Saturday, October 31, 2015

Reaper

William Strang
The Reaper
1892
etching
British Museum

Of all things Homer said, one thing exceeds all others.
"The tragedy of man is the tragedy of leaves."
Yet few who've heard it have taken it to heart. 
For in youth we come to believe some things
will never die, that sickness, decrepitude
and age are mere phantasms of an alien mind.
Poor fools, how oversoon death will seem to them,
how like a dream, that momentary judder of existence.

 Simonides (556-468 BC)

From the fine anthology, Greek Lyric Poetry : a new translation by Sherod Santos (New York : Norton, 2005)

after Rosso Fiorentino
The Skeletons
1518
engraving
British Museum

Ed. Renaux
Le départ de la Commune
1870-71
lithograph
Victoria & Albert Museum

William Blake
Hamlet and his Father's Ghost
1806
drawing
British Museum

Francisco Goya
Flight of Witches
1797
Prado

Francisco Ribalta
Soul in Pain
c. 1605-10
Prado

Peter Paul Rubens
Man tormented by Demon
1621
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum

Titian
Tityus
1548-49
Prado

Hendrik Goltzius
The Companions of Cadmus and the Dragon
1588
engraving
Metropolitan Museum

Jacopo Ligozzi
Chimera
c. 1590-1610
drawing
Prado

Friday, October 30, 2015

Faces

Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Jackson
1867
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Mrs. Herbert Duckworth (Julia Jackson)
1872
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Mrs. Herbert Duckworth (Julia Jackson)
1874
Getty

Julia Jackson was the niece and namesake of Julia Margaret Cameron, the great Victorian photographer. By 1874 when the photograph immediately above was made, Julia Jackson was a widow with three small children. A few years later she consented to marry Sir Leslie Stephen. By that marriage she became the mother of four more children, including the future famous writer Virginia Woolf.

The character of Mrs. Ramsay in To The Lighthouse was shaped by Woolf's memories of her mother, confirming what Mrs. Cameron recorded  "She bore about with her, she could not help knowing, the torch of her beauty, she carried it erect into any room that she entered."

Julia Margaret Cameron
Aurora (Emily Peacock)
c. 1865-75
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Emily Ritchie
c. 1870
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Hypatia
1867
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Isabel Bateman
1874
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Magdalene Brookfield
1865
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
"O Hark" (from Tennyson)
1875
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
"Tears, idle tears" (from Tennyson)
1875
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Maud & Passion Flower (from Tennyson)
1875
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Marie Spartali
1870
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Mountain Nymph, Sweet Liberty
1866
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Study for Holy Family
c. 1866-70
Getty

All images are based on prints at the Getty in Los Angeles.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Tableaux

Julia Margaret Cameron
The Disappointment
1865
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) devoted much of her best artistic energy to the now-unfashionable genre of the narrative tableau. The Victorians were exceptionally fond of staging these static episodes from favored literary sources. Tennyson was a friend and near neighbor of the Camerons at their summer house on the Isle of Wight. The influence of his knights and ladies on Mrs. Cameron's imagination was particularly powerful.

Julia Margaret Cameron
Fisherman's Farewell
1874
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Sir Galahad and the Pale Nun 
1874
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Lancelot & Guinevere 
1874
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Vivien & Merlin  
1874
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Death of Elaine 
1875
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
The Princess 
1875
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Young Man & Young Woman 
c. 1873-74
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Zuleika
1871
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Lady Elcho as Cumean Sybil
1865
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
The Passing of King Arthur 
1874
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Madness of Ophelia 
1875
Getty

All images are based on prints at the Getty in Los Angeles.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Small Models

Julia Margaret Cameron
Annie
1864
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Annie
1864
Getty

In January 1864 Julia Margaret Cameron mounted the albumen silver print above and wrote across the bottom border "Annie  My very first success in Photography."  Only a month earlier, Cameron's daughter had produced the camera as a gift  an expensive and unusual gift at the time. The mother immediately threw herself into learning the extremely awkward processes required to use large wet-glass negatives, recruiting sitters from among her large household (children, grandchildren, servants, visitors) and inducing them to maintain poses through long exposure-times. In a career lasting scarcely more than a decade Julia Margaret Cameron made almost a thousand photographs. This body of work then waited a full century before its importance was widely recognized.

Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Herschel
c. 1865
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Vision of the Infant Samuel
c. 1865
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Water Babies, Again
1864
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Study of the Child St. John
1872
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Study of Dead Child
1868
Getty

The photograph above appears to document Cameron's encounter with an actual dead child, anticipating the industry of mortuary photography that would flourish on both sides of the Atlantic in the turn-of-the-century period. Below, Cameron photographs one of her own living grandchildren as if dead, calling the picture Shulamite Woman and Dead Son. This baby-model's apparent deep sleep might of course have been naturally induced, but knowing the ways of the Victorians it is hard to avoid the suspicion that a drop or two of opium was involved.

Julia Margaret Cameron
Shunamite Woman and Dead Son
1865
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Angel of the Nativity
1872
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Florence
1872
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
George, Archie, Charlotte, Adeline
c. 1868
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Study of the Cenci
1868
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
A Study
1867
Getty

Julia Margaret Cameron
Adeline Norman
1874
Getty

All prints are from collections at the Getty in Los Angeles.