J.F.W. Herschel

Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871) was a longtime friend of Julia Margaret Cameron and one of the most accomplished scientists of his generation. He contributed enormously to the early processes of photography by discovering the power of sodium hyposulfate as a fixing agent. Cameron first met him in 1835 in South Africa, where she was recovering from an illness and he was conducting astronomical investigations. They began a close friendship that lasted until his death in 1871.

During the 1840s Herschel corresponded regularly with Cameron, often remarking on the latest discoveries in photography. In November 1864, less than a year after she began making pictures, Cameron presented him with an album of prints “in grateful memory of 27 years of friendship.” In her Annals Cameron described the depth of her feelings for Herschel: “He was to me as a Teacher and High Priest. From my earliest girlhood I had loved and honoured him, and it was after a friendship of 31 years’ duration that the high task of giving his portrait to the nation was allotted to me.”

In April 1867 Cameron visited Herschel at Collingwood, his home at Hawkhurst, Kent, and photographed him in a sitting from which at least three negatives were made. Her stated intention was to capture “faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man.” She swathed his shoulders in a drape of dark cloth, concentrating on the monumental form of his head. The gleaming eyes and shock of white hair reflect his creative vision and remarkable intellectual energy.

Cameron was acutely aware of the commercial viability of the Herschel portraits. She promptly registered them for copyright, and in June 1867 they went on display at Colnaghi’s, a commercial art gallery and print publisher in London. The reviewer for the Athenaeum described them as “severely and grandly effective pictures of a noble head.” This work, one of several Cameron sent to the Universal Exhibition in Paris later that year, created a sensation; she was awarded an honorable mention for “artistic photographs.”

Adapted from Julian Cox. Julia Margaret Cameron, In Focus: From the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996), 56. ©1996 The J. Paul Getty Museum.