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Mrs. Herbert Duckworth

Black and white photograph of white woman, in profile, Victorian dress.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • Black and white photograph of white woman, in profile, Victorian dress.

Date:

April 1867

Artist:

Julia Margaret Cameron
English, 1815–1879

About this artwork

Julia Margaret Cameron began photographing at age forty-eight, after receiving a camera as a gift from her daughter and son-in-law. She soon became obsessed with photography, reveling in its messy magic and focusing more on the overall effects of her pictures than on technical perfection. Although she made portraits of some of the most important men of her day, Cameron’s female subjects helped her to explore the realm of mythology and imagination in highly allegorical and literary pictures. She delighted in dressing and posing friends, relatives, and servants as the Virgin Mary, Queen Esther, or Shakespeare’s faithful Cordelia. Julia Jackson, Cameron’s niece, was one of the few female sitters who posed for the photographer as herself. Known as a great beauty throughout her life, she was a favorite subject for Cameron, who took dozens of photographs of her over the course of ten years. In April 1867, shortly before Jackson’s wedding to her first husband, Herbert Duckworth, Cameron made a series of head-on portraits of the young bride-to-be that alternately reveal Jackson as noble, tender, and vulnerable. In this photograph, made after the wedding, Cameron captured Jackson’s mature beauty and extraordinary strength.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Photography and Media

Artist

Julia Margaret Cameron

Title

Mrs. Herbert Duckworth

Place

England (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

Made 1867

Medium

Albumen print

Dimensions

34.2 × 26.3 cm (13 1/2 × 10 3/8 in.)

Credit Line

The Mary and Leigh Block Endowment Fund

Reference Number

2001.59

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/157056/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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