Mrs. Herbert Duckworth

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Artist: Julia Margaret Cameron (English, 1815–1879)
Medium: Albumen print
Size: 34.2 × 26.3 cm (13 1/2 × 10 3/8 in.)
Museum: Art Institute of Chicago
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

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.

Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0.