CAMERON, JULIA MARGARET

born June 11, 1815, Calcutta died Jan. 26, 1879, Kalutara, Ceylon British photographer, considered one of the greatest portrait photographers of the 19th century. In 1848, she moved to England with her husband, a retired colonial official, and her family, settling in 1860 on the Isle of Wight to be near the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. Around 1863, she received a camera as a gift. She converted a chicken coop into a studio and a coal bin into a darkroom and began making portraits. Among her sitters were her friends the poets Tennyson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the astronomer Sir John Herschel, the writer Thomas Carlyle, and the scientist Charles Darwin. Especially noteworthy are her sensitive renderings of female beauty, as in the portraits Ellen Terry (1864) and Mrs. Herbert Duckworth (1867). Like many Victorian photographers, Mrs. Cameron made allegorical and illustrative studio photographs in imitation of the popular Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite paintings of the day. At Tennyson's request, she illustrated his Idylls of the King with her photographs. These photographs show the influence of the painter George Frederic Watts, her friend and mentor for more than 20 years. Mrs. Cameron was often criticized for poor technique. Some of her pictures are out of focus, her plates are sometimes cracked and often display her fingerprints. But in her portraits, she was interested in spiritual depth, not technical perfection, and they are considered among the finest in the medium. In 1875, she and her husband left for Ceylon. Nearly destitute, they took with them a cow, Mrs. Cameron's photographic equipment, and two coffins, in case they should not be available in the East. She continued to photograph and, according to legend, her dying word was Beautiful!