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: The V&A Book of Color in Design

 

The V&A Book of Color in Design

Thames & Hudson/304 pages/$39.95

Reviewed by Ed Voves

Mark Twain was correct. "Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to."

What Twain did not mention is that our blushes only register with other human beings. The ruddy red color which spreads across our faces in moments of embarrassment or mortification cannot be detected by dogs, cats, rabbits and most other animals. The range of color which can be perceived by our four-legged friends is far more limited. Dogs and cats can see some shades of blue and green, but not red. 

Even the bulls of Spain, charging towards the matador's cape, are oblivious to its red hue. These fearsome beasts are goaded into action by the motion of the muleta, not by its vivid color.

Color is a very human matter, fascinating, compelling and confusing. A brilliant new study, The V&A Book of Color in Design, goes a long way to help us grasp the way that people understand and make use of color. 

The science behind humanity's appreciation of color has engaged some of the greatest minds in history. The conflicting theories of Sir Isaac Newton and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe set the tone of the Age of Enlightenment dialogue on color. 

Engraving by René-Henri Digeon of Michel Chevreul's 

Cercle Chromatique (1864)

The modern version of the color wheel, showing how colors relate to each other, is based on the research of Michel Chevreaul during the nineteenth century. Without Chevreul's Cercle Chromatique (1864), the innovations of the Post-Impressionist painters might never have occurred. 

The V&A Book of Color in Design is a collaborative endeavor of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Here Design Studio of London and Thames & Hudson Publishers. 

Edited by Tim Travis, a curator of the V&A's Word & Image Department, the book can be used as a reference source for artists and designers. Organized in chapters devoted to specific colors, 375 works of art and craft from the V&A collection show how color has been used - and sometimes abused - from antiquity to the present day.

Page spread from The V&A Book of Color in Design

Yet, the importance of The V&A Book of Color in Design transcends its role as a historical survey. This is an insight-rich book which will engage thoughtful readers in focusing their eyes on the world around them.

Human beings have been putting color to use for a long time. The introductory chapter discusses the discovery by archaeologist Lawrence Barham of a layer of sediment used by prehistoric humans to create colors, most likely for cave painting and body decoration. Minerals, many excavated at other sites, were painstakingly ground-down with stone tools to extract a wide range of pigments: brown, red, yellow, purple, blue and pink. 

The site of this color "processing" center was the Twin Rivers Cave in Zambia. The complex activity dates to between 200,000 to 400,000 years ago. 

Even if we accept the most recent of these long-ago dates, the implications are astonishing. Colors were already being "man-made" before the first definitive evidence of Homo sapiens, in the shape of skull fragments found in Ethiopia, dating to 195,000 years ago. Scientists conjecture that human language was not prevalent until 150,000 years ago. Thus, color served as a form of self-expression even before our ancestors could verbally articulate their thoughts and feelings.

The fact that many of the minerals had to be transported a considerable distance to be processed into pigments at the Twin Rivers Cave deserves further consideration. Here we see the sequence of the material/spiritual culture of color. Extracted from the earth, processed by human hands, colors were then projected into "higher" value systems. 

The transformation of raw minerals into gleaming treasures fit for the gods - or godlike humans - is best observed in the chapter dealing with the color Blue. "The difficulty and expense of extracting or creating blue materials," the caption text notes, "elevated the color's status among those keen to demonstrated their wealth and taste."

Rare, costly lapis lazuli, unearthed in mines in remote Afghanistan since the dawn of civilization, was used to create works of art of special significance for the religious and royal authorities of many ancient realms. Merchant "princes" later asserted their claim to elite status with prized possessions embellished with lapis lazuli. A particularly notable example is this chess/backgammon set from sixteenth century Venice which incorporated three shades of the rare blue mineral on the rosewood and gold games board.

Venetian Games Board, ca. 1570

The great lengths required in antiquity to procure lapis lazuli explains the efforts of the ancient Egyptians to find a substitute. Turquoise, a semi-precious gemstone, was available closer to home, but not without effort, for the mines were located in the inhospitable Sinai peninsula. In what is almost certainly the first "R&D" initiative in history, the Egyptians developed faience, a glaze for ceramics composed of ground quartz, plant ash, lime water and copper oxide. This was applied to all manner of objects, secular and sacred, giving them a touch of the color of the heavens above. 

The example of Egyptian faience in the The V&A Book of Color in Design is a monumental representation of the scepter of Pharaoh Amenhotep II, ca. 1401 BC.

        

               Monumental Ritual Sceptre (Uas) of Amenhotep II,                   New Kingdom Egypt, c.1427 BC-c.1401 BC.

For once, the superlative photos in the book do not give a real "feel" for the size of this incredible example of ancient Egyptian regalia. To gain that insight, it is necessary to see how it is displayed in the V&A gallery.

Gallery view of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. 

The Ritual Sceptre (Uas) of Amenhotep II appears at right.

Even after the discovery of chemical dyes in the 1850's, the symbolical value of colors remained a central tenant of artists and philosophers. Vasily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and the other Blue Rider artists expounded the "spiritual" nature of color and art, until the drab, uniform brutality of World War I overwhelmed their bold experiments.

Utilizing color has often presented problems. The color Green in oil paintings can quickly fade, an obvious challenge for landscapes painters, like J.M.W. Turner who disliked using it. 

The French glass artist, Emile Charles Gallé, however, mastered this tricky color. He created his Oak Leaf Vase in direct communion with nature. Gallé's personal motto was "my roots are in the depth of the woods." Gazing at this green-hued masterwork for a short time, we find ourselves there as well. 

Emile Charles Gallé, Oak Leaf Vase, ca. 1895

Red is another color with a problematical past and present. As ceramic artists know, Red is a volatile color. A red-glazed piece of pottery requires close attention to the temperature settings of the kiln and to the reduction of the inflow of oxygen in order to achieve the correct color. Even a slight error can ruin the red coloring of a piece.

Red dyes in clothing were also a challenge. The famous redcoats of the British Army often faded to a russet shade of red after a few weeks in the field. Officers normally had uniforms made by private tailors who used cloth colored with more expensive dyes. Thus, the officers' uniforms retained their vibrant hue longer, making them more conspicuous targets. 

British Hunting Coat, 1810-1820

In the case of the fox hunter (above) from the era of Jane Austin, there were no such dangers. Gentlemen's coats were called "hunting pinks" and the foxes were unarmed!

Colors have taken on a vast range of meanings and connotations. The V&A Book of Color in Design is rich in stimulating commentary on the bewildering differences of opinion and belief regarding the various colors. Red, the color of valor - and blood - is also associated with the seductive, sassy lip gloss of "scarlet" women. 

Page spread from The V&A Book of Color in Design

Happy, cheerful Yellow, available in an abundance of hues, has been singularly unlucky in the negative roles and values ascribed to it.

Language has not always been kind to this colour. To yellow is to age and wither. In English slang, "yellow-bellied" refers to a coward, and "yellow journalism" describes fake news. In French and Italian a yellow person ("jaune","giallo") is deemed a traitor, while in German "gelb laune sein" means to be jealous. Jaundice, yellow fever and bubonic plague are all linked to the colour, and some sources of yellow pigments, such as cadmium, lead and chrome, can be toxic.

All of this negativity relating to Yellow can be banished by looking for a few moments at a print of Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers and reflecting on his remark to his brother Theo, "How lovely yellow is!"

In the conflicting court of opinion regarding color, even Black and White are not "black and white" matters. In the Western world, Black is generally the color of mourning, while in East Asia White is worn on such somber occasions. 

During the 1500's and 1600's, Spanish nobles wore black garments almost as a national uniform. However, the great expense of black dyes made such seemingly austere clothing a source of arrogant pride. 

More than a hint of Black's clandestine qualities appears in the portrait miniature, below, painted by Isaac Oliver, ca. 1605. This is a sexually provocative, emotionally charged keepsake to be worn on a chain over a lover's heart!

Isaac Oliver Portrait Miniature of an Unknown Woman, ca. 1605

Who is this Dark Lady with the jaunty hat and the daring decolletage? We don't know. Might this in fact be a portrait of one of the boy actors who portrayed women on the Elizabethan stage? Could she/he be the model for Virginia Woolf's Orlando? It's really up to us to decide!

And that's just the point about color. The multitude of interpretations made available to us by the variegated nature of color is a call for setting free our own imaginations. And that in turn, requires us to open our eyes and minds to the evolving, ever-expanding universe we inhabit.

If The V&A Book of Color in Design has a "moral", it is this: color cannot be defined. It is what we make of it.

By way of confirmation of the awesome possibilities opened to us by color, I experienced a remarkable epiphany while working on this review. I looked up from reading The V&A Book of Color in Design to see a beam of light streaming through a prism which we have hanging in our bedroom window. There on a pillow case, before my eyes, was the color spectrum in all its glory.

Newton's classic experiment on the division of "white" light into all the colors of the rainbow was taking place, guided by an "invisible hand." Totally unaware of what was taking place, I would never have witnessed this incredible moment of synchronicity, had I not looked up. And by some act of good fortune - or grace - I had a small digital camera close at hand to record this amazing event. 

Here, displayed on the pillow case was color in all of its simple, startling beauty. Glancing down on the pages of the V&A book, I saw examples of creative endeavor, decked out in color effects of every hue and shade.

Color is a manifestation of life itself. It is an invitation to you and me to join in, to live in a world of imagination, provided our minds and hearts are open to the experience.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves. Original Photo: Ed Voves. All rights reserved       

Book cover and page spreads, courtesy of Thames and Hudson, Publishers. Collection images, courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Introductory Image: 

Vera Willoughby (British, 1870-1939) Wooden figure showing Vaslav Nijinsky in Mikhail Fokine's ballet "Le Spectre de la rose". Pen and ink drawing, with gouache: Height: 236 mm. Lower edge of base width: 172mm. Victroria & Albert Museum. Cyril W. Beaumont Bequest. # S.703-2001

René-Henri Digeon, engraver (French, 1844-?)  Des couleurs et de leurs applications aux arts industriels à l'aide des cercles chromatiques (Colors and Their Application to Industrial Arts Using Chromatic Circles), 1864; Book written by Michel Eugène Chevreul (French, 1786–1889) Aquatint with yellow, blue, red, and black ink on paper. Cooper Hewitt-Smithsonian National Museum of Design  # ND1280 .C523 1864

Venetian Games Board, ca. 1570. Rosewood and gilding with lapis lazuli: Height: 37.7cm. Width: 48.5 cm. Depth: 2.5cm. Victoria and Albert Museum. Bequeathed by the 7th Duke of Wellington. # W.9-1972

Monumental Ritual Sceptre (Uas) of Amenhotep II, New Kingdom Egypt, c.1427 BC-c.1401 BC. Found in 1894 at Naqada by William Flinders-Petrie, in the temple of the God Seth. Faience (blue-green turquoise-glazed composition, with painted decoration): Weight: 143 lbs (65.0 kg), Height: 7 feet, 1 inch (215.9 cm), Width: (25.0 cm) Victoria & Albert Museum,# 437-1895.

Gallery view of the Victoria and Albert Museum, showing the Monumental Ritual Sceptre (Uas) of Amenhotep II. Victoria and Albert Museum.

Emile Charles Gallé (French,1846-1904)  Oakleaf Vase,  ca. 1895. Cased, wheel-cut, acid-etched and fire-polished glass: Height: 25.3 cm, Width: 15.2 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum. Given by Dr John MacGregor. #  C.599-1920

Unknown Artist/Maker. British Hunting Coat, 1810-1820. Woollen superfine cloth and metal buttons: part-lined with woven sateen and cotton, hand-sewn.  Victoria and Albert Museum.  Purchased with Art Fund support and assistance from the Friends of the V&A, and a number of private donors. # T.100-2003

Isaac Oliver (English, 1565-1617) Portrait Miniature of an Unknown Woman, ca. 1605. Watercolour on vellum: Framed height: 7.5 cm. Framed width: 6 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum. Salting Bequest  # P.130-1910

Ed Voves (Photo, 2021) Color spectrum.