Julia
Margaret Cameron was an English photographer known for her portraits of
eminent people of the day, and for her romantic pictures which, despite
their technical imperfections, stand the test of time. b. 11 June 1815; d. 26 January 1879
Julia
Margaret Cameron was an English photographer known for her portraits of
eminent people of the day, and for her romantic pictures which, despite
their technical imperfections, stand the test of time.
Her involvement in photography came about as a result of the kindness of her eldest daughter. Julia Margaret, by this time was aged forty-nine, her children had grown up, and her husband was often abroad on business. As a result she suffered from loneliness, and her daughter, to make her life more fulfilling, bought her a camera. From this simple beginning a new hobby began, which was to turn into an obsession. The comments in her book give a delightful glimpse of this lady:
"I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and at length the longing has been satisfied. Its difficulty enhanced the value of the pursuit. I began with no knowledge of the art. I did not know where to place my dark box, how to focus my sitter, and my first picture I effaced to my consternation by rubbing my hand over the filmy side of the glass..."
"I turned my coal-house into my dark room, and a glazed fowl-house I had given to my children became my glass house! The hens were liberated, I hope and believe not eaten. The profit of my boys upon new laid eggs was stopped, and all hands and hearts sympathised in my new labour, since the society of hens and chickens was soon changed for that of poets, prophets, painters and lovely maidens...."
As to the delight that her first successful portrait brought her......
"I took one child... appealing to her feelings and telling her of the waste of poor Mrs. Cameron's chemicals and strength if she moved. The appeal had its effect, and I now produced a picture which I called "My first success."
"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: size 11 by 9 inches."
"Sweet, sunny haired little Annie! No later prize has effaced the memory of this joy....."
It has to be said that Julia Margaret Cameron was not the best of technicians. Some of her negatives show uneven coating of collodion, and above all, dust particles. Many of her prints are faded. Indeed, a critical entry in the Photographic Journal commented: "Mrs. Cameron will do better when she has learned the proper use of her apparatus." Lewis Carroll's comments were in the same vein:
"In the evening Mrs. Cameron and I had a mutual exhibition of photographs. Hers are all taken purposely out of focus - some are very picturesque - some merely hideous - however, she talks of them as if they were triumphs of art."
Nevertheless, Cameron had a tremendous capacity to visualise a picture, and her portraits show a measure of vitality which the work of many others of the time did not. Among her most famous portraits are those of Herschel and Tennyson. She was greatly appreciated abroad, and won a number of major prizes. No less a person than Victor Hugo, the poet, wrote "No one has ever captured the rays of the sun and used them as you have. I throw myself at your feet". She must also have been a tremendously magnetic personality; Benjamin Jowett wrote of her: "Perhaps she has a tendency to make the house shake the moment she enters, but in this dull world that is a very excusable fault".
She was also influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite school, which sought to return to artistic practices of Europe in late Mediaeval times; a classic example is the delightful portrait of Alice Liddell (on whom the story of Alice in Wonderland is based), entitled "Alethea." Another is the "Kiss of Peace." Many of her photographs of women and children are undisguisedly sentimental, others are delightful and penetrating studies.
Exposures lasting between one minute and as many as seven, the fact that the pictures show such lack of self consciousness may be largely due to her overpowering personality.
We tend to remember her best pictures. Some, to put it mildly, were pretty awful. "Idylls of the King" , for example, has a very poor attempt at a moon on the top left, and cheesecloth to represent water, whilst "The Passing of Arthur" almost verges on the ridiculous! Looking beyond the banal, some remain as rather lovely pictures; an example is "Venus Chiding Cupid and Removing His Wings."
One of photography's eccentrics, her work is still admired and greatly sought-after today. In her book "Annals of my Glass House", which was unfinished, she wrote of the distinguished people who faced her camera:
"When I have such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavoured to do its duty towards them, in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man"
The photographic press spoke harshly of her technical mastery of photography, or rather the lack of it; Thomas Sutton wrote of her work:
"Admirable, expressive and vigorous, but dreadfully opposed to photographic conventions and proprieties"
whilst The Photographic Journal for 15 February 1865 reads:
"Mrs. Cameron exhibits her series of out of focus portraits of celebrities. We must give this lady credit for daring originality but at the expense of all other photographic qualities."
The Photographic News, 20 March 1868, reporting upon one of her exhibitions in London, reads:
"There is, in many cases, much evidence of art feeling, especially in the light and shade, and composition... often being awkward. The subjects... such as Sir John Herschel, Henry Taylor, Holman Hunt, Alfred Tennyson and others - are full of interest in themselves, and are often noble in form and appearance, a circumstance which alone gives value to the exhibition. Not even the distinguished character of some of the heads serve, however, to redeem the result of wilfully imperfect photography from being altogether repulsive: one portrait of the Poet Laureate presents him in a guise which would be sufficient to convict him, if he were ever charged as a rogue and vagabond, before any bench of magistrates in the kingdom......."
Her force of personality made her a formidable photographer, capable of bullying anyone, however famous, into submission. Sitting for her could be quite an ordeal. Tennyson once brought Longfellow to her studio, warning him:
"Longfellow, you will have to do whatever she tells you. I shall return soon and see what is left of you."
Commenting about a portrait of Wilfred Ward, she once wrote to a friend:
"I counted four hundred and five hundred and got one good picture. Poor Wilfrid said it was torture to sit so long, that he was a martyr! I bid him be still and be thankful. I said, I am the martyr. Just try the taking instead of the sitting!"
Because she believed in subdued lighting and had large photographic plates, exposures could last several minutes. After each picture had been taken she would disappear into her coal-cellar cum darkroom, to prepare another plate, her victims having been warned not to move a muscle.
She was clearly supported by a long-suffering family. In her book she writes:
"Personal sympathy has helped me on very much. My husband from first to last has watched every picture with delight, and it is my daily habit to run to him with every glass upon which a fresh glory is newly stamped, and to listen to his enthusiastic applause. This habit of running into the dining-room with my wet pictures has stained such an immense quantity of table linen with nitrate of silver, indelible stains, that I should have been banished from any less indulgent household...."
Cameron received honours abroad, but recognition did not come easily at home. She wrote:
"The Photographic Society of London in their Journal would have dispirited me very much had I not valued that criticism at its worth. It was unsparing and too manifestly unjust for me to attend to it...."
She presented an album to Sir John Herschel; this is now in the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Julia died in Ceylon in January 1879. In a lengthy obituary The Times gives a vivid picture of this remarkable lady:
"Mrs. Cameron appealed to a..wide...public by her pefectly original and unique photographic work and subject pictures in which, after a daring fashion of her own, forfeiting the sharpness of definition which ordinary photographers strive for, and which is one of the things artists most dislike in photographic portraiture...she produced a series of heads and groups... unique in their suggestiveness...
Mrs. Cameron's singular ardour of enthusiasm, the energy with which she flung herself into whatever she undertook, her rare forgetfulness of self and readiness to help others, endeared her to a wide circle of friends.
...so full of life and energy, so ripe with plans and projects, so buoyant of spirits, so vivid in her interests, so keen in her friendships, and so overflowing in her friendliness."
The Royal Photographic Society owns nearly 800 of her albumen and carbon prints and portraits, together with a handwritten manuscript of her autobiography.
A Trust has been set up to ensure the preservation of Dimbola
Lodge and Cameron House, and to provide historical information on Julia
Margaret Cameron's life and works. Details can be found at http://www.dimbola.co.uk
© Robert Leggat, 2000