The Echo

The title of this work may refer to the Echo of classical mythology, a nymph of Mount Helicon and attendant of the goddess Hera. According to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Echo kept Hera entertained with endless chatter while Zeus dallied with the other nymphs. Catching on to this deception, the angry goddess deprived her of speech as a punishment. Echo could begin no conversation, but only repeat the words of others. While suffering this handicap, Echo became enamored of Narcissus. After he pined away from gazing at his own reflection in a pool, Echo faded away until nothing but her voice remained. She is commonly represented in the visual arts as a ghostly figure grieving over the body of Narcissus.

The model in Julia Margaret Cameron’s picture is Hatty Campbell (born about 1852, death date unknown) about whom very little is known. Her beauty inspired several portraits by Cameron, all apparently made during 1868. A fine selection of these in now preserved at the Maison Victor Hugo in Paris. The author was an effusive admirer of Cameron’s photographs and once remarked: “No one has ever captured the rays of the sun and used them as you have. I throw myself at your feet.”

Campbell emerges from the dark background of the picture as an ideal representation of virginal womanhood. The formal sophistication of the portrait is cleverly articulated—the line of her hand is echoed by the hair draped under her shoulder. She wears a medieval-style gown and possesses the features characteristic of Pre-Raphaelite feminine beauty. A print of this image in the Gernsheim Collection at the University of Texas at Austin is appropriately inscribed, “And music born of morning sound/shall pass into her face.”

Julian Cox. Julia Margaret Cameron, In Focus: From the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996), 70. ©1996 The J. Paul Getty Museum.