Julia Jackson
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
27.4 x 20.6 cm (10 13/16 x 8 1/8 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1996
Accession Number
1996.99.2
Tags
Art Historical Context
Julia Margaret Cameron's *Julia Jackson* (1867) is a captivating albumen silver print portrait that exemplifies the artist's revolutionary approach to photography in Victorian Britain. Captured when Cameron was at the height of her brief but brilliant career—having taken up the medium just four years earlier at age 48—this image depicts Julia Prinsep Jackson, Cameron's niece and a celebrated beauty who later became the mother of writer Virginia Woolf. The soft-focus technique, achieved through deliberate lens manipulation and long exposures on glass negatives, creates an ethereal, almost paint...
About the Artist
Julia Margaret Cameron · 1815–1879
Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879), born Julia Margaret Pattle in Calcutta, India, emerged as one of the 19th century's most innovative photographers despite beginning her career at age 48. The daughter of East India Company official James Pattle and French aristocrat Adeline de l'Etang, she was educated in France from 1818 to 1834 alongside her six surviving sisters, renowned for their beauty and...