Cameron (Julia Margaret) Family Papers, circa 1777-1940

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Summary

Title:

Julia Margaret Cameron family papers

Dates:

circa 1777-1940

Creators:

Cameron, Hardinge Hay, Cameron, C. H. (Charles Hay), 1795-1880, Cameron, Adeline A. Blake, Cameron, Henry Herschel Hay, 1852-1911, Cameron family, Cameron, Julia Margaret, 1815-1879, Cameron, Kitty Macleod, Herschel, John F. W. (John Frederick William), 1792-1871, Cameron family, and Taylor, Henry, Sir, 1800-1886

Abstract:

A collection of family correspondence and papers touching on the life of English photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (active 1860s-1870s), though derived from the estate of her son, Hardinge Hay Cameron, around whom much of the materials revolve. They document the personal, legal, and financial aspects of the extended family through letters, journals, documents, photographs, art work, and other materials.

Extent:

7 Linear Feet (18 boxes)

Language:

English .

Preferred citation:

Julia Margaret Cameron family papers, circa 1777-1940, Getty Research Institute, Research Library, Accession no. 850858.

http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa850858

Background

Scope and content:

The collection consists primarily of correspondence and personal papers, with some family photographs, and original watercolors and drawings. The material derives from the estate of Hardinge Hay Cameron, the fourth child and third son of J. M. and C. H. Cameron, and the bulk of it concerns Hardinge Hay Cameron and his wives, Catherine Macintosh Macleod and Adeline A. Blake and their families. The papers provide a glimpse of Julia Margaret Cameron's intellectual and artistic milieu and document her relationships with her husband and children, while also presenting a view of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British colonial life in Ceylon (Sri Lanka).

Note on initials used in the collection:

Many figures are referred to in the finding aid by their initials. The following list provides the full names of these individuals, their identity, and nicknames used in the correspondence:

C. H. Cameron: Charles Hay Cameron (1795-1880), barrister, partially responsible for creating the Indian legal system of the 1840s, investor in Ceylon coffee estates. Married Julia Margaret Prattle in 1838.

J. M. Cameron: Julia Margaret Pattle Cameron (1815-1879).

Julia Hay Cameron: Julia Hay Cameron Norman (1838-1873), first child and only daughter of J. M. and C. H. Cameron; wife of Charles Norman.

E. W. H. Cameron: Ewen Wrottesley Hay Cameron (1843-1889), second child, first son of J. M. and C. H. Cameron. Owner of Rathoongoode Forest coffee estate. Husband of Annie Chinnery Cameron.

H. H. Cameron: Hardinge Hay Cameron (1846-1911), third child, third son of J. M. and C. H. Cameron. "Har." Worked in the Ceylon civil service from from 1870 to 1904, retiring as treasurer of the colony. First wife: Catherine Anne Macintosh Macleod Cameron; second wife: Adeline A. Blake Cameron.

H. H. H. Cameron: Henry Herschel Hay Cameron (1852-1911), sixth child and fifth son of J. M. and C. H. Cameron. "Punch." Photographer, actor, and theater producer. Unmarried.

J. F. W. Herschel: Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871), astronomer, photographer, friend of J. M. and C. H. Cameron; godfather of Julia Hay Cameron.

M. B. Herschel: Lady Margaret Brodie Stewart Herschel, wife of J. F. W. Herschel.

Kitty Macleod: Catherine Anne Macintosh Macleod Cameron (1859-1880), first wife of H. H. Cameron, married in 1879.

A. A. Cameron: Adeline A. Blake Cameron (1862-1947), second wife of H. H. Cameron, married in 1884. "Hoodie."

A. E. Cameron: Annie E. Chinery Cameron (1851-1925), wife of E. W. H. Cameron. "Topsy."

H. A. L. Fisher: Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher (1865-1940), son of Mary Louisa Jackson Fisher (daughter of J. M. Cameron's youngest sister Maria Jackson);

H. W. Fisher: Herbert William Fisher (1836-1903); husband of Mary Louisa Jackson Fisher; historian and author; tutor to the Prince of Wales (King Edward VII).

W. H. Gregory: Sir William H. Gregory, governor of Ceylon from 1872 to 1877.

Ellen Ottingham: J. M. Cameron's maid and photographic assistant. "Little E."

Annie C. Macleod: Annie Catherine Macleod Wilson, sister of Kitty Macleod.

C. A. Macleod: Catherine Anne Macintosh Macleod, mother of Kitty and Annie C. Macleode.

Norman Macleod: well-known Scottish reverend, Father of Kitty Macleod.

William, Polly, Jessie, Aggie, Jean, and Elsie Macleod: Siblings of Kitty Macleod.

C. Blake: Grandmother of Adeline A. Blake Cameron.

A. A. Blake: Mother of Adeline A. Blake Cameron, wife of George Pilkington Blake.

G. P. Blake: George Pilkington Blake, father of Adeline A. Blake Cameron.

Geraldine Thomas: Geraldine Blake Thomas, sister of Adeline A. Blake Cameron, wife of E. H. L. Thomas.

E. H. L. Thomas: Husband of Geraldine Thomas. "Ted." Assistant manager of Ceylon tea estates.

E. M. King King: Eliza Margaret King King. "Lizzie."

M. C. King King: Mary Cochrane King King. "Molly."

Frank Hadden: Brother-in-law of E. H. L. Thomas.

Jack Hadden: Nephew of E. H. L. Thomas, son of Frank Hadden.

Mary Hadden: Sister of E. H. L. Thomas, wife of Frank Hadden?

Helen Thomas: Sister of E. H. L. Thomas.

J. H. Thomas: Jocelyn? H. Thomas.

Biographical / historical:

Julia Margaret Cameron (J. M. Cameron, 1915-1879) was an English photographer whose work dates from 1864 to the 1870s. Born in Calcutta (Kolkata), she was primarily raised and educated in France, and returned to Calcutta in 1834. In 1836, while convalescing in South Africa, she met two Englishmen men who would have a lasting impact on her life: the astronomer and photographer, Sir John Herschel, who became a lifelong friend and who would shortly introduce her to photography, and Charles Hay Cameron (C. H. Cameron, 1795-1880), a jurist and member of the Law Commission serving in India, whom she married in Calcutta in 1838. During the couple's time in Calcutta, J. M. Cameron was a prominent social hostess within the Anglo-Indian community, organizing events for Henry Hardinge, the Governor-General of India, while also raising a family. Through her correspondence with Herschel she kept abreast of developments in the chemistry of photography and image making.

The Camerons had four children in India: a daughter Julia, whose godfather was Herschel, followed by three sons: Ewen Wrottesley, Hardinge, and Eugene. C. M. Cameron served as the legal member of the Council of India from 1843 until he retired in 1848.

Upon C. M.'s retirement the Camerons returned to England where they had two more sons: Charles and Henry Herschel. Their sons, Hardinge Hay Cameron (H. H. Cameron) and Henry Herschel Hay Cameron (H. H. H. Cameron) are of particular relevance to the present archive. Hardinge was private secretary to Sir William Gregory, governor of Ceylon from 1872 to 1877. He married Catherine Macintosh Macleod (Kitty) in 1879, who died in 1880. In 1884, he married Adeline A. Blake, daughter of George Pilkington Blake. Henry Herschel Hay Cameron, the youngest Cameron child, followed in his mother's footsteps and became a photographer.

Through her sister, Sara Prattle Princep, who hosted a salon at her home, Little Holland House, J. M. Cameron became part of the artistic and intellectual circle that included William Makepeace Thackery, Robert Browning, John Ruskin, James Abbot MacNeill Whistler, Pre-Raphaelites Dante Gabriel Rossetti and G. F. Watts, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Although she had written and translated poetry throughout her life, and had followed the development of the newly emerging technology of photography since its beginnings, J. M. Cameron did not start taking photographs until 1863 when, at age forty-eight, she received a set of photographic equipment by her daughter. Along with Cameron family members and friends, many of the people who gathered at Little Holland House became J. M. Cameron's sitters. Watts and Tennyson were also particularly influential in the development of Cameron's aesthetic theory and expression, while Herschel served as her primary technical advisor. Consequently, Cameron, who worked primarily in the area of portraiture, did not strive for the photographic perfection most of her contemporaries sought. Instead, she embraced the imperfections caused during the picture making process and did not retouch her photographs. Her deliberately soft focused portraits, influenced by the photographer David Wilkie Wynfield, whom she credited as the greatest influence on her work, and which presaged the Pictorialist movement of the late-nineteenth and –early-twentieth centuries, were often misinterpreted by her contemporaries as exhibiting a lack of technical ability.

In 1860, the Camerons moved to the Isle of Wight, living next door to Tennyson. Cameron considered her 1874 photographs for Tennyson's Idylls of the King to be her most important work. The Camerons lived on the island until 1875 when they moved to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) where four of their sons lived, and where C. H., like his sons, had holdings in coffee and tea estates. Cameron produced few photographs in Ceylon. She died there at the Glencairn estate in 1879 with C. H. surviving her by a year.

Sources consulted:

__ "Julia Margaret Cameron (Pattle)." Geni.https://www.geni.com/people/Julia-Margaret-Cameron/6000000018591530057

Barlow, Helen. "Cameron [née Pattle], Julia Margaret (1815–1879), photographer."Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-4449.

Cox, Julian, and Colin Ford. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs. Los Angeles: Getty, 2003.

Acquisition information:

Acquired in 1985.

Processing information:

Hillary Brown processed the collection and wrote the finding aid circa 1995. Beth Ann Guynn revised the finding aid in 2021 and in 2023 she and Quin Fraley further processed and described the photographs in Series III.

Arrangement:

Arranged in three series: Series I. Cameron family papers, 1777-1940; Series II. Watercolors and drawings, ca. 1830-1925, undated; Series III. Photographs, 1890-1929, undated.

Physical location:

Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the catalog record for this collection. Click here for the access policy.

Rules or conventions:

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Indexed terms

Subjects:: Photographs, Original
Photographic prints
Portraits
Cartes-de-visite
Names:: King family
McLeod family
Blake family
Thomas family
Blake, George Pilkington
Thomas, Geraldine
Cameron, Adeline A. Blake
Cameron, Hardinge Hay
Places:: Sri Lanka -- Social life and customs

About this collection guide

Collection Guide Author:: Hillary Brown.
Date Encoded:: This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2024-10-24 13:28:33 -0700 .

Access and use

Restrictions:: Open for use by qualified researchers.
Terms of access:: Contact Library Rights and Reproductions.