- The Mountain Nymph Sweet Liberty
- from the album Mrs. Cameron’s Photographs from the Life
Sheet: 13 13/16 × 10 11/16 in. (35.1 × 27.1 cm)
Mount: 18 1/8 × 12 3/8 in. (46 × 31.5 cm)
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This photograph takes its title from John Milton’s poem “L’Allegro,” a celebration of life’s pleasures:
Come, and trip it as you go
On the light fantastic toe;
And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty.
Sir John Herschel wrote to Cameron, “That head of the ‘Mountain Nymph Sweet Liberty’ (a little farouche & égarée [timid and distraught] by the way, as if first let loose & half afraid that it was too good to last) is really a most astonishing piece of high relief—She is absolutely alive and thrusting out her head from the paper into the air.” Herschel seized upon the photograph’s most striking quality—its startling sense of presence and of psychological connection with the viewer.
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.
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