- 31
Julia Margaret Cameron
Description
- Julia Margaret Cameron
- MRS. HERBERT DUCKWORTH (JULIA JACKSON)
- Albumen print
- 19 x 15 7/8 inches
Provenance
To a descendent
Sotheby's London, 13 May 1994, Sale 4275, Lot 81, Robert Hershkowitz as agent
Literature
Henri Jonquieres, ed., La Vielle Photographie depuis Daguerre jusqu’a 1870 (Paris, 1935), pl. 19 (one of two illustrations by Cameron)
Catalogue Note
Julia Margaret Cameron's sensitive portrait of her niece and goddaughter, Julia Prinsep Jackson, came originally from the personal collection of the sitter and was one of seven Cameron photographs, all with the same provenance, offered at Sotheby's London in 1994. In Julia Margaret Cameron's Women, Stephanie Lipscomb observes that Cameron photographed Jackson repeatedly throughout her career; 'yet, unlike most of her other female subjects, whom Cameron portrayed as characters from biblical, classical, or literary sources, Julia was almost always represented as herself, simply and eloquently, without pretense' (p. 222).
A great beauty, Jackson sat for many artists of the day and served most notably as the model for Mary in Edward Burne-Jones's Annunciation. She was widowed in 1867 with the death of her first husband, the barrister Herbert Duckworth. Later she married Sir Leslie Stephen, and among the couple's children were painter Vanessa Bell and author Virginia Woolf.