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Image of Gallery in South Kensington
Request to view at the Prints & Drawings Study Room, level F , Case X, Shelf 311, Box T

Miss Louise Beatrice de Fonblanque

Photograph
March 1868 (photographed)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

When Julia Margaret Cameron photographed her intellectual heroes, such as Tennyson, her aim was to record ‘the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man’. Another motive was to earn money from prints, since her family’s finances were precarious. Within her first year as a photographer she began exhibiting and selling through the London gallery Colnaghi’s. She used autographs to increase the value of some portraits.

In March 1868, Cameron used two rooms at the South Kensington Museum as a portrait studio. Her letter of thanks makes clear her commercial aspirations, mentioning photographs she had sold and asking for help securing more, possibly royal, sitters.

Cameron inscribed this photograph, ‘From life taken at the South Kensington Museum, March 1868’. Although Miss de Fonblanque also sat for Cameron in her own clothes, here she is draped in a manner similar to Cameron’s representation of Beatrice Cenci, the 16th-century Italian noblewoman, executed for arranging the murder of her abusive father.


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleMiss Louise Beatrice de Fonblanque (assigned by artist)
Materials and techniques
Albumen print from wet collodion glass negative
Brief description
Photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron, 'Miss Louise Beatrice de Fonblanque', albumen print, 1868
Physical description
Photograph of a woman in profile (Louise Beatrice de Fonblanque) wearing a turban.
Dimensions
  • Height: 32.4cm
  • Image width: 25.4cm
  • Height: 40.9cm
  • Mount width: 33.2cm
Style
Marks and inscriptions
  • 'From life taken at the South Kensington Museum, march 1868 Julia Margaret Cameron' (on mount, under image, from left to right; inscribed; brown ink; Cameron, Julia Margaret)
  • 'Miss Louise Beatrice de Fonblanque' (on mount, lower centre; inscribed; brown ink; Cameron, Julia Margaret)
  • '28-1939' (lower right on mount; inscribed; black ink)
  • 'x.311 Photographs by Mrs Julia Margaret Cameron, c.1864-75./Portrait of Miss Louise Beatrice de Fonblanque./March, 1868./28-1939" (Museum labels; pasting)
Gallery label
Julia Margaret Cameron Victoria and Albert Museum Miss Louise Beatrice de Fonblanque 1868 Cameron inscribed this photograph, ‘From life taken at the South Kensington Museum, March 1868’. Although Miss de Fonblanque also sat for Cameron in her own clothes, here she is draped in a manner similar to Cameron’s representation of Beatrice Cenci, displayed in the previous section of the exhibition. Given by Mrs Ida S. Perrin, 1939 V&A: 28-1939 (18 November 2014 – 25 September 2016)
Credit line
Given by Mrs Ida S. Perrin, 1939
Object history
Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–79) was one of the most important and innovative photographers of the 19th century. Her photographs were rule-breaking: purposely out of focus, and often including scratches, smudges and other traces of the artist’s process. Best known for her powerful portraits, she also posed her sitters – friends, family and servants – as characters from biblical, historical or allegorical stories.

Born in Calcutta on 11 June 1815, the fourth of seven sisters, her father was an East India Company official and her mother descended from French aristocracy. Educated mainly in France, Cameron returned to India in 1834.

In 1842, the British astronomer Sir John Herschel (1792 – 1871) introduced Cameron to photography, sending her examples of the new invention. They had met in 1836 while Cameron was convalescing from an illness in the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. He remained a life-long friend and correspondent on technical photographic matters. That same year she met Charles Hay Cameron (1795–1880), 20 years her senior, a reformer of Indian law and education. They married in Calcutta in 1838 and she became a prominent hostess in colonial society. A decade later, the Camerons moved to England. By then they had four children; two more were born in England. Several of Cameron’s sisters were already living there, and had established literary, artistic and social connections. The Camerons eventually settled in Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight.

At the age of 48 Cameron received a camera as a gift from her daughter and son-in-law. It was accompanied by the words, ‘It may amuse you, Mother, to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater.’ Cameron had compiled albums and even printed photographs before, but her work as a photographer now began in earnest.

The Camerons lived at Freshwater until 1875, when they moved to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) where Charles Cameron had purchased coffee and rubber plantations, managed under difficult agricultural and financial conditions by three of their sons. Cameron continued her photographic practice at her new home yet her output decreased significantly and only a small body of photographs from this time remains. After moving to Ceylon the Camerons made only one more visit to England in May 1878. Julia Margaret Cameron died after a brief illness in Ceylon in 1879.

Cameron’s relationship with the Victoria and Albert Museum dates to the earliest years of her photographic career. The first museum exhibition of Cameron's work was held in 1865 at the South Kensington Museum, London (now the V&A). The South Kensington Museum was not only the sole museum to exhibit Cameron’s work in her lifetime, but also the institution that collected her photographs most extensively in her day. In 1868 the Museum gave Cameron the use of two rooms as a portrait studio, perhaps qualifying her as its first artist-in-residence. Today the V&A’s Cameron collection includes photographs acquired directly from the artist, others collected later from various sources, and five letters from Cameron to Sir Henry Cole (1808–82), the Museum’s founding director and an early supporter of photography.

Subjects depicted
Summary
When Julia Margaret Cameron photographed her intellectual heroes, such as Tennyson, her aim was to record ‘the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man’. Another motive was to earn money from prints, since her family’s finances were precarious. Within her first year as a photographer she began exhibiting and selling through the London gallery Colnaghi’s. She used autographs to increase the value of some portraits.

In March 1868, Cameron used two rooms at the South Kensington Museum as a portrait studio. Her letter of thanks makes clear her commercial aspirations, mentioning photographs she had sold and asking for help securing more, possibly royal, sitters.

Cameron inscribed this photograph, ‘From life taken at the South Kensington Museum, March 1868’. Although Miss de Fonblanque also sat for Cameron in her own clothes, here she is draped in a manner similar to Cameron’s representation of Beatrice Cenci, the 16th-century Italian noblewoman, executed for arranging the murder of her abusive father.
Bibliographic references
  • Cox, Julian and Colin Ford, with contributions by Joanne Lukitsh and Philippa Wright. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs. London: Thames & Hudson, in association with The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles and The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford, 2003. ISBN: 0-500-54265-1 Cat. no. 226, p. 200
  • Weiss, Marta. Julia Margaret Cameron: Photographs to electrify you with delight and startle the world. London: MACK, 2015, p. 103.
Collection
Accession number
28-1939

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Record createdJune 18, 2003
Record URL
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