples of Margaret Watkins' work from Robert Mann Gallery] *[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28015/28015-h/28015-h.html Pictorial Photography in America 1920]
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Watkins, Margaret}} Category:1884 births Category:1969 deaths Category:20th-century Canadian women photographers Category:Artists from Hamilton, Ontario Category:Photographers from Glasgow Category:Canadian people of Scottish descent Category:20th-century Canadian photographers