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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 F

Devotion

Photograph
1865 (photographed)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

The South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) purchased many of Julia Margaret Cameron's ‘Madonna Groups’ depicting the Virgin Mary and the infant Christ. Cameron often cast her grandson as baby Jesus. Her housemaid Mary Hillier posed as the Virgin Mary so often she became known locally as ‘Mary Madonna’.

Like many of her contemporaries, Cameron was a devout Christian. The motif of the Madonna and Child held particular significance for her as a mother of six. In aspiring to make ‘High Art’, Cameron aimed to make photographs that could be uplifting and morally instructive.

In this unusual horizontal composition, the close-up figures of the sleeping Christ Child and the Madonna nearly fill the frame. The title suggests both piety and motherhood. Next to the title Cameron wrote, ‘From Life My Grand child age 2 years & 3 months’, making the image simultaneously a religious study and a family portrait.


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleDevotion (assigned by artist)
Materials and techniques
Albumen print from wet collodion glass negative
Brief description
Photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron, 'Devotion' (sitters Archibald Cameron and Mary Hillier), albumen print, 1865
Physical description
Photograph of a woman (Mary Hiller) watching over a sleeping baby (Archibold Cameron).
Dimensions
  • Image height: 22.8cm
  • Image width: 27.9cm
  • Mount height: 26.1cm
  • Mount width: 33.2cm
Style
Marks and inscriptions
'From Life my grandchild / aged 2 years & 3 months Julia Margaret Cameron / Devotion' and in an unknown hand at upper left corner 'Studies for Painting XXIV ad'. (Recto mount in ink by JMC.)
Gallery label
Julia Margaret Cameron: A Bicentenary Exhibition Devotion 1865 In this unusual horizontal composition, the close-up figures of the sleeping Christ child and the Madonna nearly fill the frame. The title suggests both Christian concepts and the theme of motherhood. Next to the title Cameron wrote: ‘From Life My Grand child age 2 years & 3 months’, making the image simultaneously a religious study and a family portrait. Given by Julia Margaret Cameron, 27 September 1865 Museum no. 45:154 (18 November 2014 – 25 September 2016)
Credit line
Given by or Purchased from Julia Margaret Cameron, 27 September 1865
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.
Subject depicted
Summary
The South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) purchased many of Julia Margaret Cameron's ‘Madonna Groups’ depicting the Virgin Mary and the infant Christ. Cameron often cast her grandson as baby Jesus. Her housemaid Mary Hillier posed as the Virgin Mary so often she became known locally as ‘Mary Madonna’.

Like many of her contemporaries, Cameron was a devout Christian. The motif of the Madonna and Child held particular significance for her as a mother of six. In aspiring to make ‘High Art’, Cameron aimed to make photographs that could be uplifting and morally instructive.

In this unusual horizontal composition, the close-up figures of the sleeping Christ Child and the Madonna nearly fill the frame. The title suggests both piety and motherhood. Next to the title Cameron wrote, ‘From Life My Grand child age 2 years & 3 months’, making the image simultaneously a religious study and a family portrait.
Bibliographic references
  • Julian Cox and Colin Ford, et al. Julia Margaret Cameron: the complete photographs. London : Thames and Hudson, 2003. Cat. no. 158, p. 171.
  • Weiss, Marta. Julia Margaret Cameron: Photographs to electrify you with delight and startle the world. London: MACK, 2015, p.69.
Collection
Accession number
45154

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Record createdJune 4, 2004
Record URL
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