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30 November 2001 National Gallery |
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The photographs: Madonnas and Angelic ChildrenChildren held a distinct place in the Victorian imagination as symbols of innocent beauty and spiritual purity. In common with her sometime visitor, the writer and photographer Lewis Carroll, Cameron loved to use children as models. However, unlike Carroll, Cameron preferred an interpretative photographic style that was soft and overtly 'spiritual' in focus. The photographs featured in this section of the exhibition were among the first that Cameron produced in her career. From a personal perspective, Cameron enjoyed the company of children, having had six of her own and adopting or caring for five others. She found children to be natural if sometimes reluctant sitters. One woman who had been pressed into posing for her when a child later noted that, "Mrs Cameron was neither mysterious nor awe-inspiring, but just a kind, exacting though benevolent, tyrant. Children loved her but fled from her". In keeping with her strongly held religious beliefs, Cameron commonly chose to produce photographs in which women are idealised as divine mothers posed with their suitably angelic looking children. To create these works, Cameron paid close attention to her subject's gestures encouraging them to adopt reflective expressions that suggested inner states of spiritual absorption. She also often dressed the children to resemble the putti common to Italian Renaissance paintings.
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Mary Hillier as Madonna, c. 1865 |
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The flower girl, 1865 |
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The first born, 1865 |
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Light and love, 1865 |
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Hosanna, 1865 |
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Girl reading, 1867 |
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The dream, 1869 |
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Untitled (Julia Norman), 1868 |
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Portrait of Kate Keown, 1866 |
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Beauty of holiness, 1870 |
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I wait, 1872 |
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