Photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron, 'Alfred Tennyson', collotype, 1869, printed later but probably before 1884

A photograph of a bearded man (Alfred Tennyson) with bald forehead shown from the shoulders up looking slightly to the left.

Nevinson Bequest, 1990

Julia Margaret Cameron's career as a photographer began in 1863 when her daughter gave her a camera. Cameron began photographing everyone in sight. Because of the newness of photography as a practice, she was free to make her own rules and not be bound to convention. The kinds of images being made at the time did not interest Cameron. She was interested in capturing another kind of photographic truth. Not one dependent on accuracy of sharp detail, but one that depicted the emotional state of her sitter.

Cameron liked the soft focus portraits and the streak marks on her negatives, choosing to work with these irregularities, making them part of her pictures. Although at the time Cameron was seen as an unconventional and experimental photographer, her images have a solid place in the history of photography.

Most of Cameron's photographs are portraits. She used members of her family as sitters and made photographs than concentrated on their faces. She was interested in conveying their natural beauty, often asking female sitters to let down their hair so as to show them in a way that they were not accustomed to presenting themselves. In addition to making stunning and evocative portraits both of male and female subjects, Cameron also staged tableaux and posed her sitters in situations that simulated allegorical paintings.

Through the acquaintance of the author Sir Henry Taylor (who was a neighbour) Cameron was introduced to poet laureate Alfred Tennyson, who would remain a life-long friend, public supporter and a frequently photographed subject. In 1874, Tennyson commissioned Cameron to create the first ever photographic illustrations for his collection Idylls of the King and Other Poems, based on the legend of King Arthur.

Series of 8 photographs probably printed by J.B. Obernetter and Co., Munich, before 1884 [see stamp on E.2746-1990]

As the inscription visible on E.2746-1990 and E.2749-1990 indicate, this collotype was made from internegatives (negatives made from rephotographing prints)

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), appointed poet Laureate in 1850, was a major source of inspiration for artists, and in particular for Julia Margaret Cameron, who was his neighbour on the Isle of Wight. It was largely through Tennyson's celebrity that Freshwater became well known. It attracted many of the most prominent artists, writers, intellectuals of the time who came visit the great poet and who were called upon to sit for Mrs Cameron. She made at least nineteen portraits of Tennyson often depicting him theatrically in a black cloak and cap, with a book emphasising his intellect and vocation as poet. This, the last portrait that Cameron made of him, is a quiet yet noble likeness of Tennyson. He is presented as more refined, wearing modern dress compared to her other well known photograph of him ("The Dirty Monk", V&A Ph 1143-1963). Light catches on the folds of draped fabric creating a golden aura behind the sitter. The focus of the image is sharpest around the poet's eyes and nose emphasising his visionary "seeing" gaze.

E.2747-1990