The photographs:
Madonnas and Angelic Children
Julia Margaret CAMERON
British, 1815–79
Beauty of holiness, 1870
albumen silver photograph
19.3 x 19.3 cm
The Wilson Centre for Photography
94:5078
Freddy Gould is the sitter for this photograph. The angle of his head and
beatific look are reminiscent of the cherubs that inhabit old master
paintings or soar across ceilings and walls in Renaissance frescoes.
In an undated, fragmentary letter to Sir John Herschel, Cameron explained that in
her child protraits she sought 'To get the real child & to combine power
with softness in life sized heads has been my earnest endeavour ... Nor do I
know anyone else who with a very slow lens can prevail on children to wear a
natural expression.'
She brings the lens very close to the sitter so that the
head fills the frame. Cameron often used directional lighting with one side
of the face lit and the shadow side merging into the background.
Freddy Gould was the son of a Freshwater sailor. He appears in a great number of the
Madonna pictures and also in many of Cameron's 'fancy subjects', as she
referred to them.
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