Immerse yourself in the Pre-Raphaelite world of the British Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), one of the pioneers of photography in the 19th century, on display until January 28, 2024 at the Jeu de Paume.
Designed by Lisa Springer (of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London) and Quentin Bajac (of Palm Game in Paris), the exhibition “Julia Margaret Cameron. Capturing Beauty” allows Parisian visitors to immerse themselves in the English Pre-Raphaelite world with its old-fashioned sweetness. We love finding portraits of our loved ones disguised as saints and mythical heroines. We admire his knowledge of composition, adjusting a face to the oval of the print or grouping several characters into a historical fresco. We like to find Raphael or Michelangelo for his ideal scenes which are, for this fervent Christian, “ the embodiment of a prayer ».
An indomitable vitality
You have to start at the end of the exhibition to discover the features of Julia Margaret Cameron since, paradoxically, this immense portraitist never represented herself in photography. The only photo of her, hanging at the end of the route, was taken by her son Henry Herschel Hay Cameron. Born in Calcutta to a French aristocrat living in Pondicherry and an English civil servant, Julia Margaret Cameron only returned to England when her husband retired. Her great-niece, the writer Virginia Woolf, spoke of the “indomitable vitality” of this authoritarian but delightfully eccentric woman.
Mrs Julia Margaret Cameron (1870) by Henry Herschel Hay Cameron, featured in the exhibition “Julia Margaret Cameron. Capturing beauty”, Jeu de Paume museum, Paris, 2023 © Guy Boyer
Late Photographer
It was not until 1863, when she was already 48 years old, that Julia Margaret Cameron took up photography. Her models are her family, her neighbors and her domestic employees, whom she imagines as heroes and heroines of religious, historical or mythological scenes repeating the composition of Renaissance paintings (Raphael in the lead) or those of her contemporaries. In a dozen years, before returning to India, she took hundreds of photos which were widely distributed and exhibited. She will never have a photography workshop unlike her contemporaries.
From left to right: Lucia (1864), La Madonna della Pace (1864), A Sibyl after the Manner of Michelangelo (1864) and GF Watts (1864) by Julia Margaret Cameron, presented in the exhibition “Julia Margaret Cameron. Capturing beauty”, Jeu de Paume museum, Paris, 2023 © Guy Boyer
Chiaroscuro and blur
« From the first moment, I handled my lens with tender ardor, so much so that it became in my eyes like a living being endowed with a voice, a memory and a creative vigor », assures Julia Margaret Cameron in her biography entitled Annals of my house. Initiated before 1863 by a few technical courses on collodion, her passion for photography allowed her to take liberties with conventions. She likes chiaroscuro, blur, smudges and scratches on prints. She focuses solely on portraiture, individual or group, abandoning landscape or still life.
I Wait (1872) by Julia Margaret Cameron, presented in the exhibition “Julia Margaret Cameron. Capturing beauty”, Jeu de Paume museum, Paris, 2023 © Guy Boyer
Portraits of loved ones
Mary Hillier and Mary Kellaway borrow their attitudes from the Virgin Mary and Saint Elizabeth, mother of Saint John the Baptist, for this scene entitled The Visitation. We recognize the softness of Giotto’s frescoes at the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (which Cameron was able to see in a publication of the Arundel Society) but the photographer eliminates the architecture to give a timeless character to this religious scene.
Kiss of Peace (1869) by Julia Margaret Cameron, featured in the exhibition “Julia Margaret Cameron. Capturing beauty”, Jeu de Paume museum, Paris, 2023 © Guy Boyer
From Darwin to Tennyson
Some eminent personalities will also pose for Julia Margaret Cameron. She freezes the big eyebrows of Charles Darwin in 1868. She asks the astronomer Sir John Frederick William Herschel to roll his eyes to the sky to recall his profession. His friend, the poet Alfred Tennyson, became “ the infamous monk » in a profile inspired by Michelangelo. The historian Thomas Carlyle finds himself “ terribly ugly and distressed » despite her beautiful blurred white hair.
Right: Thomas Carlyle (1867) by Julia Margaret Cameron, featured in the exhibition “Julia Margaret Cameron. Capturing beauty”, Jeu de Paume museum, Paris, 2023 © Guy Boyer
Shakespearean scenes
In Julia Margaret Cameron’s work, biblical scenes rival Shakespearean meetings. For the cycle of Idylls of the King, published in two volumes, the photographer brings together twenty-five perfectly well composed images. To represent the last embrace of the wife of King Arthur and the knight Lancelot du Lac, Cameron needed forty-two shots but the result is disturbingly sensual and contemplative.
The Separation of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere (1874) by Julia Margaret Cameron, presented in the exhibition “Julia Margaret Cameron. Capturing beauty”, Jeu de Paume museum, Paris, 2023 © Guy Boyer
“Julia Margaret Cameron. Capturing beauty »
Jeu de Paume museum, 75 008 Paris
until January 28, 2024
Julia Margaret Cameron Exhibition. Capturing the beauty
2023-10-10 21:54:58
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