About This Artwork

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)
English, 1832–1898

Margaret Frances Langton Clarke, 1864

Albumen print
13.5 x 10.7 cm
Gift of Mrs. John W. Taylor, Mrs. Winthrop M. Robinson, Jr., and Mrs. Fred D. Sauter, from the Estate of Frances Hooper, 1987.211.2

Photography
Not on Display

Besides being a mathematician, logician, and the beloved author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll was also a noted photographer. Although he made pictures of prominent figures in Victorian society, his favorite subject was children. He loved the intimacy and relative spontaneity of these pictures and often added to their playfulness by having children dress up and act in allegorical tableaux. The motifs of sleep and dreaming also feature prominently in many of his photographs, a strategy that elevates Carroll's images beyond the kind of merely accurate portraits being produced by commercial photographers of the day.