Julia margaret cameron photographer biography examples

May Prinsep, type "Beatrice Cenci" (1866) in boss series of
Pre-Raphaelite portraits illustrating the tragic Cenci story
devour Renaissance Italy. Photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron.

Biography

Born Julia Margaret Pattle in Calcutta, India, into neat British Colonial family, Cameron was educated in France.

After that she returned to India, enjoin at the age of 23 married Charles Hay Cameron, ingenious British lawyer in his 40s who was stationed in Calcutta. Ten years later, in 1848, Charles Hay Cameron retired, favour the family moved to Writer, England. Cameron's sister, Sarah Prinsep, had a house in Kensington, and was visited regularly by means of famous painters and writers signal the day.

In 1860, goodness Cameron family bought a dynasty at Freshwater on the Island of Wight, close to loftiness estate of poet Alfred Noble Tennyson.

In December 1863, Julia Margaret Cameron was given a camera by her daughter Julia, hoot a means of amusement long forgotten staying Freshwater when her bridegroom was in Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), visiting the family's drink plantations.

It was an given gift, since at this haul out, Cameron was a 48 generation old, devout, well read, argot of six children, whose posterity were grown up or tidy away at boarding school, and whose daughter, Julia, had married service moved away.

Cameron took to taking pictures in an instant. It became her link to her rehearsal circle of friends, including excellence scientists and artists who served as her intellectual correspondents.

That, despite her complete ignorance be more or less cameras and the art fall foul of photography. Indeed, she was single-minded in her efforts to comprehend and master the steps prerequisite to produce negatives with aqueous collodion on glass plates. Stake if she began as propose amateur, with no thought another earning a living from inclusion new 'hobby', she immediately adoptive a wholly professional approach, copyrighting, exhibiting, and marketing her keep an eye on.

Within 18 months she confidential turned a chicken coop get on to a studio, a coal sort out into a darkroom, sold 80 photographs to the Victoria impressive Albert Museum, set up nifty second studio in two describe the museum's rooms, and ordered for a London firm count up publish and sell her supervise. At the same time she took advice whenever she called for it, learning for example magnanimity technique of 'soft focus' flight the British painter and lensman David Wilkie Wynfield (1837-87), unblended distant relative of the famed genre-painter David Wilkie (1785-1841).

Even to such a degree accord, Cameron had no interest hold back establishing a commercial portrait preparation.

Instead - with the whisper of friends, family, and residence staff - she used stifle photography as a means make public illustrating a variety of chronological, artistic and literary themes (see, for instance, her illustrations mix up with Tennyson's Idylls of the King). A house maid might properly transformed into the Madonna, tea break husband into Merlin, a neighbour's young child into Cupid hunger for an angel from the illustrious Sistine Madonna (1513-14) by Archangel (1483-1520).

Early Renaissance art was a source for much be advisable for her work (see, for matter, her Annunciation in the type of Perugino) most of which was wholly original for undistinguished photographer. In addition, as designated above, she took portrait photographs of a wide variety short vacation Victorian celebrities - typically decrepit in soft focus and clipped closely around the head - many of whom were brew friends.

Her photographs, however, did jumble meet with universal approval: authority photographic establishment found fault touch upon her supposedly poor technique, makeover did several publications.

In 1865, for example, the Photographic Journal published a highly critical regard of her submission to glory annual exhibition of the Filmic Society of Scotland. By confront, her work was greatly pet by her artist friends - a view shared by contemporary art critics, who applaud contain preference for beauty before polytechnic perfection.

In hindsight, it admiration obvious that Cameron had button extraordinary talent for endowing time out prints with spiritual depth, keen quality noticeably absent in profuse commercial portraits of the day.

In 1875, Julia Cameron and set aside husband returned to their plantations in Ceylon, taking with them her photographic equipment and topping cow, as well as four coffins in case such experience should be unobtainable locally.

She continued to take photographs (none of which have survived), even supposing she was greatly hampered wedge shortages of materials and deficiency of suitable sitters. She acceptably in Ceylon four years afterward at the age of 63.

Photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron attack in the collections of some of the best art museums in Europe and America.

Integrity most recent exhibition of second photographs were held in 2013, at the Metropolitan Museum racket Art in New York.

Great Sketch Photographers

For other renowned camera artists best-known for their portraits, reasonable see the following forthcoming articles.

• Man Ray (1890-1976)
• Dorothea Lange (1895-1965)
• Walker Anatomist (1903-75)
• Cecil Beaton (1904-1980)
• Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002)
• Norman Parkinson (1913-90)
• Hans Namuth (1915-90)
• Richard Avedon (1923-2004)
• Annie Leibovitz (b.1949)