Magdalene (Brookfield)

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Artist: Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India, 1815–1879)
Medium: Albumen silver print
Size: Image: 27.1 × 22.2 cm (10 11/16 × 8 3/4 in.)
Culture: British
Museum: J. Paul Getty Museum
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone; And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the rose is blown.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in Maud

The woman in the garden is a common theme of Victorian poetry and painting, often representing beauty and romantic love. Magdalene Brookfield, a family friend of Julia Margaret Cameron, is the dark-haired woman strolling through this garden. Her pyramid-shaped figure is centered in the photograph, and so is Cameron's focus. Brookfield's face, hand, and a part of a nearby bush are sharply defined. The rest of the image blends into soft-focus, emphasizing her mysterious, pointing gesture.

Perhaps Magdalene represents the subject of a man's obsession, as in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's 1855 poem, Maud, in which the ephemeral qualities of love and a woman's beauty are ascribed to nature. Like Eve in the Garden of Eden, the woman in nature becomes part of a moral theme of the virtuous woman versus the fallen woman. Cameron probably made this outdoor, full-figure study at the London home of her sister, Sara Prinsep.

Text: J. Paul Getty Trust, CC BY 4.0.