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Janet Malcom New York Review of Books Julia Margaret Cameron

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Julia Margaret Cameron (née Pattle; 11 June 1815 – 26 January 1879) was a British lensman who is considered one of the most important portraitists of the 19th century. She is known for her soft-focus close-ups of famous Victorian men and for illustrative images depicting characters from mythology, Christianity, and literature. She as well produced sensitive portraits of women and children.

Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron MET DP114480 - Restoration.jpg

Cameron in 1870
Born

Julia Margaret Pattle


(1815-06-11)eleven June 1815

Calcutta, British India
Died 26 January 1879(1879-01-26) (aged 63)

Kalutara, British Ceylon
Nationality British
Known for Photography

Subsequently establishing herself showtime amid Calcutta'southward Anglo-Indian upper-class and then amongst London's cultural aristocracy, Cameron formed her own salon frequented past distinguished Victorians at the seaside village of Freshwater, Isle of Wight.

After showing a groovy interest in photography for many years, Cameron took up the practice at the relatively late age of 48, afterward her girl gave her a photographic camera every bit a nowadays. She speedily produced a big 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 past tableaux vivants, theatre, 15th-century Italian painters, and the work of her creative contemporaries. Her photography career was short merely productive; she made effectually 900 photographs over a 12-twelvemonth 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. Withal, her portraits of respected men (such as Henry Taylor, Charles Darwin, and Sir John Herschel) accept been consistently praised, both in her own life and in reviews of her piece of work since. Her images have been described equally "extraordinarily powerful"[1] and "wholly original",[2] and she has been credited with producing the outset close-ups in the history of the medium.[i]

Biography Edit

Early life and education Edit

Julia Margaret Cameron was born Julia Margaret Pattle on xi June 1815, at Garden Accomplish, Calcutta, India[3] to Adeline Marie (née de l'Etang, 1793–1845) and James Peter Pattle (1775-1845).[iv]

James Pattle was a successful official from England who worked in Republic of india for the Due east India Company.[3] [5] His family had been involved with the East India Visitor for many years, though he traced his line to a 17th-century ancestor living in Chancery Lane, London.[6] Her female parent was a French aristocrat and the daughter of Chevalier Ambrose Pierre Antoine de l'Etang, who had been a page to Marie Antoinette and an officer in the Garde du Corps of Rex Louis Sixteen.[7] When he died he was shipped back to London in a butt of rum for burial in Camberwell.

Julia was the fourth of her parents' children. Three of her parents' children[a] died in infancy. Julia and the six of her six sisters[1] [3] who survived into machismo[b] 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 shut, outspoken, and unconventional in behaviour and dress.[8] [c] They favoured Indian silks and shawls rather than the demure Victorian attire of other colonial woman.[10]

All of the sisters were sent to France every bit children to be educated, Julia living at that place with her maternal grandmother in Versaille from 1818 to 1834, later on which she returned to India.[1] [3] [v] [11]

Julia's sisters all made advantageous matches, Adeline marrying a military man who became a General, Sophia marrying a baronet, Louisa, a High Courtroom Judge while Maria married the distinguished Dr John Jackson, with amid their descendants existence Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. Sara married Henry Prinsep an administrator with the East India Company, and fabricated their home at Trivial Holland Firm in Kensington, England an important intellectual heart. Amidst their children was Julia's godchild Julia Stephen. Virginia Pattle married Lord Charles Eastnor, later the third Earl Somers. Their eldest daughter was Lady Isabella Caroline Somers-Cocks, the temperance leader, while the younger, Lady Adeline Marie became the Duchess of Bedford.

Marriage and social life Edit

South Africa and Calcutta Edit

In 1835, afterwards suffering several illnesses, Julia visited the Cape of Expert Promise in Southward Africa with her parents to recover.[3] [5] Information technology was mutual for Europeans living in India to visit South Africa to convalesce after an illness.[i]

While in that location, she met the British astronomer and photochemist Sir John Herschel, who was observing the southern celestial hemisphere.[11] She too met Charles Hay Cameron, 20 years her senior and a reformer of Indian law and instruction who later invested in coffee plantations in what is now Sri Lanka.[xi] Charles Hay was too in that location to convalesce, likely from a virulent malarial fever which often spread during the Indian monsoon flavour. The illness he suffered caused recurring kidney trouble and diarrhœa for the rest of his life.[9] : 14

They were married in Calcutta on ane February 1838, two years after meeting.[1] [3] In December of that aforementioned year, Julia gave birth to their first child; Sir John Herschel was the godfather.[nine] : 15 Betwixt 1839 and 1852, they had six children, one of whom was adopted.[5] [12] In all, the Camerons raised 11 children, 5 of her own, five orphaned children of relatives, and an Irish daughter named Mary Ryan whom they constitute begging on Putney Heath and whom Cameron used as a model in her photographs.[four] [8] [13] Their son, Henry Herschel Hay Cameron, would too become a photographer.[3]

Through the early 1840s—as the organiser of social engagements for the Governor-Full general, Lord Hardinge—Cameron became a prominent hostess in Anglo-Indian guild.[iii] During this time she also corresponded with Herschel about the latest developments in photographic engineering. In 1839, Herschel informed Cameron about the invention of photography.[9] : 14 [d] In 1842, he sent her two dozen calotypes and daguerreotypes, the outset photographs she ever saw.[9] : 42

England Edit

Perhaps to be closer to their 2 children, the Camerons retired to England in 1845, where they took office in London'due south artistic and cultural scene.[9] : 15 [fourteen] Julia oft visited Picayune The netherlands House in Kensington, London, where her sister, Sara Prinsep, oversaw a literary and artistic salon "of Pre-Raphaelite painters, poets, and aristocrats with artistic pretensions".[12] [thirteen] Hither, she met many of the well-known subjects of her later portraits, including Henry Taylor and Alfred Tennyson.[1]

Daphne du Maurier describes the scene:

The nobilitee, the gentree, the litherathure, polithics and art of the counthree, past jasus! Information technology'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 near kneeling.[15]

Benjamin Jowett echoed this when describing Cameron'due south reverence to these creative personalities after a later visit to the aforementioned 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."[9] : 27

In 1847, she was writing poetry, had started a novel, and published a translation of Gottfried August Bürger'southward Leonora.[three] [12]

In 1848, Charles Cameron retired fully and invested in coffee and rubber plantations in Ceylon, becoming one of the island's largest landowners.[9] : 483 The Camerons settled down in England, first in Tunbridge Wells in Kent,[16] where they were neighbours of Taylor,[nine] : xvi then to East Sheen in 1850.[3] [5] [9] : 7 During this time, Cameron became a fellow member of a club for fine art education and appreciation and George Frederic Watts started working on a painting of Cameron (which is now in the National Portrait Gallery).[nine] : 7

Julia Margaret Cameron by George Frederic Watts. Oil on canvas, 1850–1852, 24 in. 10 20 in. (610 mm x 508 mm).[17]

In 1860, afterward an extended visit to Alfred Tennyson at the seaside village of Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight, Cameron hastily purchased a belongings next door to Tennyson. The family unit moved in that location, naming the property "Dimbola" subsequently one of the coffee plantations in Ceylon.[3] [13] A individual gate connected the residences and the two families before long started entertaining well-known personalities with music, poetry readings, and amateur plays, creating an artistic scene much every bit what was previously found at Lilliputian Kingdom of the netherlands Firm.[ane] She lived there until 1875.[eighteen]

Photography career Edit

Early career Edit

Cameron showed an interest in photography in the late 1850s and there are indications that she experimented with making photographs in the early 1860s.[1] [14] Around 1863, her girl and her son-in-police force gave her her first camera (a sliding-box camera) as a Christmas present.[5] The souvenir was meant to provide a diversion while her husband was in Ceylon tending to his coffee plantations.[14] Of the souvenir, her girl stated "It may charm you, Mother, to attempt to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater."[2]

After receiving the photographic camera, she cleared out a chicken coop and converted information technology into studio space.[19] 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 business firm. 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 order of hens and chickens was presently changed for that of poets, prophets, painters and lovely maidens, who all in turn have immortalized the humble lilliputian farm erection.[i] [...] I began with no cognition of the fine art... I did not know where to identify my night box, how to focus my sitter, and my showtime moving picture I effaced to my consternation by rubbing my mitt over the filmy side of the glass.[2]

Cameron called this 29 January 1864 portrait of Annie Philpot her "first success."

On 29 January 1864 she photographed nine‐yr‐old Annie Philpot, an prototype she described as her "start success".[1] She sent the photograph to the subject's father with the notation:

My first perfect success in the consummate Photograph owing greatly to the docility & sweetness of my best & fairest sitter. This Photo was taken by me at 1 p.thousand. Friday January. 29th. Printed—Toned—stock-still and framed all by me & given as it is at present by viii p.m. this aforementioned day.[1]

That aforementioned yr, she compiled albums of her images for Watts and Herschel, registered her work and prepared information technology for exhibition and sale,[9] : 7–8 and was elected to the Photographic Lodge of London, of which she remained a member until her decease[20] and where she displayed piece of work at yearly exhibitions.[3]

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 idea of her photographic activity as a professional attempt, actively copyrighting, publishing, and marketing her work.[two] Her family did not see substantial profits from their coffee plantations in Ceylon and Cameron may take been looking to bring in some coin with her photography. The portraits of celebrities and the high volume of her photographic output also suggest commercial aspirations.[9] : 25, 41–42, 496

Mid-career Edit

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.[21] She presented a serial of photographs, The Fruits of the Spirit, to the British Museum,[9] : 8 and held her first solo exhibition in November 1865.[3] Her prints generated robust demand and she showed her work throughout Europe,[5] securing awards in Berlin in 1865 and 1866,[3] and an honourable mention in Dublin.[9] : 8

Her photographic activity was supported by her hubby. Cameron wrote: "My husband from first to concluding has watched every moving-picture show 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 heed to his enthusiastic applause."[half-dozen]

In August 1865, the South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert Museum, purchased 80 of her photographs.[nine] : 8 3 years later, the museum offered her ii rooms to utilise as a portrait studio, substantially making her the museum'southward first artist-in-residence.[xi]

She produced images of Thomas Carlyle and John Herschel in 1867.[3] Past 1868, she was generating sales through P. & D. Colnaghi and a 2nd London agent, William Spooner. In 1869, she created The Kiss of Peace, which she considered her finest piece of work.[ix] : 8

The Kiss of Peace, by Julia Margaret Cameron.

In the early 1870s, Cameron's work matured.[5] Her elaborate illustrative tableauxs involving religious, literary, and classical figures peaked in a series of images for Tennyson's Idylls of the Male monarch, published in 1874 and 1875, manifestly at her expense.[xiv] [16] During this time, she also wrote Register of my Drinking glass Business firm, an unfinished memoir recounting her photographic career.[9] : 9

Later on life Edit

In Oct 1873, her daughter died in childbirth. Two years subsequently,[3] considering of her husband'southward ill health,[sixteen] considering of the lower cost of living,[9] : 483 and to be nearer to their sons who were managing the family coffee plantations[11] (which had been desperately harmed by a fungus),[9] : 35 Cameron and her husband left Freshwater for Ceylon with "a cow, Cameron'due south photographic equipment, and two coffins, in instance such items should non be bachelor in the Due east".[1] [nineteen]

Henry Taylor recounts the divergence:

Mr. and Mrs. Cameron accept taken their departure for Ceylon, there to live and dice. He had bought an manor in that location some thirty years ago when he was serving the Crown at that place and elsewhere in the E, and he had a passionate love for the island, to which he had rendered an important service in providing it with a lawmaking of procedure . . . he never ceased to yearn afterward the island as his place of abode, and thither in his eighty-first year he has betaken himself, with a foreign joy. The blueprint was kept underground, — I believe even from their dearest relatives.[9] : 36

V.C. Scott O'Connor later on wrote about the absenteeism at their vacated home in Freshwater:

The house is silent now and tenantless. All its erstwhile feverish life and hurry are stilled as is the heart which trounce here in true sympathy with every living animal that came inside 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 saturday 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.[9] : 37

The move effectively marked the stop of Cameron'due south photography career;[three] she took few photographs later on,[16] mostly of Tamil servants and workers.[e] [9] : nine Fewer than 30 images survive from this period. Cameron's output may have dropped in role considering of the difficulty working with collodion in the insect-friendly heat where fresh h2o was less bachelor for washing prints.[9] : 483 The botanical painter and biologist Marianne North 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 fabricated some studies of natives while I was in that location, 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 equally her gardener, though she had no garden and he did not know even the pregnant of the discussion.[nine] : 483 [13]

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'south Weekly as a wood engraving.[9] : 9

After a short visit to England half-dozen months before, Cameron fell ill with a unsafe chill[5] and died on 26 January 1879[11] at the Glencairn manor in Ceylon.[3] It is ofttimes reported that her last discussion was "Dazzler"[ane] [xiv] or "Beautiful".[19]

In her 12-yr career, Cameron produced around 900 photographs.[2]

Photographic work Edit

Influences Edit

Male monarch Lear allotting his Kingdom to his three daughters. Sitters are Lorina Liddell, Edith Liddell, Charles Hay Cameron and Alice Liddell.

Cameron was an educated and cultured woman; she was a Christian thinker familiar with medieval fine art, the Renaissance, and the Pre-Raphaelites.[f] [6] She may also have been influenced by the contemporary interest in phrenology, the study of the human physiognomy as a sign of a person's graphic symbol.[1] The Old Masters besides informed her work. Her compositions and use of light have been continued to Raphael, Rembrandt, and Titian.[iii]

John Herschel, who relayed to Cameron the news of the inventions of photography by Talbot and Daguerre,[nine] : 42 was an important influence on technique and the practicalities of the medium, every bit indicated in a alphabetic character Cameron wrote to the astronomer, "You lot were my starting time teacher and to you I owe all the first experience and insights."[eight]

Information technology is probable that Cameron saw Reginald Southey photographing on the Isle of Wight during a vacation in 1857 when he visited the Camerons and photographed their children and the children of her neighbor, Alfred Tennyson, before Cameron took upward the medium in earnest.[nine] : 42

Perchance the nigh of import photographer to influence Cameron's work was David Wilkie Wynfield. 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 on wrote "I consult him in correspondence whenever I am in difficulty".[eight] Much similar Cameron, Wynfield published an album of soft-focus portraits of friends dressed up equally characters from history or literature.[13] The printing compared their photographic work and noted the similarities in way and their consideration of the medium equally fine art.[9] : 46 She after wrote that "to my feeling about his beautiful photography I owed all my attempts and indeed consequently all my success".[22]

Concept of genius and beauty Edit

Cameron'south portraits are partly the product of her intimacy and regard for the bailiwick, but also intend to capture "particular qualities or essences—typically, genius in men and beauty in women".[3] Mike Weaver, a scholar who wrote about Cameron'due south photography in work published in 1984, framed her thought of genius and beauty "within a specifically Christian framework, as indicative of the sublime and the sacred".[iii] Weaver supposes that Cameron'southward myriad influences informed her concept of beauty: "the Bible, classical mythology, Shakespeare's plays, and Tennyson'south poems were fused into a single vision of platonic dazzler."[6]

Cameron herself indicated her desire to capture beauty. She wrote, "I longed to arrest all the beauty that came earlier me and at length the longing has been satisfied"[nine] : 175 [23] and "My aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the grapheme and uses of High Art past combining the real & Ideal & sacrificing nada of Truth by all possible devotion to poetry and dazzler."[11]

Her female person subjects were typically chosen for their beauty,[24] particularly the "long-necked, long-haired, immature dazzler familiar in Pre-Raphaelite paintings".[ane] In Virginia Woolf'due south farcical play Freshwater, which described the cultural scene at Freshwater, Cameron'due south grapheme comically expresses her commitment to beauty:

I take sought the beautiful in the most unlikely places. I accept searched the law force at Freshwater, and not a man have I found with calves worthy of Sir Galahad. Simply, as I said to the Chief Constable, "Without dazzler, lawman, what is order? Without life, what is law?" Why should I continue to have my silverish protected by a race of men whose legs are aesthetically abhorrent to me? If a burgler came and he were cute, I should say to him: Take my fish knives! Accept my cruets, my bread baskets and my soup tureens. What you take is zilch to what you give, your calves, your beautiful calves.[half dozen]

Portraits Edit

Cameron's photographs are generally placed into three categories: distinguished portraits of men, frail portraits of women, and illustrative allegories based on religious and literary works.[25]

Men Edit

Cameron's portraits of men were a kind of hero-worship.[9] : 175 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 likewise as the features of the outer human being. The photograph thus taken has been almost the embodiment of a prayer."[viii]

Most of these men are well-known scientists, writers, or clergymen of the Victorian era.[nine] : 291 Cameron turned to Old Principal paintings and the contemporary idea — based in phrenology — of the ideal "type" to capture the greatness that she perceived in these eminent Victorian individuals.[12] Her aspiration to record this greatness resulted in powerful images displaying a masterly command of chiaroscuro that resulted in "the finest and nigh revealing gallery of eminent Victorians in existence".[9] : 292

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, Taylor, Watts, and Charles Cameron are as much celebrations of beards every bit of Victorian eminence."[6]

Women Edit

Her images of women are decidedly softer than those of men. With less dramatic lighting and a more typical altitude between the sitter and the photographic camera, these images are less dynamic and more than conventional than her images of men.[9] : 175

Cameron well-nigh exclusively photographed younger women, never making a portrait even of her neighbour and skilful friend Emily Tennyson.[9] : 26 According to a biographer of Charles Darwin, Cameron refused to have a picture show of Darwin'south wife, saying that "no woman must be photographed between the ages of xviii and seventy."[6]

Her mature photographs of women are noted for their subtle but suggestive representation of the obscurity and malleability of female person identity. Many of her images of young women obscure their individuality and stand for their identity as multifaceted and changeable[9] : 68 by showing them "in pairs, or reflected in a mirror... ofttimes expressive of a deep ambiguity and anxiety."[3]

Janet Malcolm again notes Cameron'southward attention to the hair of her subjects, writing that "Like the footling girls whose hair was mussed to rid it of its prim nursery look, the bigger girls were made to disengage their buns and chignons so that their hair would poetically stream or catamenia or twist around their faces".[6]

Children Edit

Children — her own children, those of relatives, and young locals — were oft models for Cameron. Children were popular subjects in the Victorian era and Cameron kept with the prevailing notion of them every bit innocent, kind, and noble. She regularly depicted them as angels or as children from Bible stories.[9] : 373

The children in her images were not always cooperative, and her attempts to bandage them as allegorical figures were ofttimes frustrated by the children's boredom, indignation, lark — moods which are often evidenced in her images.[9] : 374

Allegories and illustrations Edit

Cameron may have institute these illustrative group portraits more challenging than her other images. With more people in the prototype, the chances were greater that someone would movement during the long exposures, so more than light was needed to shorten the exposure fourth dimension and abort the motion. More sitters also meant a greater depth of field was necessary to put anybody in focus, farther complicating the compositions.[9] : 433

Cameron'south 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 married woman.[12]

Religion Edit

Cameron made over 50 images representing the Madonna, 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 and the Salutation,[nine] : 130 just also created a number of images illustrating more than obscure religious figures.[9] : 129

Literature Edit

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, Robert Browning, and George Eliot.[9] : 434

  • Maud "There has Fallen a excellent Tear From the Passion Flower at the Gate", 1875

  • "He thought of that sharp expect Mother I gave him yesterday"/"They phone call me fell hearted, I care not what they say", 1875

  • Queen Esther before Rex Ahasuerus, 1865

  • "So at present I recall my time is most – I trust information technology is – I know"/"The blessed Music went that mode my soul will take to go", 1875

Idylls of the Rex Edit

In 1874, Alfred Tennyson asked Cameron to create illustrations for a new edition of his Idylls of the Male monarch, a popular serial of poems about Arthurian legends.[9] : 434 Cameron worked on this commission for three months, capturing several images in her notable soft focus way. She was unhappy with the final publication, and complained that the modest size of her images depleted their significance. This prompted Cameron to event a palatial version of the Idylls of the King which featured a series of twelve photographs every bit total-size prints.[26] This serial of images, influenced in part past Watts,[nineteen] was her last big-scale projection[16] and is considered the superlative of her illustrative piece of work.[1] [xiv]

  • Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere 1874

Reception and legacy Edit

Contemporary reception Edit

In her own time, Cameron's photographs found a contentious audience, with many criticising her use of soft focus and her unretouched prints.[three]

In 1865, The Photographic Journal reviewed her images, commenting:

Mrs. Cameron exhibits her serial of out-of-focus portraits of celebrities. We must requite 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 fine art he might exercise. In these pictures, all that is skillful in photography has been neglected and the shortcomings of the art are prominently exhibited. Nosotros are sorry to take to speak thus severely on the works of a lady, but we experience compelled to do and then in the interest of the art.[ii]

The Photographic News echoed this sentiment:

What in the name of all the nitrate of silverish that ever turned white into blackness 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 take been washed off the plate as presently as it appeared Nosotros cannot but think that this lady's highly imaginative and creative efforts might exist supplemented by the judicious employment of a small boy with a wash leather, and a lens screwed a trifle less out of accurate definition.[ix] : 54

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-fine art to photography".[ii]

Early impact Edit

Cameron's niece Julia Prinsep Stephen (née Jackson; 1846–1895) wrote a biography of Cameron that appeared in the start edition of the Dictionary of National Biography, 1886.[27]

A few years later, George Bernard Shaw reviewed a posthumous exhibition of Cameron'south, writing:

While the portraits of Herschel, Tennyson and Carlyle beat hollow anything I have always seen, correct on the aforementioned wall, and well-nigh in the same frame, at that place are photographs of children with no clothes on, or else the underclothes past style of propriety, with palpably paper wings, about inartistically grouped and artlessly labelled every bit angels, saints or fairies. No-one would imagine that the artist who produced the marvellous Carlyle would have produced such kittenish trivialities.[9] : 433

Virginia Woolf wrote a comic portrayal of the "Freshwater circumvolve" in her only play Freshwater. Afterwards, in collaboration with Roger Fry, Woolf also edited the showtime major collection of Cameron's photographs, Victorian Photographs of Famous Men and Fair Women, published in 1926.[3] [28] In the introduction to this drove, Fry wrote that Cameron's allegorical photographs "must all be judged as failures from an aesthetic viewpoint".[9] : 433 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 and George Frederic Watts.[9] : 291

Despite the publication of this collection, Cameron's work remained obscure until the mid-1940s.

Mid-century rediscovery Edit

Helmut Gernsheim, 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 constitute her reputation.[3] [29] Gernsheim's review of Cameron'due south piece of work echoed the before 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 u.s.a. affected, ludicrous and amateurish, and appear in our opinion to exist failures, how masterly, on the other hand, are her straightforward, true portraits, which are entirely free from false sentiment, and which compensate for the errors of taste in her studies.[6]

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 as well criticised the characterisations of Cameron's personality that focused on her supposed eccentricities.[half dozen]

21st century reception Edit

Colin Ford, in the Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography calls her images "extraordinarily powerful" and "arguably the beginning 'close-up' photographs in history".[one] He continues:

Her visualisations of poesy are different in style and achievement from those of any other lensman of the time. Her contemporaries busy books of verse by Burns, Gray, Milton, Scott, Shakespeare and others with picturesque landscapes, occasionally peopling these with attractively disposed figures in the scenery, just rarely illustrating bodily characters or incidents from the story.[1]

For the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Malcolm Daniel writes:

Her creative goals for photography, informed past the outward appearance and spiritual content of fifteenth-century Italian painting, were wholly original in her medium. She aimed for neither the end and formalized poses common in the commercial portrait studios, nor for the elaborate narratives of other Victorian "high fine art" photographers such as H. P. Robinson and O. G. Rejlander.[2]

Janet Malcolm, in "The Genius of the Glass Firm" writes that "Cameron's compositions have more connection to the family unit album pictures of recalcitrant relatives who take been herded together for the obligatory group movie than they practice to the masterpieces of Western painting" simply that "The beauty that Cameron establish, and in a surprising number of cases was able to arrest, among the aging and aged men of the Victorian literary and fine art establishment is a cornerstone of her achievement".[half-dozen] In 2003, the J. Paul Getty Museum published a complete catalogue of Cameron's known surviving photographs. One caption of a portrait of Alice Liddell (whom Cameron photographed every bit Alethea, Pomona, Ceres, and St. Agnes in 1872) claims that "Cameron'south photographic portraits are considered among the finest in the early history of photography".[30]

In 2018, The Norman Album was deemed by the Reviewing Committee on the Consign of Works of Art 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—1 of the about meaning photographers of the 19th century."[31]

Retrospectives Edit

In 2013, the Metropolitan Museum of Art curated an exhibition of Cameron's work, which garnered significant reviews.[32]

In 2015 the Victoria and Albert Museum in London drew on their extensive collection of her piece of 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, and Lewis Carroll.[33]

The following retrospective exhibitions have focused on Cameron'due south oeuvre:

Title Dates Institution Country
Julia Margaret Cameron 16 December 1960 – 31 January 1961 Limelight Gallery United states of america
Mrs. Cameron's photographs from the life [34] 22 January 1974 – ten March 1974 Stanford Academy Museum of Fine art United states of america
Whisper of the Muse [35] 10 September 1986 – xvi November 1986 Getty Villa United states
Whisper of the Muse at Loyola Marymount University [36] 12 September 1986 – 25 Oct 1986 Laband Gallery Usa
Portrait Photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron [36] 25 November 1987 – fourteen February 1988 National Portrait Gallery United states
Julia Margaret Cameron: The Creative Process [36] 15 October 1996 – 5 January 1997 Getty Villa U.s.a.
4 Feb 1998 – 3 May 1998 Art Gallery of Ontario Canada
Julia Margaret Cameron: Nineteenth Century Photographic Genius [36] half-dozen February 2003 – 26 May 2003 National Portrait Gallery, London United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland
5 June 2003 – xxx Baronial 2003 National Media Museum United Kingdom
Julia Margaret Cameron, Photographer [37] 21 Oct 2003 – 11 January 2004 Getty Center U.s.a.
Julia Margaret Cameron [38] 19 August 2013 – 5 Jan 2014 Metropolitan Museum of Fine art United States
Julia Margaret Cameron [39] 15 Baronial 2015 – 25 October 2015 Art Gallery of New South Wales Australia
Julia Margaret Cameron: Influence and Intimacy [40] 24 September 2015 – 28 March 2016 Science Museum, London Great britain
Julia Margaret Cameron [41] 28 Nov 2015 – 21 February 2016 Victoria and Albert Museum United Kingdom
Julia Margaret Cameron: A Adult female who Breathed Life into Photographs [42] 2 July 2016 – 19 September 2016 Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum Japan

Albums Edit

Title Dedication date
Mia Album 7 July 1863
Watts Anthology 22 February 1864
Herschel Album 26 November 1864[g]
Overstone Album 5 August 1865
Lindsay Anthology –
Thackeray Anthology 1864[h]
Henry Taylor Album –[i]
Norman Album 7 September 1869
Aubrey Ashworth Taylor Album 29 September 1869

Listing of selected publications Edit

  • Cameron, Julia Margaret (1973) [1926]. Victorian photographs of famous men & fair women. Introductions by Virginia Woolf and Roger Fry. D. R. Godine. ISBN978-0-87923-076-0.
  • Cameron, J. M. P. (1875). Illustrations by Julia Margaret Cameron of Alfred Tennyson'due south Idylls of the King and other poems
  • Cameron, J. M. P. (1889). Unfinished autobiography "Annals of my drinking glass house" past Julia Margaret Cameron, written 1874, get-go published 1889
  • Cameron, J. M. (1975). The Herschel album: an anthology 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. One thousand. P., & Weaver, M. (1986). Whisper of the muse: the Overstone anthology & other photographs. Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum

Footnotes Edit

  1. ^ James (1813–1813), Eliza (1814-1818) and Harriet (1828–1828)
  2. ^ Adeline (1812-1836), Sara (1816-1887), Maria (1818-1892), Louisa (1821-1873), Virginia (1827-1910) and Sophia (1829-1911)
  3. ^ All of the sisters spoke Hindustani and French[9] : 12
  4. ^ Herschel coined the terms "photography," "snapshot," and "negative."[13]
  5. ^ Cameron described these subjects as "natives", much every bit she referred to the residents of the Island of Wight as "peasants".[one]
  6. ^ Of the Pre-Raphaelites, "she was closest in her creative ethics and the ethos of her piece of work to Thou. F. Watts".[3]
  7. ^ According to Cameron's dedication, on September eight, 1867 the anthology was "completed & restored with renewed / devotedness of grateful friendship".
  8. ^ The dedication specifies that the album was "Commenced twelvemonth 1864".
  9. ^ This album contains no dedication.

References Edit

  1. ^ a b c d eastward f g h i j m l grand n o p q r s t Ford, Colin (2008). "Cameron, Julia Margaret, 1815–1879". In Hannavy, John (ed.). Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography. London, Great britain: Routledge. Retrieved 28 April 2019.
  2. ^ a b c d e f k h Daniel, Malcolm. "Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879)". The Met'south Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . Retrieved 4 May 2019.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j one thousand fifty m north o p q r s t u 5 w x y z Barlow, Helen (2017). "Cameron [née Pattle], Julia Margaret (1815–1879), photographer". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford Lexicon of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Printing. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/4449. (Subscription or Uk public library membership required.)
  4. ^ a b "Family unit Tree & Genealogy Tools for Julia Margaret (Pattle) Cameron". WikiTree. Retrieved 5 August 2021.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Julia Margaret Cameron". The Fine art Story. 7 August 2018. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
  6. ^ a b c d east f g h i j grand Malcolm, Janet (4 February 1999). "The Genius of the Glass House". The New York Review of Books. ISSN 0028-7504. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
  7. ^ Boatright, Robert M.; Southworth, Helen (2004). The Intersecting Realities and Fictions of Virginia Woolf and Colette – Helen Southworth. ISBN9780814209646.
  8. ^ a b c d e Higgins, Charlotte (22 September 2015). "Julia Margaret Cameron: soft-focus photographer with an iron volition". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
  9. ^ a b c d eastward f one thousand h i j k 50 m n o p q r s t u 5 w x y z aa ab ac advertizement ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au Cox, Julian; Ford, Colin (2003). Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs . Los Angeles, CA: Getty Publications. ISBN0-89236-681-8.
  10. ^ Schama, Simon (2011). A History of Britain: The Fate of Empire 1776-2000 (Paperback). London: The Bodley Head. pp. 178–181. ISBN9781847920140.
  11. ^ a b c d e f one thousand Weiss, Marta. "Julia Margaret Cameron – an introduction". Victoria and Albert Museum . Retrieved 30 April 2019.
  12. ^ a b c d due east Lukitsh, Joanne (2018). "Cameron [Pattle], Julia Margaret". Grove Fine art Online. doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T013434.
  13. ^ a b c d e f Thurman, Judith (10 February 2003). "Angels and Instincts". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 30 Apr 2019.
  14. ^ a b c d eastward f Ford, Colin (2005). "Cameron, Julia Margaret". The Oxford Companion to the Photograph . Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-866271-vi . Retrieved 28 Apr 2019.
  15. ^ Daphne Du Maurier, ed., The Young George Du Maurier: A Option of His Letters, 1860–67 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1952), p. 112, quoted in Leonee Ormond, George Du Maurier (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 103, quoted in Cox, Julian; Ford, Colin (2003). Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs . Los Angeles, CA: Getty Publications. ISBN0-89236-681-8.
  16. ^ "NPG 5046; Julia Margaret Cameron – Portrait Extended". National Portrait Gallery . Retrieved 8 May 2019.
  17. ^ Birch, Dinah (1 January 2009). "Cameron, Julia Margaret". In Dinah Birch (ed.). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-280687-1 . Retrieved 28 Apr 2019.
  18. ^ a b c d "Julia Margaret Cameron". Britannica Bookish . Retrieved 28 April 2019.
  19. ^ "Members of the Regal Photographic Order, 1853–1901". The Majestic Photographic Gild. 2013. Retrieved 27 Oct 2015.
  20. ^ "Julia Margaret Cameron". International Center of Photography. 31 January 2018. Retrieved iii May 2019.
  21. ^ "Julia Margaret Cameron: Related Photographers". Victoria and Albert Museum. 2016. Retrieved 25 March 2018.
  22. ^ AskOxford: The Cod and the Camera Quote is taken from her unpublished autobiography, "Annals of My Glass House."
  23. ^ Ford, Colin (2005). "Cameron, Julia Margaret". The Oxford Companion to the Photo . Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-866271-6 . Retrieved 28 Apr 2019.
  24. ^ Rosenblum, Naomi. A History of Women Photographers. Third ed. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 2010. p. 52.
  25. ^ Rosen, Jeff (2016). Julia Margaret Cameron's 'fancy subjects': photographic allegories of Victorian identity and empire. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 233–234. ISBN9781784997465.
  26. ^ Stephen, L. (1886). Dictionary of national biography: vol. 8. Burton – Cantwell. London: Smith, Elder, & Co.
  27. ^ Woolf, V., & Fry, R. E. (1926). Victorian photographs of famous men & women. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
  28. ^ Gernsheim, H. (1948). Julia Margaret Cameron; her life and photographic work. Famous photographers. London: Fountain Press; distributed in the USA by Transatlantic Arts, New York.
  29. ^ "Photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron of Alice Liddell: Getty Images #90762993". Getty Images. Retrieved 5 March 2013.
  30. ^ "Famed photography anthology at risk of leaving the UK". Authorities of the Britain. Retrieved nine February 2018.
  31. ^ Lane, Anthony, Names and Faces, the portraits of Julia Margaret Cameron, The New Yorker, two September 2013, pages 69–73.
  32. ^ "Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art Photography 1 March – xx May 2018" (Museum exhibition). National Portrait Gallery, London. Retrieved 26 March 2018.
  33. ^ Mozley, Anita Ventura (1974). "Mrs. Cameron'southward photographs from the life" : [exhibition] 22 January-10 March 1974. Palo Alto, California: Department of Art, Stanford University. OCLC 33005764.
  34. ^ Cameron, Julia Margaret; Howard, Jeremy (1990). Whisper of the muse : the world of Julia Margaret Cameron. London: Colnaghi. ISBN978-0-89236-088-8.
  35. ^ a b c d "The Whisper of the Muse / Portrait of One thousand.F. Watts". The J. Paul Getty Museum . Retrieved 29 Nov 2015.
  36. ^ "Julia Margaret Cameron, Photographer". The J. Paul Getty Museum . Retrieved 29 November 2015.
  37. ^ "Julia Margaret Cameron". The Metropolitan Museum of Fine art . Retrieved 29 November 2015.
  38. ^ "Julia Margaret Cameron". Fine art Gallery of New South Wales . Retrieved 29 November 2015.
  39. ^ "Julia Margaret Cameron: Influence and Intimacy". Science Museum . Retrieved 29 November 2015.
  40. ^ "Julia Margaret Cameron". Victoria and Albert Museum . Retrieved 29 November 2015.
  41. ^ "Julia Margaret Cameron: A Adult female who Breathed Life into Photographs". Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum . Retrieved 25 March 2018.

Further reading Edit

  • Ford, Colin (2003). Julia Margaret Cameron: A Disquisitional Biography. Getty Publications. ISBN978-0-89236-707-8.
  • Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert (Jan 2016). "The Taker of Chances". Apollo. 183 (638): 48–54.
  • Lukitsh, Joanne (2006). Julia Margaret Cameron. Phaidon. ISBN9780714846187.
  • Olsen, Victoria (2003). From Life: Julia Margaret Cameron & Victorian Photography. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN978-1-4039-6019-1.
  • Nordstrom, Alison Devine (one April 2001). "Julia Margaret Cameron's Women (review)". Victorian Studies. 43 (3): 499–501. doi:x.1353/vic.2001.0072. ISSN 1527-2052. S2CID 144738863.
  • Rosen, Jeff (2016). Julia Margaret Cameron's 'Fancy Subjects' Manchester University Press
  • Wolf, Sylvia, ed. (1998). Julia Margaret Cameron's Women. Art Establish of Chicago. ISBN978-0-300-07781-0. besides available through MOMA here

External links Edit

  • 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
  • Julia Margaret Cameron 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'south Idylls of the King, illustrated past Julia Margaret Cameron

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Source: https://en.wikidark.org/wiki/Julia_Margaret_Cameron

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