Julia Margaret Cameron
1874
May du Maurier

Albumen print
34 x 27.5 cm
 
The 19th Century Rare Book and Photograph Shop
Inscribed and signed on the mount by Cameron: “From life, registered photograph, copy right, Julia Margaret Cameron, Freshwater, Sep. 1874.”
 
This is a delightful and unrecorded signed portrait by Julia Margaret Cameron, the foremost British portrait photographer of her time. In September 1874 illustrator and novelist George Du Maurier, his wife, and his daughter May came to Cameron's home at the village of Freshwater on the Isle of Wight and sat for portraits.
 
“How masterly … are her straightforward, truthful portraits, which are entirely free from false sentiment.” “It is they which have made her work immortal in the annals of photography” (Gernsheim).
 
This image is unrecorded in Cox and Ford, Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs, which lists two portraits from the occasion (nos. 215 and 940). Cameron quotes Du Maurier as saying that her photography “charms me.”
 
Provenance: George du Maurier, and by descent.
 
LL/97459