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Julia Margaret Cameron (''
née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...
'' Pattle; 11 June 1815 – 26 January 1879) was a British photographer who is considered one of the most important portraitists of the 19th century. She is known for her
soft-focus In photography, soft focus is a lens flaw, in which the lens forms images that are blurred due to spherical aberration. A soft focus lens deliberately introduces spherical aberration in order to give the appearance of blurring the image while ...
close-ups of famous Victorian men and women, for illustrative images depicting characters from mythology, Christianity, and literature, and for sensitive portraits of men, women and children. After establishing herself first among Calcutta's Anglo-Indian upper-class and then among London's cultural elite, Cameron formed her own salon frequented by distinguished Victorians at the seaside village of
Freshwater, Isle of Wight Freshwater is a large village and civil parish at the western end of the Isle of Wight, England. The southern, coastal part of the village is Freshwater Bay, named for the adjacent small cove. Freshwater sits at the western end of ...
. After showing a keen interest in photography for many years, Cameron took up the practice at the relatively late age of 48, after her daughter gave her a camera as a present. She quickly produced a large body of work capturing the genius, beauty, and innocence of the men, women, and children who visited her studio at Freshwater, and created unique allegorical images inspired by tableaux vivants, theatre, 15th-century Italian painters, and the work of her creative contemporaries. Her photography career was short but productive; she made around 900 photographs over a 12-year period. Cameron's work was contentious in her own time. Critics derided her softly focused and unrefined images, and considered her illustrative photographs amateurish and hammy. However, her portraits of respected men (such as Henry Taylor,
Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...
, and
Sir John Herschel Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet (; 7 March 1792 – 11 May 1871) was an English polymath active as a mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor, experimental photographer who invented the blueprint and did botanical wor ...
) have been consistently praised, both in her own life and in reviews of her work since. Her images have been described as "extraordinarily powerful" and "wholly original", and she has been credited with producing the first close-ups in the history of the medium.


Biography


Early life and education

Julia Margaret Cameron was born Julia Margaret Pattle on 11 June 1815, at
Garden Reach Garden Reach is a neighbourhood of the city of Kolkata in West Bengal, India. It is situated in the south-western part of Kolkata near the bank of the Hooghly River.
,
Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...
, India, to Adeline Marie and James Peter Pattle. James Pattle was a successful official from England who worked in India for the
East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...
. His family had been involved with the East India Company for many years, though he traced his line to a 17th-century ancestor living in Chancery Lane, London. Her mother was a French aristocrat and the daughter of Chevalier Ambrose Pierre Antoine de l'Etang, who had been a page to
Marie Antoinette Marie Antoinette Josèphe Jeanne (; ; née Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria, and was the penultimate child a ...
and an officer in the
Garde du Corps A ''Garde du Corps'' (French for lifeguard) is a military unit, formed of guards. A '' Garde du Corps'' was first established in France in 1445. From the 17th century onwards, the term was used in several German states and also, for example, in th ...
of
King Louis XVI Louis XVI (''Louis-Auguste''; ; 23 August 175421 January 1793) was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as ''Citizen Louis Capet'' during the four months just before he was e ...
. When he died he was shipped back to London in a barrel of rum for burial in Camberwell. Julia was the fourth of her parents' children. Three of her parents' children died in infancy. Julia and the six of her six sisters who survived into adulthood had inherited some Bengali blood through their maternal grandmother, Thérèse Josephe Blin de Grincourt. The seven sisters were known for their "charm, wit and beauty" and for being close, outspoken, and unconventional in behaviour and dress. They favoured Indian silks and shawls rather than the demure Victorian attire of other colonial woman. All of the sisters were sent to France as children to be educated, Julia living there with her maternal grandmother in Versaille from 1818 to 1834, after which she returned to India. Julia's sisters all made advantageous matches, Adeline marrying a military man who became a General, Sophia marrying a baronet, Louisa, a High Court Judge while Maria married the distinguished Dr John Jackson, with among their descendants being
Vanessa Bell Vanessa Bell (née Stephen; 30 May 1879 – 7 April 1961) was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf (née Stephen). Early life and education Vanessa Stephen was the eld ...
and
Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...
. Sara married
Henry Prinsep Henry Thoby Prinsep (15 July 1793 – 11 February 1878) was an English official of the Indian Civil Service, and historian of India. In later life he entered politics, and was a significant figure of the cultural circles of London. Early life Pr ...
an administrator with the East India Company, and made their home at Little Holland House in Kensington, England an important intellectual centre. Among their children was Julia's godchild
Julia Stephen Julia, Lady Stephen (born Julia Prinsep Jackson; 7 February 1846 – 5 May 1895) was an English Pre-Raphaelite model and philanthropist. She was the wife of the biographer Leslie Stephen and mother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, members o ...
. Virginia Pattle married Lord Charles Eastnor, later the third Earl Somers. Their eldest daughter was
Lady Isabella Caroline Somers-Cocks Isabella Caroline Somerset, Lady Henry Somerset (née Somers-Cocks; 3 August 1851 – 12 March 1921), styled Lady Isabella Somers-Cocks from 5 October 1852 to 6 February 1872, was a British philanthropist, temperance leader and campaigner for w ...
, the temperance leader, while the younger, Lady Adeline Marie became the Duchess of Bedford.


Marriage and social life


South Africa and Calcutta

In 1835, after suffering several illnesses, Julia visited the
Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope ( af, Kaap die Goeie Hoop ) ;''Kaap'' in isolation: pt, Cabo da Boa Esperança is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is t ...
in South Africa with her parents to recover. It was common for Europeans living in India to visit South Africa to convalesce after an illness. While there, she met the British astronomer and photochemist Sir John Herschel, who was observing the southern celestial hemisphere. She also met Charles Hay Cameron, twenty years her senior and a reformer of Indian law and education who later invested in coffee plantations in what is now
Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
. Charles Hay was also there to convalesce, likely from a virulent
malaria Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. S ...
l fever which often spread during the Indian monsoon season. The illness he suffered caused recurring kidney trouble and diarrhœa for the rest of his life. They were married in Calcutta on 1 February 1838, two years after meeting. In December of that same year, Julia gave birth to their first child; Sir John Herschel was the godfather. Between 1839 and 1852, they had six children, one of whom was adopted. In all, the Camerons raised 11 children, five of her own, five orphaned children of relatives, and an Irish girl named Mary Ryan whom they found begging on Putney Heath and whom Cameron used as a model in her photographs. Their son, Henry Herschel Hay Cameron, would also become a photographer. Through the early 1840s—as the organiser of social engagements for the Governor-General, Lord Hardinge—Cameron became a prominent hostess in Anglo-Indian society. During this time she also corresponded with Herschel about the latest developments in photographic technology. In 1839, Herschel informed Cameron about the invention of photography. In 1842, he sent her two dozen
calotype Calotype or talbotype is an early photographic process introduced in 1841 by William Henry Fox Talbot, using paper coated with silver iodide. Paper texture effects in calotype photography limit the ability of this early process to record low co ...
s and
daguerreotype Daguerreotype (; french: daguerréotype) was the first publicly available photographic process; it was widely used during the 1840s and 1850s. "Daguerreotype" also refers to an image created through this process. Invented by Louis Daguerre an ...
s, the first photographs she ever saw.


England

Perhaps to be closer to their two children, the Camerons retired to England in 1845, where they took part in London's artistic and cultural scene. Julia often visited
Little Holland House Little Holland House was the dower house of Holland House in the parish of Kensington, Middlesex, England. It was situated at the end of Nightingale Lane, now the back entrance to Holland Park and was demolished when Melbury Road was made. Nu ...
in
Kensington Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West End of London, West of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up b ...
, London, where her sister, Sara Prinsep, oversaw a literary and artistic salon "of
Pre-Raphaelite The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James ...
painters, poets, and aristocrats with artistic pretensions". Here, she met many of the well-known subjects of her later portraits, including Henry Taylor and
Alfred Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...
.
Daphne du Maurier Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, (; 13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989) was an English novelist, biographer and playwright. Her parents were actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and his wife, actress Muriel Beaumont. Her grandfather was Geor ...
describes the scene:
The nobilitee, the gentree, the litherathure, polithics and art of the counthree, by jasus! It's a nest of proraphaelites, where Hunt, Millais, Rossetti, Watts, Leighton etc, Tennyson, the Brownings and Thackeray etc and tutti quanti receive dinners and incense, and cups of tea handed to them by these women almost kneeling.
Benjamin Jowett Benjamin Jowett (, modern variant ; 15 April 1817 – 1 October 1893) was an English tutor and administrative reformer in the University of Oxford, a theologian, an Anglican cleric, and a translator of Plato and Thucydides. He was Master of Bal ...
echoed this when describing Cameron's reverence to these creative personalities after a later visit to the same salon-like atmosphere at Freshwater, "She is a sort of hero-worshipper, and the hero is not Mr Tennyson — he only occupies second place — but Henry Taylor." In 1847, she was writing poetry, had started a novel, and published a translation of
Gottfried August Bürger Gottfried August Bürger (31 December 1747 – 8 June 1794) was a German poet. His ballads were very popular in Germany. His most noted ballad, '' Lenore'', found an audience beyond readers of the German language in an English and Russian ada ...
's ''Leonora''. In 1848, Charles Cameron retired fully and invested in coffee and rubber plantations in Ceylon, becoming one of the island's largest landowners. The Camerons settled down in England, first in
Tunbridge Wells Royal Tunbridge Wells is a town in Kent, England, southeast of central London. It lies close to the border with East Sussex on the northern edge of the Weald, High Weald, whose sandstone geology is exemplified by the rock formation High Roc ...
in
Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
, where they were neighbours of Taylor, then to East Sheen in 1850. During this time, Cameron became a member of a society for art education and appreciation and
George Frederic Watts George Frederic Watts (23 February 1817, in London – 1 July 1904) was a British painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. He said "I paint ideas, not things." Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical work ...
started working on a painting of Cameron (which is now in the National Portrait Gallery). In 1860, after an extended visit to Alfred Tennyson at the seaside village of Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight, Cameron hastily purchased a property next door to Tennyson. The family moved there, naming the property " Dimbola" after one of the coffee plantations in Ceylon. A private gate connected the residences and the two families soon started entertaining well-known personalities with music, poetry readings, and amateur plays, creating an artistic scene much as what was previously found at Little Holland House. She lived there until 1875.


Photography career


Early career

Cameron showed an interest in photography in the late 1850s and there are indications that she experimented with making photographs in the early 1860s. Around 1863, her daughter and her son-in-law gave her her first camera (a sliding-box camera) as a Christmas present. The gift was meant to provide a diversion while her husband was in Ceylon tending to his coffee plantations. Of the gift, her daughter stated "It may amuse you, Mother, to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater." After receiving the camera, she cleared out a chicken coop and converted it into studio space. Later, in an unfinished autobiographical manuscript titled ''Annals of my Glasshouse'', Cameron wrote:
I turned my coal-house into my dark room, and a glazed fowl house I had given my children became my glass house. The hens were liberated, I hope and believe not eaten. The profit of my boys upon new laid eggs was stopped, and all hands and hearts sympathised in my new labour, since the society of hens and chickens was soon changed for that of poets, prophets, painters and lovely maidens, who all in turn have immortalized the humble little farm erection. ..I began with no knowledge of the art... I did not know where to place my dark box, how to focus my sitter, and my first picture I effaced to my consternation by rubbing my hand over the filmy side of the glass.
On 29 January 1864 she photographed nine‐year‐old Annie Philpot, an image she described as her "first success". She sent the photograph to the subject's father with the note:
My first perfect success in the complete Photograph owing greatly to the docility & sweetness of my best & fairest sitter. This Photograph was taken by me at 1 p.m. Friday Jan. 29th. Printed—Toned—fixed and framed all by me & given as it is now by 8 p.m. this same day.
That same year, she compiled albums of her images for Watts and Herschel, registered her work and prepared it for exhibition and sale, and was elected to the Photographic Society of London, of which she remained a member until her death and where she displayed work at yearly exhibitions. Though Cameron took up photography as an amateur and considered herself an artist, and despite never making commissioned portraits nor establishing a commercial studio, she thought of her photographic activity as a professional endeavour, actively copyrighting, publishing, and marketing her work. Her family did not see substantial profits from their coffee plantations in Ceylon and Cameron may have been looking to bring in some money with her photography. The portraits of celebrities and the high volume of her photographic output also suggest commercial aspirations.


Mid-career

In 1865, she became a member of the Photographic Society of Scotland and arranged to have her prints sold through the London dealers P. & D. Colnaghi. She presented a series of photographs, ''The Fruits of the Spirit'', to the
British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
, and held her first solo exhibition in November 1865. Her prints generated robust demand and she showed her work throughout Europe, securing awards in Berlin in 1865 and 1866, and an honourable mention in Dublin. Her photographic activity was supported by her husband. Cameron wrote: "My husband from first to last has watched every picture with delight, and it is my daily habit to run to him with every glass upon which a fresh glory is newly stamped, and to listen to his enthusiastic applause." In August 1865, the South Kensington Museum, now the
Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...
, purchased 80 of her photographs. Three years later, the museum offered her two rooms to use as a portrait studio, essentially making her the museum's first artist-in-residence. She produced images of
Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature and philosophy. Born in Ecclefechan, Dum ...
and John Herschel in 1867. By 1868, she was generating sales through P. & D. Colnaghi and a second London agent, William Spooner. In 1869, she created ''The Kiss of Peace'', which she considered her finest work.In the early 1870s, Cameron's work matured. Her elaborate illustrative tableauxs involving religious, literary, and classical figures peaked in a series of images for Tennyson's ''
Idylls of the King ''Idylls of the King'', published between 1859 and 1885, is a Literature cycle, cycle of twelve narrative poems by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892; Poet Laureate from 1850) which retells the legend of King Arthur, his knig ...
'', published in 1874 and 1875, evidently at her expense. During this time, she also wrote ''Annals of my Glass House'', an unfinished memoir recounting her photographic career.


Later life

In October 1873, her daughter died in childbirth. Two years later, because of her husband's ill health, because of the lower cost of living, and to be nearer to their sons who were managing the family coffee plantations (which had been badly harmed by a fungus), Cameron and her husband left Freshwater for Ceylon with "a cow, Cameron's photographic equipment, and two coffins, in case such items should not be available in the East". Henry Taylor recounts the departure:
Mr. and Mrs. Cameron have taken their departure for Ceylon, there to live and die. He had bought an estate there some thirty years ago when he was serving the Crown there and elsewhere in the East, and he had a passionate love for the island, to which he had rendered an important service in providing it with a code of procedure . . . he never ceased to yearn after the island as his place of abode, and thither in his eighty-first year he has betaken himself, with a strange joy. The design was kept secret, — I believe even from their dearest relatives.
V.C. Scott O'Connor later wrote about the absence at their vacated home in Freshwater:
The house is silent now and tenantless. All its old feverish life and bustle are stilled as is the heart which beat here in true sympathy with every living creature that came within its reach needing such succor. Her pretty maids, her scholars, her poets, her philosophers, astronomers, and divines, all those men of genius who came and sat willingly to her while in a fever of artistic emotion she plied the instruments of her art, — they have all gone, and silence is the only tenant left at Dimbola.
The move effectively marked the end of Cameron's photography career; she took few photographs afterwards, mostly of
Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nativ ...
servants and workers. Fewer than 30 images survive from this period. Cameron's output may have dropped in part because of the difficulty working with collodion in the insect-friendly heat where fresh water was less available for washing prints. The botanical painter and biologist
Marianne North Marianne North (24 October 1830 – 30 August 1890) was a prolific English Victorian biologist and botanical artist, notable for her plant and landscape paintings, her extensive foreign travels, her writings, her plant discoveries and the ...
recounted her time visiting Cameron In Ceylon:
The walls of the room were covered with magnificent photographs; others were tumbling about the tables, chairs, and floors with quantities of damp books, all untidy and picturesque; the lady herself with a lace veil on her head and flowing draperies. Her oddities were most refreshing . . . She also made some studies of natives while I was there, and took such a fancy to the back of one of them (which she said was absolutely superb) that she insisted on her son retaining him as her gardener, though she had no garden and he did not know even the meaning of the word.
In February 1876, ''Macmillan's Magazine'' published her poem, ''On a Portrait''. The following year, her image ''The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere'' appeared on the cover ''Harper's Weekly'' as a wood engraving. After a short visit to England six months earlier, Cameron fell ill with a dangerous chill and died on 26 January 1879 at the Glencairn estate in Ceylon. It is often reported that her last word was "Beauty" or "Beautiful". In her 12-year career, Cameron produced around 900 photographs.


Photographic work


Influences

Cameron was an educated and cultured woman; she was a Christian thinker familiar with medieval art, the Renaissance, and the Pre-Raphaelites. She may also have been influenced by the contemporary interest in
phrenology Phrenology () is a pseudoscience which involves the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits.Wihe, J. V. (2002). "Science and Pseudoscience: A Primer in Critical Thinking." In ''Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience'', pp. 195–203. C ...
, the study of the human physiognomy as a sign of a person's character. The
Old Master In art history, "Old Master" (or "old master")Old Masters De ...
s also informed her work. Her compositions and use of light have been connected to
Raphael Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (; or ; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. List of works by Raphael, His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of ...
,
Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...
, and
Titian Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italians, Italian (Republic of Venice, Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school (art), ...
. John Herschel, who relayed to Cameron the news of the inventions of photography by Talbot and Daguerre, was an important influence on technique and the practicalities of the medium, as indicated in a letter Cameron wrote to the astronomer, "You were my first teacher and to you I owe all the first experience and insights." It is likely that Cameron saw
Reginald Southey Reginald Southey (15 September 1835 – 8 November 1899) was an English physician and inventor of ''Southey's cannula'' or ''tube'', a type of trocar used for draining oedema of the limbs. Perhaps the most important photographer to influence Cameron's work was
David Wilkie Wynfield David Wilkie Wynfield (1837 – 26 May 1887) was a British painter and photographer. Wynfield was distantly related to the Scottish artist David Wilkie, after whom he was named. Born in India, he was originally intended by his family for t ...
. Cameron's style of close-up portraits resembling Titian may well have been learned from Wynfield, since she took a lesson from him and later wrote "I consult him in correspondence whenever I am in difficulty". Much like Cameron, Wynfield published an album of soft-focus portraits of friends dressed up as characters from history or literature. The press compared their photographic work and noted the similarities in style and their consideration of the medium as fine art. She later wrote that "to my feeling about his beautiful photography I owed all my attempts and indeed consequently all my success".


Concept of genius and beauty

Cameron's portraits are partly the product of her intimacy and regard for the subject, but also intend to capture "particular qualities or essences—typically, genius in men and beauty in women". Mike Weaver, a scholar who wrote about Cameron's photography in work published in 1984, framed her idea of genius and beauty "within a specifically Christian framework, as indicative of the sublime and the sacred". Weaver supposes that Cameron's myriad influences informed her concept of beauty: "the Bible, classical mythology, Shakespeare's plays, and Tennyson's poems were fused into a single vision of ideal beauty." Cameron herself indicated her desire to capture beauty. She wrote, "I longed to arrest all the beauty that came before me and at length the longing has been satisfied" and "My aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art by combining the real & Ideal & sacrificing nothing of Truth by all possible devotion to poetry and beauty." Her female subjects were typically chosen for their beauty, particularly the "long-necked, long-haired, immature beauty familiar in Pre-Raphaelite paintings". In Virginia Woolf's farcical play ''Freshwater'', which described the cultural scene at Freshwater, Cameron's character comically expresses her commitment to beauty:
I have sought the beautiful in the most unlikely places. I have searched the police force at Freshwater, and not a man have I found with calves worthy of
Sir Galahad Sir Galahad (), sometimes referred to as Galeas () or Galath (), among other versions of his name, is a Knights of the Round Table, knight of King Arthur's Round Table and one of the three achievers of the Holy Grail in Arthurian legend. He i ...
. But, as I said to the Chief Constable, "Without beauty, constable, what is order? Without life, what is law?" Why should I continue to have my silver protected by a race of men whose legs are aesthetically abhorrent to me? If a burgler came and he were beautiful, I should say to him: Take my fish knives! Take my cruets, my bread baskets and my soup tureens. What you take is nothing to what you give, your calves, your beautiful calves.


Portraits

Cameron's photographs are generally placed into three categories: distinguished portraits of men, delicate portraits of women, and illustrative allegories based on religious and literary works.


Men

Cameron's portraits of men were a kind of hero-worship. To Thomas Carlyle, Cameron wrote "When I have had such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavoured to do its duty towards them in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man. The photograph thus taken has been almost the embodiment of a prayer." Most of these men are well-known scientists, writers, or clergymen of the Victorian era. Cameron turned to Old Master paintings and the contemporary idea — based in phrenology — of the ideal "type" to capture the greatness that she perceived in these eminent Victorian individuals. Her aspiration to record this greatness resulted in powerful images displaying a masterly command of
chiaroscuro Chiaroscuro ( , ; ), in art, is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for the use of contrasts of light to achi ...
that resulted in "the finest and most revealing gallery of eminent Victorians in existence". Janet Malcom notes the attention Cameron paid to hair as an expressive element in her portraits, writing that "Her closeups of Tennyson, Carlyle, Darwin,
Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include "Paul Revere's Ride", ''The Song of Hiawatha'', and ''Evangeline''. He was the first American to completely transl ...
, Taylor, Watts, and Charles Cameron are as much celebrations of beards as of Victorian eminence." File:Charles Darwin by Julia Margaret Cameron 2.jpg, Charles Darwin File:Henry Taylor, by Julia Margaret Cameron, M198111190001.jpg, Henry Taylor Alfred, Lord Tennyson by Julia Margaret Cameron.jpg,
Alfred, Lord Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...
. Carbon print, 1869 File:Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron in 1868.jpg,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include "Paul Revere's Ride", ''The Song of Hiawatha'', and ''Evangeline''. He was the first American to completely transl ...
1868.


Women

Her images of women are decidedly softer than those of men. With less dramatic lighting and a more typical distance between the sitter and the camera, these images are less dynamic and more conventional than her images of men. Cameron almost exclusively photographed younger women, never making a portrait even of her neighbour and good friend
Emily Tennyson Emily Sarah Tennyson, Baroness Tennyson ( Sellwood; 9 July 1813 – 10 August 1896), known as Emily, Lady Tennyson, was the wife of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and a creative talent in her own right. Emily was the oldest of three daughte ...
. According to a biographer of Charles Darwin, Cameron refused to take a picture of Darwin's wife, saying that "no woman must be photographed between the ages of eighteen and seventy." Her mature photographs of women are noted for their subtle but suggestive representation of the obscurity and malleability of female identity. Many of her images of young women obscure their individuality and represent their identity as multifaceted and changeable by showing them "in pairs, or reflected in a mirror... frequently expressive of a deep ambiguity and anxiety." Janet Malcolm again notes Cameron's attention to the hair of her subjects, writing that "Like the little girls whose hair was mussed to rid it of its prim nursery look, the bigger girls were made to undo their buns and chignons so that their hair would poetically stream or flow or twist around their faces". File:Sadness, by Julia Margaret Cameron.jpg,
Ellen Terry Dame Alice Ellen Terry, (27 February 184721 July 1928), was a leading English actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born into a family of actors, Terry began performing as a child, acting in Shakespeare plays in London, and tour ...
1864 File:Julia Margaret Cameron Pomona.png,
Alice Liddell Alice Pleasance Hargreaves (''née'' Liddell, ; 4 May 1852 – 16 November 1934), was an English woman who, in her childhood, was an acquaintance and photography subject of Lewis Carroll. One of the stories he told her during a boating trip beca ...
, 1872 File:Julia Jackson, by Julia Margaret Cameron, M196700880008.jpg, Julia Jackson File:Suspense, by Julia Margaret Cameron.jpg, ''Suspense''


Children

Children — her own children, those of relatives, and young locals — were often models for Cameron. Children were popular subjects in the Victorian era and Cameron kept with the prevailing notion of them as innocent, kind, and noble. She regularly depicted them as angels or as children from Bible stories. The children in her images were not always cooperative, and her attempts to cast them as allegorical figures were often frustrated by the children's boredom, indignation, distraction — moods which are often evidenced in her images. File:I Wait, by Julia Margaret Cameron.jpg, ''I Wait'' File:Angel of the Nativity, by Julia Margaret Cameron.jpg, ''Angel of the Nativity'' File:Love in Idleness, by Julia Margaret Cameron.jpg, ''Love in Idleness'' File:Young Astyanax, by Julia Margaret Cameron.jpg, ''Young Astyanax'' File:Déjatch Alámayou, King Theodore's Son, by Julia Margaret Cameron.jpg, '' Déjatch Alámayou, King Theodore's Son''


Allegories and illustrations

Cameron may have found these illustrative group portraits more challenging than her other images. With more people in the image, the chances were greater that someone would move during the long exposures, so more light was needed to shorten the exposure time and arrest the motion. More sitters also meant a greater
depth of field The depth of field (DOF) is the distance between the nearest and the furthest objects that are in acceptably sharp focus in an image captured with a camera. Factors affecting depth of field For cameras that can only focus on one object dist ...
was necessary to put everyone in focus, further complicating the compositions. Cameron's narrative portraits of women were influenced by tableaux vivants and amateur theatre. The women in her images are typically depicted in the idealised Victorian roles of mother and wife.


Religion

Cameron made over 50 images representing the
Madonna Madonna Louise Ciccone (; ; born August 16, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Widely dubbed the " Queen of Pop", Madonna has been noted for her continual reinvention and versatility in music production, songwriting, a ...
, often played by her household servant Mary Hillier. These images present "an ideal of femininity that combines wholesomeness with qualities of sensuality and vulnerability". She represented the Virgin Mary in various scenes from the Bible, such as the
Annunciation The Annunciation (from Latin '), also referred to as the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Annunciation of Our Lady, or the Annunciation of the Lord, is the Christian celebration of the biblical tale of the announcement by the ange ...
and the Salutation, but also created a number of images illustrating more obscure religious figures. File:Henry Taylor, Study of King David, by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1865.jpg, Sir Henry Taylor as
King David David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...
1866 File:Mary Mother, by Julia Margaret Cameron.jpg, ''Mary Mother'' File:The Angel at the Tomb, by Julia Margaret Cameron.jpg, ''The Angel at the Tomb''


Literature

Cameron took literature as inspiration for her illustrative photographs, representing characters from Shakespeare, Elizabethan poems, novels, plays, and the work of her contemporaries: Alfred Tennyson, Henry Taylor,
Christina Rossetti Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894) was an English writer of romantic, devotional and children's poems, including "Goblin Market" and "Remember". She also wrote the words of two Christmas carols well known in Brit ...
,
Robert Browning Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings ...
, and
George Eliot Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wro ...
. File:Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India - Maud "There has Fallen a splendid Tear From the Passion Flower at the Gate" - Google Art Project.jpg, ''Maud "There has Fallen a splendid Tear From the Passion Flower at the Gate"'', 1875 File:Julia Margaret Cameron - "They call me cruel hearted, I care not ... - Google Art Project.jpg, ''"He thought of that sharp look Mother I gave him yesterday"/"They call me cruel hearted, I care not what they say"'', 1875 File:Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India - Queen Esther before King Ahasuerus - Google Art Project.jpg, ''Queen Esther before King Ahasuerus'', 1865 File:Julia Margaret Cameron - "The blessed Music went that way my soul w... - Google Art Project.jpg, ''"So now I think my time is near – I trust it is – I know"/"The blessed Music went that way my soul will have to go"'', 1875


''Idylls of the King''

In 1874, Alfred Tennyson asked Cameron to create illustrations for a new edition of his ''Idylls of the King'', a popular series of poems about
Arthurian King Arthur ( cy, Brenin Arthur, kw, Arthur Gernow, br, Roue Arzhur) is a Legend, legendary king of Great Britain, Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain. In the earliest tradition ...
legends. Cameron worked on this commission for three months, capturing several images in her notable
soft focus In photography, soft focus is a lens flaw, in which the lens forms images that are blurred due to spherical aberration. A soft focus lens deliberately introduces spherical aberration in order to give the appearance of blurring the image while ...
style. She was unhappy with the final publication, and complained that the small size of her images depleted their significance. This prompted Cameron to issue a deluxe version of the ''Idylls of the King'' which featured a series of twelve photographs as full-size prints. This series of images, influenced in part by Watts, was her last large-scale project and is considered the peak of her illustrative work. File:Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India - Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere - Google Art Project.jpg, ''Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere'' 1874 File:Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India - King Arthur - Google Art Project.jpg, King Arthur


Reception and legacy


Contemporary reception

In her own time, Cameron's photographs found a contentious audience, with many criticising her use of soft focus and her unretouched prints. In 1865, ''
The Photographic Journal The ''Journal of the Photographic Society'', later the Royal Photographic Society, was first published on 3 March 1853 and it has been published continuously ever since. The magazine's title was changed with volume 5 (1859) when it was renamed ' ...
'' reviewed her images, commenting:
Mrs. Cameron exhibits her series of out-of-focus portraits of celebrities. We must give this lady credit for daring originality, but at the expense of all other photographic qualities. A true artist would employ all the resources at his disposal, in whatever branch of art he might practise. In these pictures, all that is good in photography has been neglected and the shortcomings of the art are prominently exhibited. We are sorry to have to speak thus severely on the works of a lady, but we feel compelled to do so in the interest of the art.
''The Photographic News'' echoed this sentiment:
What in the name of all the nitrate of silver that ever turned white into black have these pictures in common with good photography? Smudged, torn, dirty, undefined, and in some cases almost unreadable, there is hardly one of them that ought not to have been washed off the plate as soon as it appeared We cannot but think that this lady's highly imaginative and artistic efforts might be supplemented by the judicious employment of a small boy with a wash leather, and a lens screwed a trifle less out of accurate definition.
''The Illustrated London News'' provided an alternative perspective, writing that her images were "the nearest approach to art, or rather the most bold and successful applications of the principles of fine-art to photography".


Early impact

Cameron's niece
Julia Prinsep Stephen Julia, Lady Stephen (born Julia Prinsep Jackson; 7 February 1846 – 5 May 1895) was an English Pre-Raphaelite model (art), model and philanthropist. She was the wife of the biographer Leslie Stephen and mother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Be ...
(née Jackson; 1846–1895) wrote a biography of Cameron that appeared in the first edition of the ''Dictionary of National Biography'', 1886. A few years later,
George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
reviewed a posthumous exhibition of Cameron's, writing:
While the portraits of Herschel, Tennyson and Carlyle beat hollow anything I have ever seen, right on the same wall, and virtually in the same frame, there are photographs of children with no clothes on, or else the underclothes by way of propriety, with palpably paper wings, most inartistically grouped and artlessly labelled as angels, saints or fairies. No-one would imagine that the artist who produced the marvellous Carlyle would have produced such childish trivialities.
Virginia Woolf wrote a comic portrayal of the "Freshwater circle" in her only play ''Freshwater''. Later, in collaboration with
Roger Fry Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 – 9 September 1934) was an English painter and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developme ...
, Woolf also edited the first major collection of Cameron's photographs, ''Victorian Photographs of Famous Men and Fair Women,'' published in 1926. In the introduction to this collection, Fry wrote that Cameron's allegorical photographs "must all be judged as failures from an aesthetic viewpoint". He was more charitable toward her other work, writing that she had "a wonderful perception of character as it is expressed in form" and that her work was superior to the portraits of
James Abbott McNeill Whistler James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading pr ...
and George Frederic Watts. Despite the publication of this collection, Cameron's work remained obscure until the mid-1940s.


Mid-century rediscovery

Helmut Gernsheim Helmut Erich Robert Kuno Gernsheim (1 March 1913 – 20 July 1995) was a historian of photography, a collector and a photographer. Early life and education Born in Munich, Germany, he was the third son of the academic librarian Karl Gernsheim an ...
, after seeing photographs that Cameron had donated to a railway station in Hampshire hanging in the waiting room of the station, published a book on her work that helped establish her reputation. Gernsheim's review of Cameron's work echoed the earlier sentiments of George Bernard Shaw and Roger Fry, criticising her allegorical and illustrative photos while praising her more straightforward portraits:
If the majority of Mrs. Cameron's subject pictures seem to us affected, ludicrous and amateurish, and appear in our opinion to be failures, how masterly, on the other hand, are her straightforward, truthful portraits, which are entirely free from false sentiment, and which compensate for the errors of taste in her studies.
In 1984, Mike Weaver disputed this analysis in his book ''Julia Margaret Cameron 1815–1879'', where he elevated Cameron's tableauxs as sincere religious interpretations. Weaver also criticised the characterisations of Cameron's personality that focused on her supposed eccentricities.


21st century reception

Colin Ford, in the ''Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography'' calls her images "extraordinarily powerful" and "arguably the first 'close-up' photographs in history". He continues:
Her visualisations of poetry are different in style and achievement from those of any other photographer of the time. Her contemporaries decorated books of poetry by
Burns Burns may refer to: * Burn, an injury (plural) People: * Burns (surname), includes list of people and characters Business: * Burns London, a British guitar maker Places: ;In the United States * Burns, Colorado, unincorporated community in Eagle ...
, Gray, Milton, Scott, Shakespeare and others with picturesque landscapes, occasionally peopling these with attractively disposed figures in the scenery, but rarely illustrating actual characters or incidents from the story.
For the Metropolitan Museum of Art's ''Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History'', Malcolm Daniel writes:
Her artistic goals for photography, informed by the outward appearance and spiritual content of fifteenth-century Italian painting, were wholly original in her medium. She aimed for neither the finish and formalized poses common in the commercial portrait studios, nor for the elaborate narratives of other Victorian "high art" photographers such as H. P. Robinson and O. G. Rejlander.
Janet Malcolm, in "The Genius of the Glass House" writes that "Cameron's compositions have more connection to the family album pictures of recalcitrant relatives who have been herded together for the obligatory group picture than they do to the masterpieces of Western painting" but that "The beauty that Cameron found, and in a surprising number of cases was able to arrest, among the aging and aged men of the Victorian literary and art establishment is a cornerstone of her achievement". In 2003, the
J. Paul Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. The Getty Center is located in the Brentwood, Los Angeles, Brentwood neighborhood ...
published a complete catalogue of Cameron's known surviving photographs. One caption of a portrait of Alice Liddell (whom Cameron photographed as
Alethea Alethea is an English-language female first name derived from the Ancient Greek feminine noun grc, ἀλήθεια, alḗtheia, truth, label=none; ().Campbell. It is thus an equivalent of the name Verity, from the Latin feminine noun ''veritas'', ...
, Pomona,
Ceres Ceres most commonly refers to: * Ceres (dwarf planet), the largest asteroid * Ceres (mythology), the Roman goddess of agriculture Ceres may also refer to: Places Brazil * Ceres, Goiás, Brazil * Ceres Microregion, in north-central Goiás ...
, and
St. Agnes Agnes of Rome () is a virgin martyr, venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church, Oriental Orthodox Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, as well as the Anglican Communion and Lutheran Churches. St. Agnes is one of several virgin martyrs comm ...
in 1872) claims that "Cameron's photographic portraits are considered among the finest in the early history of photography".In 2018, '' The Norman Album'' was deemed by the
Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA) is a committee of the United Kingdom government, advising the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) on the export of cultural property. Some of it ...
to be of "outstanding aesthetic importance and significance to the study of the history of photography and, in particular, the work of Julia Margaret Cameron—one of the most significant photographers of the 19th century." In 2019 Cameron was inducted into the
International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum The International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum in St. Louis, Missouri honors those who have made great contributions to the field of photography. History In 1977 the first Hall of Fame and Museum opened in Santa Barbara, California and a f ...
.


Retrospectives

In 2013, the Metropolitan Museum of Art curated an exhibition of Cameron's work, which garnered significant reviews. In 2015 the Victoria and Albert Museum in London drew on their extensive collection of her work for a 200th anniversary retrospective of Cameron's career that also travelled to Sydney, Australia. An exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London in March 2018 placed her work in relationship to the work of her Victorian contemporaries, Lady Clementina Hawarden,
Oscar Rejlander Oscar Gustave Rejlander (Stockholm, 19 October 1813 – Clapham, London, 18 January 1875) was a pioneering Victorian art photographer and an expert in photomontage. His collaboration with Charles Darwin on ''The Expression of the Emotions in M ...
, and
Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ...
. The following retrospective exhibitions have focused on Cameron's oeuvre:


Albums


List of selected publications

* * Cameron, J. M. P. (1875)
Illustrations by Julia Margaret Cameron of Alfred Tennyson's Idylls of the King and other poems
* Cameron, J. M. P. (1889)
Unfinished autobiography "Annals of my glass house" by Julia Margaret Cameron, written 1874, first published 1889
* Cameron, J. M. (1975)
The Herschel album: an album of photographs
London (2 St Martin's Place, WC2H 0HE): National Portrait Gallery * Cameron, J. M., & Ford, C. (1975)
The Cameron Collection: an album of photographs
Wokingham: Van Nostrand Reinhold for the National Portrait Gallery * Cameron, J. M. P., & Weaver, M. (1986)
Whisper of the muse: the Overstone album & other photographs
Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum


Footnotes


References


Further reading

* * * * * * Rosen, Jeff (2016). ''Julia Margaret Cameron's 'Fancy Subjects''
Manchester University Press
* ''also available through
MOMA Moma may refer to: People * Moma Clarke (1869–1958), British journalist * Moma Marković (1912–1992), Serbian politician * Momčilo Rajin (born 1954), Serbian art and music critic, theorist and historian, artist and publisher Places ; Ang ...
''
here
'


External links


Julia Margaret Cameron
at The Museum of Modern Art
Julia Margaret Cameron
at The J. Paul Getty Museum * Julia Margaret Cameron family papers, circa 1777-1940 at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession No. 850858.
Julia Margaret Cameron
at the National Portrait Gallery

at the National Gallery of Art
Julia Margaret Cameron
at the Art Institute of Chicago
Julia Margaret Cameron
at the National Galleries of Scotland
Alfred Tennyson's ''Idylls of the King''
illustrated by Julia Margaret Cameron {{DEFAULTSORT:Cameron, Julia Margaret Pioneers of photography 1815 births 1879 deaths English women photographers British portrait photographers Artists from Kolkata English people of French descent People from Freshwater, Isle of Wight Women of the Victorian era 19th-century English photographers 19th-century British women artists 19th-century women photographers People of British Ceylon British people in colonial India