NPG P215 (1a/1b/1c)

 

Selected Letters Letter from G.F. Watts to Julia Margaret Cameron, undated, assessing her recent photographs.
  Letter

No. 2
Friday

My dear Mrs Cameron
A thousand thanks for your last Photographs, which I think your very best, I don't know which I prefer, all the heads are divine, & the plates very nearly perfect, the tone too is excellent, if you are going on Photographing your grand child & he is well worth it; do have a little shirt made of some yellowish material, the block of formless white over the back of the larger

  boy spoils the whole picture, what would not do in a painting will not do in a Photograph, but I am delighted with the amount of gradation you have obtained.
Please do not send me valuable mounted copies, you (illegible) send me any (illegible) defective unmounted impressions, I shall be able to judge just as well & shall be just as much charmed with success & shall not feel that I am taking money from you,
I am indeed peeved about (illegible) it is a shocking calamity.
I have not time to write more for I am very hard at work trying to get ready for Freshwater, amongst the things I am at this moment designing a St John
 

one of four figures; to be executed in mosaic for St Pauls, so my mind is tuned to a grand major key & I can well appreciate what is noblest in Art, & your last photographs harmonise well with the effects I wish to produce, but you must not be satisfied there is more to be done & whilst that is the case we must never think anything done, I know your difficulties but the greatest things have been done under difficulties

Your's most sincerely
G.F.W.
Signor