Julia Margaret Cameron

Overview
Extended Catalogue Entry

by Henry Herschel Hay Cameron (later The Cameron Studio)
albumen print, circa 1873
9 5/8 x 8 in. (244 x 203 mm)
Purchased, 1997
Primary Collection
NPG P696

Sitterback to top

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), Pioneer photographer. Sitter in 8 portraits, Artist associated with 114 portraits.

Artistback to top

Henry Herschel Hay Cameron (later The Cameron Studio) (founded 1886), Photographic Studio. Artist associated with 34 portraits.

This portraitback to top

There is no known self-portrait of Julia Margaret Cameron, the innovative (and extremely prolific) photographer of the 1860s and 70s. One photographer whom she trusted to take her portrait was her son Henry Herschel Hay Cameron. Henry opened a photographic studio in .... and was responsible for translating his mother's soft-focus photography into a commercial portrait style.

Linked publicationsback to top

Marsh, Jan, Character Sketches: The Pre-Raphaelites, 1998
Marsh, Jan, The Pre-Raphaelite Circle, 2013, p. 85 Read entry
Cameron named her youngest son after the eminent astronomer, who also translated Homer, 'I wish you could write in a special metre a Divine Poem on Photography,' she wrote to Herschel in 1867; 'and what the sun does to us in one Instant of Time - the imperishable Treasure of a faithful Portrait ...'
Marsh, Jan, Insights: The Pre-Raphaelite Circle, 2005, p. 81
Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 98
Spalding, Frances, Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision, 2014 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 10 July 2014 - 26 October 2014), p. 28
Truss, Lynn, Tennyson and his Circle, 2015, p. 51
Truss, Lynne, Character Sketches: Tennyson and His Circle, 1999, p. 27

Events of 1873back to top

Current affairs

The public entertainment centre Alexandra Palace, designed by architect Owen Jones (associated with the Crystal Palace) and built between Wood Green and Muswell Hill in North London, burns down within sixteen days of opening. Named after Alexandra of Denmark, married to Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales, the palace was quickly rebuilt, and has since been used as a transmission centre for the BBC, and as a musical entertainment venue.

Art and science

Edith Coleridge edits her late mother Sara Coleridge's Memoir and Letters. Sara, the daughter of the poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was an author, translator and editor of her father's works.

International

Inspired by prospectors' demands for better quality trousers during the 1850s Gold Rush, Levi Strauss develops a trouser made with twilled cotton cloth from France called 'serge de Nimes', later known as denim. This year, he patents the process of putting rivets in the trousers for strength, introducing 'blue jeans' to the world.

Tell us more back to top

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Julia Margaret Cameron