Julia Margaret Cameron, 1815-1879

Albumen Print, mounted on card with gilt-ruled border and Messrs Colnaghi blindstamp, signed, dated 'Sept. 1872' and inscribed 'From Life Registered Photograph Copyright' by the photographer in ink on the mount, also titled 'St Agnes' and annotated 'No. 1' in pencil on the mount,

See Cox, J. & Ford, C., 2003, cat. nos 351-353.

Alice Liddell is one of the most significant of nineteenth-century muses. It was she who, as a young child, bullied the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson into writing down the story he had told to her and her sisters Lorina and Edith on a rowing excursion in 1862. It would later be published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Dodgson was as gifted a photographer as he was a writer and the Liddell sisters were, in the early 1860s, his favourite models.

We do not know whether Alice Liddell's role as muse to Dodgson informed Cameron's wish to photograph her. It is certainly notable that, although Cameron photographed all three sisters in September 1972, Alice was the only one of the three that she photographed alone.

St Agnes was the beautiful and wealthy Roman girl who was martyred at the age of twelve for her refusal to renounce her faith and marry. This print is a previously unrecorded variant of cat. no. 353 in the catalogue raisonné of Cameron's work.