The Mountain Nymph Sweet Liberty

On February 22, 1866, Julia Margaret Cameron wrote enthusiastically to Sir John Herschel: “I have just been engaged in that which Mr. Watts has always been urging me to do, A Series of Life sized heads—they are not only from the Life, but to the Life, and startle the eye with wonder and delight.” In the spring Cameron acquired a larger camera, one that used twelve-by-fifteen-inch glass plates and was fitted with a Rapid Rectilinear lens, recently introduced by John Henry Dallmeyer. With this apparatus she began a series of monumental heads.

In The Mountain Nymph Sweet Liberty the light is cast evenly across the bust, with the left side of the face thrown into shadow. This creates the illusion of relief and imparts a plastic, sculptural effect. The picture is an inspired visual interpretation of John Milton’s evocation of the mountain nymph in his 1631-32 poem L’Allegro:





Come, and trip it as you go,


On the light fantastic toe;


And in thy right hand lead with thee


The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty.





Cameron also created at least two other portraits of this model, but they lack the power and directness of this image. While the identity of the sitter is uncertain, she may be the sister of Cyllena Wilson, the strong-jawed subject in A Bacchante (see 84.XM.443.40).

In a letter written on September 25, 1866, Herschel was extravagant in his praise of this picture, describing it as “really a most astonishing piece of high relief—She is absolutely alive and thrusting her head from the paper into the air.”

Julian Cox. Julia Margaret Cameron, In Focus: From the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996), 52. ©1996 The J. Paul Getty Museum.