Alfred, Lord Tennyson

1 portrait of Alfred, Lord Tennyson

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Alfred, Lord Tennyson

by Julia Margaret Cameron
albumen print, arched top, May 1865
9 3/4 in. x 7 7/8 in. (249 mm x 201 mm)
Purchased, 1929
Photographs Collection
NPG x18024

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), Pioneer photographer. Artist or producer associated with 119 portraits, Sitter in 9 portraits.

This portraitback to top

Julia Margaret Cameron was one of the first and remains one of the greatest portrait photographers. The wife of a coffee-planter in Ceylon, she took up photography in her late forties, strongly influenced by the mid-Victorian fascination for High Renaissance painting and by the Romantic medievalism of the pre-Raphaelites. Before taking up photography, she had bought two cottages at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight, which she called 'Dimbola' after her house in Ceylon. Tennyson, who had long been a friend, was now a neighbour. He was to be one of her most important sources of inspiration, both in her illustrations for his Idylls of the King and, more generally, as a source for her style of poetic romance. She photographed him on a number of occasions. This was the version he liked best, writing under it, 'I prefer the Dirty Monk to the others of me.'

Linked publicationsback to top

  • 100 Portraits, p. 76
  • Victorian Portraits Resource Pack, p. 32
  • Funnell, Peter, Victorian Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery Collection, 1996, p. 32
  • Funnell, Peter (introduction); Marsh, Jan, A Guide to Victorian and Edwardian Portraits, 2011, p. 47 Read entry

    Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-92), who succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1851, won popular recognition and celebrity with the publication of In Memoriam (1850), ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ (1854) and his Arthurian poems, Idylls of the King (1859). Julia Margaret Cameron took up photography in her late forties and was strongly influenced by painting and by the Romantic medievalism of the Pre-Raphaelites. Cameron was a close friend and neighbour of Tennyson on the Isle of Wright, and he was to be one of her most important sources of inspiration, both in her illustrations for his Idylls of the King and, more generally, as a source for her style of poetic romance. She photographed him on a number of occasions. This was the portrait he liked best, writing under it, ‘I prefer the Dirty Monk to the others of me.’

  • Saumarez Smith, Charles, The National Portrait Gallery: An Illustrated Guide, 2000, p. 134
  • Saumarez Smith, Charles, The National Portrait Gallery, 1997, p. 134 Read entry

    Julia Margaret Cameron was one of the first and remains one of the greatest portrait photographers. The wife of a coffee-planter in Ceylon, she took up photography in her late forties, strongly influenced by the mid-Victorian fascination for High Renaissance painting and by the Romantic medievalism of the Pre-Raphaelites. Before taking up photography, she had bought two cottages at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight, which she called 'Dimbola' after her house in Ceylon. Tennyson, who had long been a friend, was now a neighbour. He was to be one of her most important sources of inspiration, both in her illustrations for his Idylls of the King and, more generally, as a source for her style of poetic romance. She photographed him on a number of occasions. This was the version he liked best, writing under it, 'I prefer the Dirty Monk to the others of me.'

Linked displays and exhibitionsback to top

Events of 1865back to top

Current affairs

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson is the first female to be awarded a doctor's licence. She is also involved in collecting signatures for the Manchester Suffrage Committee, the first suffrage organisation, formed this year. John Stuart Mill was also elected to parliament this year on the platform of women's suffrage.
Palmerston dies in October, and is replaced as leader of the Liberal government by his Foreign Secretary, Lord Russell.

Art and science

Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland is published, inspired by Carroll's relationship (as Oxford don Charles Dodgson) with his friend Henry George Liddell's daughter Alice.
Matthew Arnold publishes the first series of Essays in Criticism, a defining text in the development of English literature as an academic discipline.

International

In the American civil war, Robert E. Lee surrenders the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant, leading to the surrender of the Confederacy's remaining field armies. A few days later, US President Abraham Lincoln is shot dead by Confederate sympathiser John Wilkes Booth. Later this year slavery is officially abolished after years of fierce campaigning. In response, the first branch of the Ku Klux Klan is founded on Christmas Eve.

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