Julia Margaret Cameron
Mary Mother

ArtistBritish, born India, 1815–1879
CultureBritish
Titles
  • Mary Mother
  • from the album Mrs. Cameron’s Photographs from the Life
Date1867, assembled 1869
MediumAlbumen silver print from glass negative
DimensionsImage: 12 11/16 × 10 9/16 in. (32.2 × 26.9 cm)
Sheet: 12 11/16 × 10 9/16 in. (32.2 × 26.9 cm)
Mount: 18 1/8 × 12 3/8 in. (46 × 31.5 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase
Object number2021.282.23
Non exposé

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Department
Photography
Object Type
Description


Cameron generally portrayed her male sitters undisguised, in part because they were genu­inely heroic—“men great thro’ genius,” she wrote—and in part because there existed a market for portraits of Britain’s renowned poets, artists, scientists, and philosophers. By contrast, her female subjects (housemaid Mary Hillier here) were not celebrities—they were great “thro’ Love.” In them, Cameron found qualities of innocence, virtue, wisdom, piety, or passion that made them modern embodiments of classical, religious, and literary figures. For her, photography was a form of devotion, of prayer, and her religious compositions were not illustrations, they were embodiments of her belief.



ProvenanceGiven by the artist to her daughter Julia and son-in-law Charles Norman; by descent to his son Archibald Cameron Norman; by descent to his son Charles Lloyd Norman; by descent to his son Charles Wake Norman; by descent to his son to William Norman; by descent to his son Stephen Norman; [consigned to Hans P. Kraus, New York, 2012]; purchased by MFAH, 2021.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Inscribed on mount recto, below image: Mary Mother (Mary Hillier)
Catalogue raisonnéCox & Ford p. 505 "Norman Album", plate 101

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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Albumen silver print from glass negative
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