Editing Julia Margaret Cameron (section)

== Biography ==

=== Early life and education ===
Julia Margaret Cameron was born '''Julia Margaret Pattle''' on 11 June 1815, at [[Garden Reach]] in [[Calcutta]], India,<ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography">{{Cite ODNB|id=4449|title=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |last= Barlow |first= Helen |date= 2017 |chapter= Cameron [née Pattle], Julia Margaret (1815–1879), photographer}}</ref> to Adeline Marie and James Peter Pattle.

James Pattle worked in India for the [[East India Company]].<ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" /><ref name="Art Story">{{Cite web|url=https://www.theartstory.org/artist-cameron-julia-margaret.htm|title=Julia Margaret Cameron|date=7 August 2018|work=The Art Story|access-date=3 May 2019}}</ref> His family had been involved with the Company for many years. He traced his line to a 17th-century ancestor living in Chancery Lane, London.<ref name="Genius of the Glass House">{{Cite news |last= Malcolm|first= Janet |title= The Genius of the Glass House |work= The New York Review of Books |date= 4 February 1999 |url= http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1999/02/04/the-genius-of-the-glass-house/ |access-date=5 May 2019|issn=0028-7504}}</ref> Adeline's mother was a French aristocrat and the daughter of Chevalier Ambrose Pierre Antoine de l'Etang, who had been a page to [[Marie Antoinette]] and an officer in the [[Garde du Corps (France)|Garde du Corps]] of King [[Louis XVI]].<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TP_q7KHL1EkC&pg=PA203 |title=The Intersecting Realities and Fictions of Virginia Woolf and Colette – Helen Southworth |isbn=978-0-8142-0964-6 |last1= Boatright |first1= Robert G. |last2= Southworth |first2= Helen |year= 2004|publisher=Ohio State University Press }}</ref> After James died in Calcutta, he was shipped back to London in a barrel of rum for burial in Camberwell.

Julia was the fourth of ten children, three of whom{{Efn|The three children of Cameron's parents that died in infancy are James (1813–1813), Eliza (1814–1818) and Harriet (1828–1828).}} died in infancy. Julia and six of her sisters<ref name="Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography">{{Cite book|last=Ford|first=Colin|title=Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography|date=2008|publisher=Routledge|editor-last=Hannavy|editor-first=John|location=London, UK|chapter=Cameron, Julia Margaret, 1815–1879|access-date=28 April 2019|chapter-url=https://search-credoreference-com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/content/topic/cameron_julia_margaret_pattle_1815_1879}}</ref><ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" /> survived into adulthood,{{Efn|Cameron's sisters were Adeline (1812–1836), Sara (1816–1887), Maria (1818–1892), Louisa (1821–1873), Virginia (1827–1910) and Sophia (1829–1911).}} inheriting some Bengali blood through their maternal grandmother, Thérèse Josephe Blin de Grincourt. The seven sisters were known for their "charm, wit and beauty" and for being close, outspoken, and unconventional in behaviour and dress.<ref name="Soft-focus Photographer">{{Cite news|last=Higgins|first=Charlotte|date=22 September 2015|title=Julia Margaret Cameron: soft-focus photographer with an iron will|language=en|work=[[The Guardian]]|url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/sep/22/julia-margaret-cameron-victorian-portrait-photographer-exhibitions|access-date=3 May 2019|issn=0261-3077}}</ref>{{Efn|All of Cameron's sisters spoke Hindustani and French<ref name="The Complete Photographs">{{Cite book |last1= Cox|first1= Julian|last2= Ford|first2= Colin |title= Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs |date=2003|publisher= Getty Publications |url= https://archive.org/details/juliamargaretcam0000coxj |isbn=0-89236-681-8|location=Los Angeles, CA |url-access=registration}}</ref>{{Rp|12}}|name=|}} They favoured Indian silks and shawls rather than the Victorian attire of other colonial woman.<ref name=Schama>{{cite book |last= Schama |first= Simon |title= A History of Britain: The Fate of Empire 1776–2000|location=  London |publisher= The Bodley Head |date= 2011 |pages= 178–181 |type= Paperback |isbn= 978-1-84792-014-0}}</ref>

The sisters were sent to France as children to be educated, Julia living there with her maternal grandmother in [[Versailles, Yvelines|Versailles]] from 1818 to 1834, after which she returned to India.<ref name="Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography" /><ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" /><ref name="Art Story" /><ref name="Victoria and Albert Museum">{{Cite web |last= Weiss |first= Marta |title= Julia Margaret Cameron – an introduction |work= Victoria and Albert Museum |url=https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/julia-margaret-cameron-introduction |access-date=30 April 2019}}</ref>

Julia's sisters all made advantageous matches. Older sister Adeline married Lt-General Colin Mackenzie. Sophia married Sir John Warrander Dalrymple. Louisa married Henry Vincent Bayley, a high court judge. Maria married Dr John Jackson, and among their children was Julia's godchild [[Julia Stephen]]. Sara (Sarah) married Sir [[Henry Thoby Prinsep]], a director of the East India Company, and made their home at [[Little Holland House]] in [[Kensington]], which became an important intellectual centre. Virginia Pattle married [[Charles Somers-Cocks, 3rd Earl Somers|Charles Somers-Cocks, Viscount Eastnor]] (later 3rd Earl Somers). Their eldest daughter was [[Lady Henry Somerset]], the temperance leader, while the younger, [[Adeline Marie Russell, Duchess of Bedford|Lady Adeline Marie]], became the Duchess of Bedford.

=== Marriage and social life ===

==== South Africa and Calcutta ====
In 1835, after suffering several illnesses, Julia visited the [[Cape of Good Hope]] in South Africa with her parents to recover.<ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" /><ref name="Art Story" /> It was common for Europeans living in India to visit South Africa to convalesce.<ref name="Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography" /> While there, she met the British astronomer and photochemist [[Sir John Herschel]], who was observing the southern celestial hemisphere.<ref name="Victoria and Albert Museum" /> 

She also met [[Charles Hay Cameron]], twenty years her senior and a reformer of Indian law and education who later invested in coffee plantations in what is now [[Sri Lanka]].<ref name="Victoria and Albert Museum" /> He was also there to convalesce, probably after a [[malaria]]l fever, which often spread during the Indian monsoon season. The illness caused kidney trouble and diarrhœa for the rest of his life.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|14}}

They were married in Calcutta on 1 February 1838, two years after meeting.<ref name="Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography" /><ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" /> In December, Julia gave birth to their first child; Herschel was the godfather.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|15}} Between 1839 and 1852, they had six children, one of whom was adopted.<ref name="Art Story" /><ref name="Grove Art Online">{{Cite web|url=http://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000013434|title=Cameron [Pattle], Julia Margaret |last= Lukitsh |first= Joanne |work= Grove Art Online |year= 2018 |doi=10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T013434|isbn=978-1-884446-05-4 }}</ref> In all, the Camerons raised 11 children, five of her own, five orphaned children of relatives, and an Irish girl named Mary Ryan whom they found begging on Putney Heath and whom Cameron used as a model in her photographs.<ref name="Soft-focus Photographer" /><ref name="Angels and Instincts">{{Cite magazine|url=http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/02/17/angels-and-instincts|title=Angels and Instincts|last=Thurman|first=Judith|date=10 February 2003|magazine=The New Yorker|access-date=30 April 2019|issn=0028-792X}}</ref> Their son, [[Henry Herschel Hay Cameron]], would also become a photographer.<ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" />
[[File:Julia Margaret Cameron, by James Prinsep.jpg|thumb|alt=|A drawing of Julia Margaret Cameron by [[James Prinsep]]]]
Through the early 1840s—as the organiser of social engagements for the Governor-General, [[Henry Hardinge, 1st Viscount Hardinge|Lord Hardinge]]—Cameron became a prominent hostess in Anglo-Indian society.<ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" /> During this time she also corresponded with Herschel. In 1839, he told Cameron about the invention of photography.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|14}}{{Efn|Herschel coined the terms "photography", "snapshot", and "negative".<ref name="Angels and Instincts" />|name=|}} In 1842, he sent her two dozen [[calotype]]s and [[daguerreotype]]s, the first photographs she ever saw.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|42}}

==== England ====
The Camerons moved to England in 1845, where they took part in London's artistic and cultural scene.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|15}}<ref name="Oxford Companion to the Photograph">{{Cite book |title=The Oxford Companion to the Photograph |last=Ford |first=Colin |date=2005 |publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-866271-6|chapter=Cameron, Julia Margaret|access-date=28 April 2019|chapter-url=http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198662716.001.0001/acref-9780198662716-e-254|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/oxfordcompaniont0000unse_f1h1}}</ref> Julia often visited [[Little Holland House]] where her sister, Sara Prinsep, oversaw a literary and artistic salon "of [[Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood|Pre-Raphaelite]] painters, poets, and aristocrats with artistic pretensions".<ref name="Grove Art Online" /><ref name="Angels and Instincts" /> Here, she met many of the subjects of her later portraits, including Henry Taylor and [[Alfred, Lord Tennyson|Alfred Tennyson]].<ref name="Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography" />

[[Daphne du Maurier]] describes the scene:<blockquote>The nobilitee, the gentree, the litherathure, polithics and art of the counthree, by jasus! It's a nest of proraphaelites, where Hunt, Millais, Rossetti, Watts, Leighton etc, Tennyson, the Brownings and Thackeray etc and tutti quanti receive dinners and incense, and cups of tea handed to them by these women almost kneeling.<ref>Daphne Du Maurier, ed., ''The Young George Du Maurier: A Selection of His Letters, 1860–67'' (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1952), p. 112, quoted in Leonee Ormond, George Du Maurier (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 103, quoted in {{Cite book|title=Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs|last1=Cox|first1=Julian|last2=Ford|first2=Colin|date=2003|publisher=Getty Publications|isbn=0-89236-681-8|location=Los Angeles, CA|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/juliamargaretcam0000coxj}}</ref></blockquote>[[Benjamin Jowett]] echoed this when describing Cameron's reverence to these artists and poets after a later visit to Freshwater. The same salon-like atmosphere was present. "She is a sort of hero-worshipper, and the hero is not Mr Tennyson – he only occupies second place – but Henry Taylor."<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|27}}

In 1847, she was writing poetry, had started a novel, and published a translation of [[Gottfried August Bürger]]'s ''Leonora''.<ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" /><ref name="Grove Art Online" />

In 1848, Charles Cameron retired and invested in coffee and rubber plantations in [[British Ceylon|Ceylon]], becoming one of the island's largest landowners.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|483}} The Camerons settled in [[Royal Tunbridge Wells|Tunbridge Wells]] in [[Kent]],<ref name="National Gallery of Art">{{Cite web|url=https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.13395.html|title=Julia Margaret Cameron|work=National Gallery of Art|access-date=3 May 2019}}</ref> where they were neighbours of Taylor,<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|16}} then moved to East Sheen in 1850.<ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" /><ref name="Art Story" /><ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|7}} During this time, Cameron became a member of a society for art education and appreciation. [[George Frederic Watts]] started working on a painting of Cameron (which is now in the National Portrait Gallery).<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|7}}[[File:Julia Margaret Cameron by George Frederic Watts.jpg|thumb|''Julia Margaret Cameron'' by George Frederic Watts. Oil on canvas, 1850–1852, 24 in. x 20 in. (610&nbsp;mm x 508&nbsp;mm).<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitExtended/mw01021/Julia-Margaret-Cameron|title=NPG 5046; Julia Margaret Cameron – Portrait Extended |website= National Portrait Gallery |access-date=8 May 2019}}</ref>]]
In 1860, after an extended visit to Tennyson at Freshwater, Cameron bought a house next door. The family moved there, naming the property "[[Dimbola Lodge|Dimbola]]" after one of the coffee plantations in Ceylon.<ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" /><ref name="Angels and Instincts" /> A private gate connected the residences and the two families soon started entertaining famous people with music, poetry readings, and amateur plays, creating an artistic scene similar to Little Holland House.<ref name="Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography" /> Cameron lived there until 1875.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Oxford Companion to English Literature|last=Birch |first=Dinah |date=1 January 2009|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-280687-1 |editor=Dinah Birch |chapter=Cameron, Julia Margaret|access-date=28 April 2019|chapter-url=http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780192806871.001.0001/acref-9780192806871-e-1274}}</ref>

=== Photography career ===
==== Early career ====
Cameron showed an interest in photography in the late 1850s and there are indications that she experimented with making photographs in the early 1860s.<ref name="Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography" /><ref name="Oxford Companion to the Photograph" /> Around 1863, her daughter and son-in-law gave her a sliding-box camera for Christmas.<ref name="Art Story" /> The gift was meant to provide a diversion while her husband was in Ceylon.<ref name="Oxford Companion to the Photograph" /> Her daughter said, "It may amuse you, Mother, to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater."<ref name="Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History">{{Cite web|url=https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/camr/hd_camr.htm|title=Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879)|last=Daniel|first=Malcolm|work=The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History|date=October 2004 |access-date=4 May 2019}}</ref>

Cameron converted a chicken coop into studio space.<ref name="Britannica Academic">{{Cite encyclopedia|title=Julia Margaret Cameron|encyclopedia=Britannica Academic|access-date=28 April 2019|url=https://academic-eb-com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/levels/collegiate/article/Julia-Margaret-Cameron/18811}}</ref> Later, in an unfinished autobiography, ''Annals of my Glasshouse'', she wrote:<blockquote>I turned my coal-house into my dark room, and a glazed fowl house I had given 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, who all in turn have immortalized the humble little farm erection.<ref name="Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography" /> [...] 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.<ref name="Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History" /></blockquote>[[File:Annie my first success, by Julia Margaret Cameron (restored).jpg|thumb|upright|Cameron called this 29 January 1864 portrait of Annie Philpot her "first success".|alt=]]On 29 January 1864 Cameron photographed nine‐year‐old Annie Philpot, an image she described as her "first success".<ref name="Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography" /> She sent the photograph to the subject's father with the note:<blockquote>My first perfect success in the complete Photograph owing greatly to the docility & sweetness of my best & fairest sitter. This Photograph was taken by me at 1 p.m. Friday Jan. 29th. Printed—Toned—fixed and framed all by me & given as it is now by 8 p.m. this same day.<ref name="Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography" /></blockquote>That same year, she compiled albums of her images for Watts and Herschel, registered her work and prepared it for exhibition and sale.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|7–8}} She was elected to the [[Royal Photographic Society|Photographic Society of London]], displaying work at yearly exhibitions and remaining a member until her death.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://rpsmembers.dmu.ac.uk/rps_results.php?mid=396|title=Members of the Royal Photographic Society, 1853–1901|year=2013|publisher=The Royal Photographic Society|access-date=27 October 2015}}</ref><ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" />

Cameron took up photography as an amateur and considered herself an artist. Although never making commissioned portraits or establishing a commercial studio, she thought of her photographic activity as a professional endeavour, copyrighting, publishing, and marketing her work.<ref name="Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History" /> The family did not see substantial profits from their coffee plantations and Cameron may have been looking to bring in some money with her photography. The portraits of celebrities and the high volume of her photographic output also suggest commercial aspirations.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|25,41–42,496}}

==== Mid-career ====
In 1865, she became a member of the Photographic Society of Scotland and arranged to have her prints sold through the London dealers P. & D. Colnaghi.<ref name=20180131icp>{{Cite web|url=https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/julia-margaret-cameron|title=Julia Margaret Cameron|date=31 January 2018|work=International Center of Photography|access-date=3 May 2019}}</ref> She presented a series of photographs, ''The Fruits of the Spirit'', to the [[British Museum]],<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|8}} and held her first solo exhibition in November 1865.<ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" /> Her prints generated robust demand and she showed her work throughout Europe,<ref name="Art Story" /> securing awards in Berlin in 1865 and 1866,<ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" /> and an honourable mention in Dublin.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|8}}

Her photographic activity was supported by her husband. Cameron wrote: "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."<ref name="Genius of the Glass House" />

In August 1865, the South Kensington Museum (now the [[Victoria and Albert Museum]]), purchased 80 of her photographs.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|8}} Three years later, it offered her two rooms to use as a portrait studio, making her the museum's first artist-in-residence.<ref name="Victoria and Albert Museum" />
[[File:Julia Margaret Cameron - John Herschel (Metropolitan Museum of Art copy, restored) levels.jpg|thumb|[[John Herschel|Sir John Herschel]], 1867]]
She produced images of [[Thomas Carlyle]] and John Herschel in 1867.<ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" /> By 1868, she was generating sales through P. & D. Colnaghi and a second London agent, William Spooner. In 1869, she created ''The Kiss of Peace'', which she considered her finest work.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|8}}

[[File:The Kiss of Peace, by Julia Margaret Cameron, M197101590002.jpg|alt=A woman's cheek rests on the forehead of a younger girl. Both appear calm and are draped in fabric from the neck down.|thumb|''The Kiss of Peace'', by Julia Margaret Cameron]]

In the early 1870s, Cameron's work matured.<ref name="Art Story" /> Her elaborate illustrative tableaux involving religious, literary, and classical figures peaked in a series of images for Tennyson's ''[[Idylls of the King]]'', published in 1874 and 1875, evidently at her expense.<ref name="Oxford Companion to the Photograph" /><ref name="National Gallery of Art" /> During this time, she also wrote ''Annals of my Glass House''.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|9}}

=== Later life ===
In October 1873, her daughter died in childbirth. Two years later,<ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" /> because of her husband's ill-health,<ref name="National Gallery of Art" /> the lower cost of living,<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|483}} and to be near to their sons who were managing the family coffee plantations,<ref name="Victoria and Albert Museum" /> Cameron and her husband left Freshwater for Ceylon with "a cow, Cameron's photographic equipment, and two coffins, in case such items should not be available in the East".<ref name="Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography" /><ref name="Britannica Academic" />

Henry Taylor recounts the departure:<blockquote>Mr. and Mrs. Cameron have taken their departure for Ceylon, there to live and die. He had bought an estate there some thirty years ago when he was serving the Crown there and elsewhere in the East, and he had a passionate love for the island, to which he had rendered an important service in providing it with a code of procedure ... he never ceased to yearn after the island as his place of abode, and thither in his eighty-first year he has betaken himself, with a strange joy. The design was kept secret, – I believe even from their dearest relatives.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|36}}</blockquote>V.C. Scott O'Connor later wrote about their empty home in Freshwater:<blockquote>The house is silent now and tenantless. All its old feverish life and bustle are stilled as is the heart which beat here in true sympathy with every living creature that came within its reach needing such succor. Her pretty maids, her scholars, her poets, her philosophers, astronomers, and divines, all those men of genius who came and sat willingly to her while in a fever of artistic emotion she plied the instruments of her art, – they have all gone, and silence is the only tenant left at Dimbola.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|37}}</blockquote>The move marked the end of Cameron's photography career;<ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" /> she took few photographs afterwards,<ref name="National Gallery of Art" /> mostly of [[Tamils|Tamil]] servants and workers.{{Efn|Cameron described these subjects as "natives", much as she referred to the residents of the Isle of Wight as "peasants".<ref name="Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography" />|name=|}}<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|9}} Fewer than 30 images survive from this period. Cameron's output may have dropped in part because of the difficulty working with collodion in the heat and a lack of fresh water for washing prints.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|483}} The botanical painter and biologist [[Marianne North]] recounted a visit to Cameron in Ceylon:<blockquote>The walls of the room were covered with magnificent photographs; others were tumbling about the tables, chairs, and floors with quantities of damp books, all untidy and picturesque; the lady herself with a lace veil on her head and flowing draperies. Her oddities were most refreshing . . . She also made some studies of natives while I was there, and took such a fancy to the back of one of them (which she said was absolutely superb) that she insisted on her son retaining him as her gardener, though she had no garden and he did not know even the meaning of the word.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|483}}<ref name="Angels and Instincts" /> </blockquote>In 1875, after a short visit to England, Cameron fell ill with a dangerous chill.<ref name="Art Story" /> 

In February 1876, ''Macmillan's Magazine'' published her poem, ''On a Portrait''. The following year, her image ''The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere'' appeared on the cover ''Harper's Weekly'' as a wood engraving.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|9}}

Cameron died on 26 January 1879<ref name="Victoria and Albert Museum" /> at the Glencairn estate in Ceylon.<ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" /> It is often reported that her last word was "Beauty"<ref name="Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography" /><ref name="Oxford Companion to the Photograph" /> or "Beautiful".<ref name="Britannica Academic" />

In her 12-year career, Cameron produced about 900 photographs.<ref name="Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History" />