Cathy's Art Diary

Novel exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron and Francesca Woodman. I know Cameron’s work quite well. She was an early photographer working in the 19th century. Woodman, from 100 years later, was new to me. The show compared the techniques and subjects of the two women exploring the idea that both conjure a dream state. It was an interesting comparison but I found it a bit inconclusive. I would like to have known whether Woodman knew the work of the earlier photographer and if so whether she was consciously influenced by it. It felt a bit like a more modern artist was being used to make the earlier one approachable but I’m not sure that’s necessary with Cameron’s work. It was an interesting way of discovering a photographer that was new to me but I found myself being drawn more to the familiar. Closed 16 June 2024 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard      

Lovely exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery looking at the work of the four main Victorian photography pioneers in England, Julia Margaret Cameron, Lewis Carroll, Lady Clementina Hawarden and Oscar Reylander. The show was excellent and pointing out the links between these photographers and how they learnt from and influenced each other. The Duchess of Cambridge, the patron of the gallery, had written some of the labels as her undergraduate thesis had been on these photographers. The show was arranged by subject to emphasis the thematic links and all the works were shown as vintage prints. The pictures of children were the most engaging but the show was quick to point out that all of Carroll’s were taken in the presence of a parent or governess and that only half his output was of children. Of course there were the famous pictures of Alice Lidell but I found Reylander’s were more sweet and sentimental including his version of the Raphael angels which was bought by Prince ...

Good exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum celebrating the bicentary of the birth of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. It also marked the 50th anniversary of her first museum show held at the Victoria and Albert Museum itself. The most interesting section of exhibition looked at that show and the studio she set up at the museum. There were a number of pictures that she had taken there. I have come across Julia Margaret Cameron a lot as she was the great aunt of Virginia Woolf and had not known about this period of her life. I was also interested to see some of the pictures given to G F Watts who was happy to take unmounted, damaged prints as he used them to judge their composition. Also the pictures she did to illustrate two volumes of Tennyson poems which were not profitable. Closes on 21 February. Reviews Times Guardian Evening Standard  

Nice exhibition at the Science Museum to mark the bicentary of the birth of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. It deconstructed an album she’d given to Sir John Herschel in 1864 containing one year of her work with more added three years later. It had most of the iconic photographs in it. It has been described as the “finest album of Victorian photos ever created”. In the early 80s the book and photos was conserved and in this exhibition the pictures are hung in the order they were found in the book with Cameron’s original annotations. The cover is included which Cameron had had especially carved from wood. I love the over serious whimsy of many of the pictures such that of two women recreating a scene from the Elgin Marbles. Her poor maid Mary Ann Hiller appears in a number of these! There are lots of lovely pictures of Virginia Woolf’s mother Julia Jackson with her wonderful large eyes.   And of course my favourite was there, an Iago using an Italian model from...