Art Eyewitness Review: Julia Margaret Cameron & Jane Austen Exhibits at the Morgan Library and Museum

Julia Margaret Cameron & Jane Austen at the Morgan

Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron

 May 30-September 14, 2025 

A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250

 June 6-September 14, 2025  

Reviewed by Ed Voves

Whether by chance or design, the Morgan Library and Museum is currently presenting parallel exhibitions detailing the lives of two of Great Britain's most accomplished women. Spanning the era of Britain's greatest global influence, the Morgan exhibitions show how these extraordinary individuals played key roles in shaping the development of literature and photography. 

Both Jane Austen and Julia Margaret Cameron made mighty contributions in exploring and depicting human emotion in naturalistic terms. Though their chosen forms of expression, word and image, were very different, there is an amazing continuum of creative energy and vision in the lives of Austen and Cameron. 

Ed Voves, Photo (2025)

 Gallery views of A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250 and Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron, showing a replica of Jane Austen’s writing table & Julia Margaret Cameron’s lens

Jane Austen with her quill pen, Julia Margaret Cameron with a bulky, wooden box camera steered the development of English fiction and the nascent science of photography toward the realistic modalities we know today.

If, perchance, Jane Austen and Julia Margaret Cameron never struck you as kindred souls, the thought never occurred to me, either. On the surface, their lives were marked by few things in common besides the fact that these two women resided in southern England.

Miniature Portrait of Jane Austen, 19^th century.

 The Morgan Library and Museum.

Jane Austen (1775-1817) was the gentile daughter of a Church of England clergyman. She lived a very insular life in the county of Hampshire. Austen seldom traveled far from her birthplace, Steventon, and the village of Chawton, where she spent her final years, quietly writing and revising her six novels. 

A visit to the nearby resort of Bath or to London was a very big deal for Jane Austen.

If Austen personified the "Little England" temperament, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) embodied the expansive attitudes of the British Empire. 

George Frederic Watts, Julia Margaret Cameron, 1850-52

Cameron was born in India, the daughter an official of the Bengal Civil Service. She married another member of the Anglo-Indian elite, twenty years her senior, by whom she had five children. Five orphaned children of relatives and an Irish beggar child named Mary Ryan were added to her brood, quite a difference from the life style of the unwed, childless Austen.

Julia Margaret Cameron was a take-charge person of decided opinions and not shy about expressing them. Overflowing with energy and ambition - and generosity - Cameron was a true memsahib.

The two exhibitions, each occupying one of the first floor galleries at the Morgan, brilliantly complement each other. 

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) 

Gallery view of Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron

 at the Morgan Library and Museum.

Arresting Beauty draws on the vast holdings of Cameron photographs from the Victoria and Albert Museum. The exhibition has been shown at a number of other museums before coming to the Morgan. An especially notable feature of the exhibit is the display of Cameron's bronze camera lens, made in France. 

Many of the iconic images which Cameron first beheld with her camera lens are on display, along with lesser known though equally impressive ones. When Arresting Beauty concludes at the Morgan, the exhibit photos will return to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The V&A curators will withdraw the pictures from public view as part of a multi-year conservation process.   

So if Cameron's photo of a bored, peevish little girl dressed-up like an angel by Raphael is one of your favorites, see it now!

Ed Voves, Photo (2025)

 Julia Margaret Cameron’s I Wait, 1872 

It should be noted - not by way of criticism - that all the works in Arresting Beauty are by Cameron. The absence of photos by her contemporaries, Roger Fenton, Clementina Hawarden and others, somewhat mutes the revolutionary impact of Cameron's pictures. But other exhibitions, such as From this Moment, Painting is Dead at the Barnes Foundation (2019), frequently provide such a comparative focus.

By contrast, A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250 is a vintage Morgan enterprise.  Walking through this enchanting evocation of Austen's world brings to mind similar tributes at the Morgan to Charlotte Brontë and other literary masters.  Morgan exhibitions of this caliber deserve to be treasured, not merely enjoyed.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025)

 Gallery view of A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250, showing a letter from Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen and a replica of Jane Austen’s Pelisse

Surviving artifacts once owned by Jane Austen are so rare, that several of the most notable items on view in the Morgan exhibit are reproductions. The actual objects are carefully preserved at Jane Austen's House, Chawton, England. 

Jane Austen’s silk pelisse, detail. Reconstruction created by

 Hilary Davidson, 2018. Photography by Luke Shear.

Given the exactitude with which the copy of Austen's silk pelisse was created, as shown by a fascinating video, the display of a replica is not a significant omission. Of course, every "Janeite" would love to see the original, while skeptics of the Jane Austen "cult" are quick to note that the 100% provenance of this elegant garment has yet to be absolutely proven.

However, untoward negativity about Austen memorabilia, along with churlish rebukes of Cameron for getting finger prints on her glass plate negatives, will simply not be tolerated in this review! 

Jane Austen,  Letter to Cassandra Austen, Bath, June 2, 1799.

 Morgan Library and Museum, Photography by Janny Chiu

There are a number of autograph letters and other authentic documents written by Jane Austen. But these are few in number, of necessity. This brings us to a painful head-shaking moment, which ultimately confronts all Austen scholars and enthusiasts: the destruction of the greater part of her letters.

Cassandra Austen, the author's sister, carefully sifted through her impressive archive of Austen's letters. She kept 160 and burned the rest. This occurred late in Cassandra's life, during the 1840's. By then, the identity of  "A Lady" was established as the author of Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and the rest of the immortal novels. Austen's reputation was beginning to soar. Why destroy her letters?

The motivation was certainly not sibling envy or anger. The wall text of the Morgan exhibit quotes Cassandra on the day following Jane's death, "She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow. It is as if I have lost a part of myself."

The act of destroying correspondence after a person's death was actually a routine matter during the 1800's. But Cassandra Austen's action perfectly illustrates the law of unintended consequences. In seeking to safeguard her sister's privacy, she created the mystery and mystique of Jane Austen.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025)

 Gallery views of A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250

In a surviving letter, Jane Austen stated that she wrote for "fame" not financial profit. This remark may well have been a joke between sisters, considering that her name did not appear on the title pages of her novels. We do know that Austen had a wonderful sense of humor, richly endowed with an awareness of the human comedy. 

The Regency Age, in which Austen lived, certainly supplied abundant grist for the mill of ironical commentary. Here are two examples from the Morgan exhibition.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) 

French language translation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility

 by Isabelle de Montolieu, 1815

One of the fascinating objects on view at the Morgan is the French translation of Sense and Sensibility. A then-famous Swiss novelist, Isabelle de Montolieu, largely rewrote the novel to suit her taste, making Marianne Dashwood the main character, rather than her sister, Eleanor. De Montolieu boldly placed her name under the title of what she admitted was a "free translation." Austen was not consulted and likely never knew of this outrageous act of literary piracy. 

Another Regency-era scandal infiltrated the quiet world of Jane Austen. It is documented in the exhibition by an engraving made by William Blake of the celebrated "Mrs. Q". Austen saw the original painting in 1813. She was much taken by the portrait, believing it to be a fair resemblance of Jane Bennet (aka Mrs. Bingley) in Pride and Prejudice.

William Blake, Portrait of Mrs. Q., 1820 

The Morgan Library & Museum.

"Mrs Bingley is exactly herself," Austen wrote, comparing her protagonist to the visage of Mrs Q, "size, shaped face, features & sweetness; there never was a greater likeness... 

Never a greater likeness? On the surface, perhaps. Mrs Q was Georgiana Quentin, the wife of British cavalry officer, serving in the campaigns against Napoleon. While her hero husband was fighting at Waterloo, Mrs Quentin was serving the British government in another capacity  - as the mistress of the Prince Regent.

What these two less-than-admirable incidents illustrate is the kind of tawdry subject matter which might have infused the letters and other private writings of Jane Austen. Family gossip, anxiety over health, the price of dining in London  and, perhaps, the lack of a husband with a sizable income - these may also have figured in the many letters consigned to the flames.

Not exactly the stuff of literary immortality.

Instead of being remembered merely as a Regency-era figure, Jane Austen's reputation has grown with each generation until she has become revered like Shakespeare as "not of an age but for all time."

Ed Voves, Photo (2025)

Gallery view of A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250, 

showing a display of modern editions of Pride and Prejudice 

The Morgan exhibit presents a fitting tribute to the"global" Jane Austen. A awesome array of popular editions of Pride and Prejudice testifies to the world-wide reach and enduring appeal of Austen and her beloved novels.

These wonderful books are on loan to the Morgan from an archive of Austen documents and memorabilia, collected by a great Jane Austen enthusiast named Alberta H. Burke. This collection was later donated to Goucher College in Baltimore.

The Pride and Prejudice display may also bring a smile or two to your lips, in keeping with Austen's remarkable comedic ability. I am still trying to decide which book cover is the funnier, the 1969 Italian edition which presents Eliza Bennet as a domintrix or the Serbian cover with an image of Jane Austen on what appears to be a 1950's black and white TV with bad reception.

Can the same glowing accolade that Ben Jonson bestowed on Shakespeare be extended to Julia Margaret Cameron, as well as Jane Austen? I certainly believe so. But rather than trying to prove this by a close study of Cameron's oeuvre, I will take a different approach.

Earlier in this essay, I stated that Jane Austen's reputation benefited from the "law of unintended consequences." So too, did that of Julia Margaret Cameron. 

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) 

Gallery view of Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron

 at the Morgan Library and Museum.

Although Cameron had never touched a camera before receiving one as a Christmas present in 1863, she was not a complete amateur. She numbered the Swedish photographer, Oscar Gustave Rejlander, among her many friends. Before she began taking photos of her own, Cameron had practiced developing copies of Rejlander's from his glass-plate negatives.

Since Rejlander was famous for his tableau-vivant versions of Old Master paintings, it would have been natural for Cameron to follow suit. But it did not work out that way.

In a famous quote - which the Morgan uses in the exhibition title - Cameron proclaimed "I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and at length the longing has been satisfied."

Ed Voves, Photo (2025)

 Julia Margaret Cameron’s Angel at the Tomb (detail), 1870

Try though she might, and Cameron did try, "beauty" resisted her "arrest."

Cameron's attempts to use Bible stories and Arthurian legends as her theme seldom worked. When she tried to reprise Michelangelo's Erythraean Sibyl from the Sistine Chapel, the result did not evoke the Renaissance. Nor did this strikingly modern picture, dating to 1864, correspond to mid-Victorian aesthetics.

 

Contrasting views of Michelangelo’s Erythraean Sibyl and Julia Margaret Cameron’s A Sibyl after the manner of Michelangelo, 1864.

In 1877, an article in the American news journal, Harper's Weekly, astutely commented upon the reception of Cameron's photos at a London exhibition.

Photographers particularly turned up their noses at them, and held them as examples of the very worst photographs possible; and yet withal there was a mysterious quality about them which one could scarcely explain without analyzing them carefully. There was an amount of art feeling so suggestive that it claimed attention and admiration in spite of the faults which were apparent, and this very suggestiveness tempted many art critics to go into raptures over her work as something beyond the range of ordinary photographic achievement.

The "mysterious quality ... beyond the range of ordinary photographic achievement" was a manifestation of Cameron's innate genius. Cameron's talent lay in unlocking the true character of the people posing before her camera. Not tableau-vivants or role playing, but the real people beneath the often ridiculous costumes she induced them to wear.

To pose for Cameron, according to her friend and neighbor, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was to be a "victim." But in the course of these agonizing photo sessions, Cameron's creative alchemy seldom failed. Drawing on her inner "mystery", Cameron portrayed an ancient sibyl in modern garb. Taking her talents a step further, Cameron infused a sense of the ethereal, ineffable human soul into her portrait of Alice Liddel, posing as St. Agnes.

Julia Margaret Cameron, St. Agnes, 1872

The "mysterious quality ... beyond the range of ordinary" characterized the lives of Jane Austen and Julia Margaret Cameron. The origin of this "mysterious quality" is beyond the scope of an essay like this. But I have no doubt that the spiritual lives of Austen and Cameron instilled in them a sense of vision that raised their creative works to the status of high art.

In a beautiful touch, the Morgan curators have projected the words of Jane Austen's memorial from the north aisle of Winchester Cathedral on to the gallery floor of the Morgan.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) 

The words of the memorial for Jane Austen at Winchester Cathedral,

 projected on to the floor of the Morgan Library and Museum

Austen's memorial makes no mention of her literary talent or publishing success. Instead, it makes note of her "charity, devotion, faith and purity" which her family hoped would render "her soul acceptable in the sight of her Redeemer."

These heartfelt words are equally applicable to Julia Margaret Cameron who is buried in a neglected grave in Sri Lanka.

"Charity, devotion, faith and purity." Words to live by, words to create by, of an age and for all time.

***

Text and original images: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved.  

Unless otherwise noted all of the photos exhibiting in the Julia Margaret Cameron exhibition are from the Royal Photographic Society Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Introductory Image: Henry Herschel Hay Cameron (British 1852-1911) Julia Margaret Cameron, c. 1873. Albumen Print: 20 1/16 x 16 in. (50.96 x 40.64 cm.)  V&A

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery views of A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250 and Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron at the Morgan Library and Museum. Shown in the pictures are  replica of Jane Austen’s writing table from Jane Austen’s House, Chawton, U.K. and Julia Margaret Cameron’s camera lens, 5 ½ x 5 ½ x 11 13/16 inches ( 14 x 14 x 300 cm.) V&A collection.

Anonymous, Miniature Portrait of Jane Austen, 19^th century. The Morgan Library and Museum. AZ078

George Frederic Watts (British, 1817-1904) Julia Margaret Cameron, 1850-52. Oil on canvas: 24 x 20 in. (610 x 508 mm.) National Portrait Gallery, London. NPO 505046

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery view of Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron at the Morgan Library and Museum.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Julia Margaret Cameron’s I Wait, 1872. Albumen print: 24 x 19 15/16 in. (60.9. x 50.7. cm.) V&A

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery views of A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250, showing a display of an autograph letter from Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen  and replica of Jane Austen’s Pelisse

Jane Austen’s silk pelisse, detail view. Reconstruction created by Hilary Davidson, 2028. On loan from Jane Austen”s House, Chawton, U.K. Photography by Luke Shear.

Jane Austen (1775-1817) Autograph letter to Cassandra Austen, Bath, June 2, 1799. Morgan Library and Museum, MA 977.4 Photography by Janny Chiu

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery view of A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250, at the Morgan Library and Museum

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) French language translation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility by Isabelle de Montolieu, 1815. From the Alberta H. Burke collection, Goucher College, Baltimore.

William Blake (1757-1827) Portrait of Mrs. Q. (Harriet Quentin), 1820. Stipple etching/engraving with mezzotint. The Morgan Library & Museum. 1998:36:4.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery view of the A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250 exhibition, showing a display of modern editions of Pride and Prejudice in various European languages.

Art Eyewitness Image, showing Orgoglio e pregiudizio. (Milan: Editrice Piccoli, 1969), and Gordost I predasuda (Belgrade: Knjiga za Svakog, 1964) Both books from the Alberta and Henry Burke collection, Goucher College, Baltimore, Md.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery view of Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron at the Morgan Library and Museum.

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Julia Margaret Cameron’s Angel at the Tomb (detail), 1870.

Art Eyewitness Image. Contrasting views of Michelangelo’s Erythraean Sibyl and Julia Margaret Cameron’s A Sibyl after the manner of Michelangelo, 1864.

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879)  St. Agnes (Alice Liddel) 1872. Albumen print: 21 15/16 x 17 in. (55.7 x 43. cm.)

Ed Voves, Photo (2025) Gallery view of the A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250 exhibition, showing a projection of the words of the memorial for Jane Austen on the north aisle of Winchester Cathedral.

Art Eyewitness Book Review: Julia Margaret Cameron: a Poetry of Photography

 

Art Eyewitness Book Review: 

Julia Margaret Cameron: a Poetry of Photography
Bodleian Library Publishing/University of Chicago Press
279 pages/$75.00

Reviewed by Ed Voves

As Christmas presents go, the large box camera given to Julia Margaret Cameron in December 1863 was a gift to cherish - by Mrs. Cameron and by art lovers ever since.

A camera in 1863 was a most unusual choice for a Christmas gift. More of a "contraption" than a life-enhancing device, cameras were bulky and difficult to use. Taking photos required 12 x 10 glass plate negatives and potentially hazardous chemical solutions, the "wet collodion process", to develop pictures.

"It may amuse you, Mother, to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater." 

The holiday greeting from her daughter and son-in-law, who had selected the gift, seems more concerned with the "empty-nest" syndrome facing Mrs. Cameron than any idea that she might make her mark as a photographer. A devoted mother of six grown or adolescent children, Mrs. Cameron now had plenty of time to devote to a new pastime.

Julia Margaret Cameron,

A Story of the Heavens (Freddy Gould & Elizabeth Keown)1866 

Julia Margaret Cameron did not regard the box camera with alarm or as passing fancy. Cameron was an intelligent, cultured woman. Her sensitive features had been captured in an 1850 portrait by the noted painter, G.F. Watts, who was to play a prominent role in her photographic career.

George Frederic Watts, Julia Margaret Cameron, 1850-52 

                                                         

We will never know if Cameron's daughter and son-in-law suspected the extent of her artistic abilities. Prior to December 1863, the 48-year old "gentlewoman" had experimented printing from the negatives of photographer-friend, Oscar Gustave Rejlander. But, upon opening her Christmas present, Cameron's life was truly transformed. 

"From the first moment," Cameron wrote, "I handled my lens with a tender ardour and it has become to me as a living thing, with a voice and memory and creative vigour.".

The life and photographic career of Julia Margaret Cameron are the subject of a magnificent, large-format volume published by the Bodleian Library of Oxford University and distributed in the U.S. by the University of Chicago Press. Julia Margaret Cameron: a Poetry of Photography is a book to treasure, the next best thing to enjoying an exhibition of Cameron's photos.

At this point, it should be noted that the Bodleian volume is not a complete record of Cameron's oeuvre. Gaps in the story of Cameron's embrace of photography result from the content of what is known as the Taylor Album.

In 1930, the Bodleian Library received a collection of 112 original Cameron photographs bound in a scrapbook-like volume. This impressive assemblage of photos was donated by the daughter of Sir Henry Taylor. A close friend of Cameron's husband, Taylor was a confidente and supporter of her as well. Taylor's "serious, unyielding" expression, complemented by a flowing-beard, made him an ideal model (as we will discuss) for Cameron's  photography. 

Julia Margaret Cameron, Henry Taylor, 1864 

The bequest of the Taylor Album to the Bodleian Library made many of Cameron's greatest works available to scholars. However, the album contained no examples of her sensitive, late-life photos of the people of Ceylon, modern-day Sri Lanka. Cameron took these photos during the late 1870's, when she accompanied her husband back to Ceylon, where he owned coffee plantations. She died and was buried in Ceylon in 1879.

This caveat aside, Julia Margaret Cameron: a Poetry of Photography is a compelling testament to Cameron's "creative vigour." The insightful text by Nichole J. Fazio cogently discusses Cameron's efforts to "ennoble photography." A lover of Renaissance painting, Cameron grasped the potential of photography to achieve the status of high art. 

"I longed to arrest all the beauty that came before me," Cameron wrote, "and at length that longing has been satisfied."

"At length" was, in actuality, an astonishingly short interval between Cameron's initial attempts to take a photo and her breakthrough "first success."

After a mere three weeks of experimentation, Cameron created a portrait of a young girl, Annie Philpot, which was to prove a major contribution to the development of photography.

The picture of Annie Philpot differed from the sharp, stiff exactitude of mid-Victorian photography. The background of Annie was out-of-focus. Deep pools of shadow shrouded the girl's eyes. It was more a portrait of a passing moment in a child's life than a meticulous record of her features.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Annie (Annie Philpot), 1864 

In her autobiographical essay, Annals of My Glass House, Cameron recalled the magic moment when she glimpsed the image on the 12 x 10 inch glass negative.

"I was in a transport of delight. I ran all over the house to search for gifts for the child. I felt as if she entirely had made the picture. I printed, toned, fixed and framed it, and presented it to her father that same day." 

Another print of Annie was inscribed, "My first success with photography."

Julia Margaret Cameron, G.F. Watts, 1864

                                                                                   

Cameron was fortunate in having the painter Watts as an appreciative friend and mentor. Watts brought a "fresh pair of eyes" and an open mind to the appraisal of Cameron's photos. Watts wrote to Cameron:

Please do not send me valuable mounted copies ... send me any .. defective unmounted impressions, I shall be able to judge just as well & shall be just as much charmed with success...

Watts also posed for Cameron for several early attempts to invest photography with symbolic content, notably Whisper of the Muse, 1865. Cameron made two versions of the photo; the first (below), stressed the ineffable moment of inspiration. The second was a more distinct portrait of Watts, though the configuration of the photo was essentially the same.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Whisper of the Muse, 1865

Many of the experts of the professional photographic "fraternity" were not so obliging as Watts. Cameron was harshly criticized for her "imprecise" focus and "sloppy" technique. 

In fact, smudges and an occasional finger print did find their way onto some of Cameron's negatives. But Cameron was driven to radical experimentation. She sought to summon the spirit, the very souls, of the people being photographed onto the images she created.

In approaching photography from a spiritual perspective, Cameron drew on the ideals of the "sublime" which lay at the heart of Romanticism. Nicole Fazio writes:

The invisible presence of the sublime may be what leaves such an impression upon viewers of Cameron's work. She capitalizes on the capacity of her medium to make visible the real as it exists before her lens, but at the same time infuses her most successful images with a sense of that which exists just below the surface.

Cameron's astonishing facility to use the camera lens to capture what "exists just below the surface" is manifest in her portraits of individual people and of models posing to illustrate religious and poetic-themed topics. A contrasting look at two similarly posed photos, dating to the same time, 1866-67, is very revealing.

Julia Margaret Cameron,

 Mrs. Herbert Duckworth/Julia Jackson, 1867 

The first is a portrait of Julia Jackson, Cameron's niece and god-daughter. It is a haunting image of a young person facing her future, the "great unknown" of life.

Julia Jackson married Herbert Duckworth in 1867. After his tragic, early death in 1870 - and a long period of Victorian mourning - she married Leslie Stephen in 1878. Their daughter, Virginia, born in 1882 would bear a striking resemblance to her mother. In Cameron's photo of Julia, we can see a glimpse of the face and the intellect of Virginia Woolf.

Julia Margaret Cameron,

 Portrait of Christabel (May Prinsep)1866 

Cameron's model for Christabel was another favorite sitter, May Prinsep. Here Prinsep posed as the protagonist of the unfinished narrative poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The "lovely lady" Christabel falls under the malign spell of a sorceress, an enchantment brilliantly evoked by the "soft" focus of Cameron's photo.

Interestingly, May Prinsep also posed for Cameron as the youthful St. John, the "apostle whom Jesus loved" in an even more "imprecise" picture (with a finger print at the top edge of the photo)!

Julia Margaret Cameron, Head of St. John (May Prinsep), 1866 

Both of the photos of Prinsep - and of the portrait of Julia Jackson - reveal how the manipulation of a camera lens can leave much to  the viewer to consider and decide. Cameron orchestrated the composition of these remarkable photos but left the last adjustment of the lens, the final focus, for us to make ... in our mind's eye.

If Watts acted as a valued mentor, Sir Henry Taylor (1800-1886) came close to the role of collaborator in Cameron's efforts to "ennoble" photography.  As well as being an important official in the British Colonial Office, Taylor was a serious poet and playwright. His early life had been shattered by family tragedy, thus making him sensitive to the lives of others. Cameron regarded him with emotions close to hero worship.

Taylor's venerable face proved a perfect "canvas" for Cameron's character-probing portraits. But Cameron was interested in far more than representative facial features. With Taylor and other "high minded" individuals, she declared her aim to record "the inner as well as the features of the outer man."

To visualize the inner/outer nature of humanity, Cameron planned to use photography to illustrate incidents and episodes showing noble thoughts and sentiments translated into practice. Cameron aimed to depict scenes from the Holy Bible and English literature, thus "combining the real and the ideal and sacrificing nothing of the Truth..."

Julia Margaret Cameron,

 Prospero and Miranda (Henry Taylor and Mary Ryan), 1865 

Taylor posed as a pensive King David, Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest and Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet. Two servants from the Cameron household were cast as Taylor's co-stars, Mary Ryan as Miranda and Mary Ann Hillier as Juliet.

With only a year of experience in photography, Cameron was taking an audacious step forward and she might-well have stumbled. But she did not. 

Instead of trying to rival large scale allegories like Rejlander's vast photo montage, The Two Ways of Life, Cameron made a virtue of simplicity. Two figures, expertly juxtaposed with faces and (in the case of Miranda) figures emerging from the the shadows create an indelible image. 

If Cameron's Biblical and Shakespearean scenes seem "dated" today, they do so in a manner similar to "dated" movie still photos of the early decades of the twentieth century. This implies that the "look" of Cameron's photos was decades ahead of their time and have a cinematic quality to them - true on both counts!

Following the success of these 1865 images, Cameron posed models from her circle of family, friends and servants to illustrate characters and episodes in Alfred Lord Tennyson's poems. Some of the Arthurian group photos were problematical. In a bit of a gaffe, Cameron used British Army dragoon helmets for the headgear of Arthur and Lancelot.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Call, I Follow, I Follow, Let Me Die, 1867 

For the most part, however, Cameron's photos illustrating The Idylls of the King and other Tennyson poems are as vivid today as they were in the 1860's and 70's. Whether it is the searching look of "May Queen" Emily Peacock which introduces this review or the dramatic profile of Mary Ann Hillier as the Arthurian heroine, Elaine, these are images which grip the heart and mind - and don't let go.

Over the course of a little over a decade, Cameron took more than 800 photos - a sensational achievement. But in 1875, the year Emily Peacock posed for ‘For I’m to be Queen o’ the May...', Cameron's photographic career came to an effective end.

The Cameron family fortune was based, as we have seen, on coffee plantations in Ceylon. The task of managing these distant plantations was never easy, requiring occasional trips by Cameron's husband. The 1870's were a decade of world-wide economic woe and the Camerons fell deeply in debt. Although Charles Cameron was 80 years of age and in poor health, he determined to return to Ceylon in 1875. Julia, aged 60, faithfully, if reluctantly, accompanied him.

Henry Herschel Hay Cameron, Julia Margaret Cameron, c. 1873

This image does not appear in Julia Margaret Cameron: A Poetry of Photography

Julia Margaret Cameron knew that she was unlikely ever to return to England. When she departed for Ceylon, she took her faithful box camera with her - and a coffin.

The Idylls of the Queen of British photography were over. But the legacy of Julia Margaret Cameron remains, in the way we look at the world and attempt to "arrest" its beauty with the lens of a camera. 

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved   

Cover art, courtesy of Bodleian Library Publishing/University of Chicago Press                                                                     

Introductory Image:

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879 ‘For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, Mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May, (Emily Peacock) 1875. Albumen print: 35 x 27.5 cm. From Illustrations to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and Other Poems, vol. 2, 1875. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Arch. K b.18. no 2

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879) A Story of the Heavens (Freddy Gould and Elizabeth Keown), 1866. Albumen print: 25.4 x 19.7 cm. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Arch. K b.12. fol. 71r

George Frederic Watts (British, 1817-1904) Julia Margaret Cameron, 1850-52. Oil on canvas: 24 x 20 in. (610 x 508 mm.) National Portrait Gallery, London. NPO 505046

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879) Henry Taylor, 1864. Albumen print: 25.4 x 19.6 cm. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Arch. K b.12. fol. 6r

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879) Annie (Annie Philpot), 1864 (Inscription: ‘My first success’). Albumen print: 19.1 x 13.5 cm. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Arch. K b.12. fol. 20v

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879)  G.F. Watts, 1864. Albumen print: 25.4 x 19.7 cm. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Arch. K b.12. fol. 71r

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879) Whisper of the Muse (George Frederic Watts), 1865. Albumen print: 26.7 x 21.2 cm. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Arch. K b.12. fol. 70r

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879)  Mrs. Herbert Duckworth /Julia Jackson, 1867. Albumen print: 25.2 x 19 cm. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Arch. K b.12. fol. 23v

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879) Portrait of Christabel (May Prinsep), 1866. Albumen print: 25.4 x 20.2 cm. Oxford,  Ashmolean Museum WAHP48555

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879) Head of Saint John (May Prinsep), 1866. Albumen print: 32.7 x 27 cm. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum WA2009.184

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879) Prospero and Miranda (Henry Taylor and Mary Ryan), 1865. Albumen print: 31.6 x 26.6 cm. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Arch. K b.12. fol. 13r

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879) Call, I Follow, I Follow, Let Me Die (Mary Ann Hillier), 1867. Carbon print: 35.1 x 26.7 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Henry Herschel Hay Cameron (British 1852-1911) Julia Margaret Cameron, c. 1873. Albumen Print. 244 x 203 mm.  National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG P696.