Photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron, 'Faith' (sitters Elizabeth Keown, Mary Hillier, Alice Keown), from the series Fruits of the Spirit,albumen print, 1864

Arched half-length portrait of a woman (Mary Hillier), looking to her left, holding two young children (Elizabeth and Alice Keown). One child (Elizabeth Keown) is holding a cross.

The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund.

This photograph is one of a series of nine made in 1864 (Julia Margaret Cameron's first year of photography), known as "The Fruits of the Spirit". Cameron conceptualised the photographs in the sequence individually, inscribing the title on the mount of each print, corresponding to the virtues of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance as taught by Paul in the Galatians (5:22-3). The photographs show a model (Mary Hillier) as a contemplative Madonna and in all but one (Joy, V&A PH. 363-1981) posed in the manner of the Madonna and Child (with one or two infants), an often depicted and important subject in the history of art, particularly in Flemish and Italian Renaissance painting. Cameron's house maid Hillier appeared so frequently and convincingly in the guise of Madonna that she was known in the Freshwater circles as "Mary Madonna".

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

Within months of acquiring her camera, Cameron embarked on an ambitious series illustrating the nine Christian virtues. Many of the compositions resemble Renaissance paintings. Cameron struggled to represent abstract concepts such as goodness and temperance, as well as to distinguish each virtue from the others. She would not attempt another series until 1874, when she undertook the illustrations to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. Cameron donated a set of all nine Fruits of the Spirit – mounted in a single frame – to the British Museum in January 1865.

RPS.799-2017