Tuesday 29 March 2016

Blind Mary Gilbert (or life after Julia Margaret Cameron)

One of the most complicated things to work out when writing a biography of a model is what happens to your subject after they stop modelling.  Paull F. Baum famously said in his book Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Letters to Fanny Cornforth (1940) that Fanny without Rossetti was nothing, and so it is tempting to imagine that all models cease to exist once the eye of their particular artist moves on (or dies).  You will have noticed that I have been researching a biography of Mary Hillier, due out next year, and I was delighted to find further information about her that pertained to her life after Julia Margaret Cameron...

Mary Gilbert (c.1927) Ida Southwell Perrin
This was the last image we have of Mary Hillier (or Gilbert, her married name), drawn by artist Ida Southwell Perrin (1861-1953) in Freshwater, Isle of Wight.  I thought this was the only image in terms of later pictures of Mary, beyond her glory days of Cameron and Watts, but on my last trip to Dimbola Lodge I was shown this plaque...

It had been donated to Dimbola with some other Hillier family history and a couple of Cameron photographs, and it was obvious immediately that it was a bas relief portrait of Mary Hillier...

Mary Hillier (1873) Julia Margaret Cameron
The give-away was the profile with her strong nose and pouty top lip. I was delighted to see another image of Mary but who had made it?  I was left with the puzzle.

I thought of all of the sculptors that Mary might have known, connected to the Little Holland House circle.  I thought of Watts (both George Frederick and Mary), but it didn't seem to fit his work. I thought of Carlo Marochetti, who carved the figure of Princess Elizabeth in St Thomas' Church in Newport, but he was too early. I thought of other people she might have come into contact with but something was bothering me.  Most Victorian plaques seemed to be set in a circle or if they were in a rectangle they were much more 'fussy'...

The Mourners (late 19th century) Alfred Buxton
The lines of Mary's plaque were clean and sparce and it dawned on me (far later than it should) that it had a 'Deco' look about it.  So, Ida Perrin had met Mary in the twentieth century. A short search later showed that Perrin was also a sculptor, although the majority of entries for her online were for her botanical pictures.  I was led to the Bushey Heath pottery which Ida Southwell Perrin established in 1921...

Fred Passenger vase (c.1925) Bushy Heath Pottery
Ida employed an associate of the de Morgan's, Fred Passenger, to work in the relatively short lived pottery (it closed in 1933) and the pieces are beautiful.  Although I kept reading she was a sculptor I could not find any pictures of her work but in a short book on the Bushey Heath Pottery it mentioned that a good amount of her work had ended up at Leighton House Museum.  I had been led back to Little Holland House (well, next door to it)...

The Bushey Heath collection was no longer on display, but I contacted the curator to arrange a visit.  She confirmed the collection was still there and it had been catalogued in Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council pages.  Looking at Ida Perrin's entries I found this...

Blind Mary Gilbert (1910-1919) Muriel Ida Perrin
The piece is actually by Muriel Perrin, only daughter of Ida Southall Perrin, an artist in her own right, who died in the 'flu epidemic of 1919 shortly before her brother died in a flying accident. It wouldn't be my research if it wasn't bleak...

Sorrowing Angel by Muriel Perrin at St Peter's Church, Bushey Heath
The plaque of Mary Gilbert, blind and approaching 70, is so delicately rendered that it gives a reflection of the dignity that infused the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron.   It had been presented to Leighton House Museum as part of the Perrin Memorial Gift 1927-1929. After her daughter died, Ida Perrin offered to pay for an extension to Leighton House in memory of her daughter on the proviso that certain works by Muriel would be presented to the Council and shown occassionally.  There is a note on record that the sculptor might be Alfred Gilbert but the subject is so much like Ida Perrin's drawing that I suspect Muriel is the creator. I would also be tempted to re-date Ida's drawing to be contemporary with the sculpture.
 
Mary was 'rediscovered' by her community in the 1920s with an interview in the Isle of Wight Press and a sizable obituary when she died in 1936.  As her biographer, I appreciate each little fact and piece as they create stepping stones for her story, and to see her as an older woman is thought-provoking, especially as Mary avoided cameras after Julia Margaret Cameron left the Wight.  She even refused to be in the wedding photographs of her own son.  In Ida and Muriel Perrin's works we see 20th century Mary, Mary as a much-loved mother, grandmother and member of the Freshwater community.

The research continues...

Tuesday 22 March 2016

Six Degrees of Agnes Mangles

As I have said before, I have a particular fondness for this photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron...


Vivien and Merlin  (1874)
It seems very apparent from Cameron's photographs that she found older men very attractive (and who doesn't?) but I think the photographs of Vivien and Merlin are a very overt referrence to this.  In the images she shows her husband, Charles Hay Cameron, falling under the spell of the beautiful, twenty four year old Agnes Mangles.  In one image, she is seen beguiling him, her arm outstretched.  Charles Cameron has closed his eyes, the sourcerer Merlin caught in a web of magic.   The more powerful of the two images shows Vivien pressing her fingers into the old man's beard.  He looks down at her, seemingly comfortable in his superiority, unwary of how he is no match for her.
Now, you know me, I like a dig to find out things about the models and so was interested to find out more about Agnes Mangles, placeholder for Mrs Cameron, and what I found made me realise what a small world it is...

Vivien and Merlin (1874) Julia Margaret Cameron

 Miss Agnes Mangles was born in 1850, the youngest of a large family that numbered almost a dozen children.  Her father, Captain Charles Mangles had political aspirations in Southampton but these were never realised as he failed three times to get elected as an MP.  From a long line of gentlemen of daring and fortune, Captain Mangles was a director of the West India Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, whose home port was Southampton. In 1869, The Hampshire Chronicle reported on the launch of the RMSPC  ship 'Nile' from the Northam Ironworks, in front of 'an immense concourse of spectators'.  The ceremony of naming was performed by Agnes, daughter of the chairman of the company.

The Nile, launched in 1869
Captain Mangles and his family lived at a very well appointed house called Poyle Park in Surrey (now demolished, typical).  The Captain died in 1873, leaving less than £7,000 to his widow Rose, who was by that time living in France in the Chalet de Violette in Cannes.  Although Agnes was still quite young and unmarried when her father died, her eldest brother, a solicitor, was almost twenty years older than her and so the loss of Captain Mangles does not seem to have affected the family's social position, despite the relatively modest amount he left to his widow.  It seems likely that the family was staying on the Isle of Wight when Julia Margaret Cameron seized her chance to photograph Agnes as both Vivien and also Tennyson's heroine Mariana...

Mariana (1875-6)
It is unclear whether Cameron's photographs were taken during one season or over two years, 1875 and 1876.  From the works involving Mary Ryan and May Prinsep and their respective partners, it is clear that Cameron loved women on the brink of marriage and Agnes married in September 1876.  Her husband was Arthur Wakefield Chapman (later Sir Arthur), a partner in a jute company in Calcutta, later JP and unsuccessful MP (not unlike her father).  Much like Mary Ryan and Julia Margaret Cameron, Agnes became a colonial wife, going with her husband first to India where their eldest son Paul was born in 1877, then to Italy where younger son Michael followed in 1880.  Arthur Chapman was a close friend of Edwin Lutyens who designed a home for them in 1890...

Crooksbury House, nr. Farnham (thank you, Country Life)
 The seven bedroom house near Farnham was sold last summer apparently, for £2.5M.  Very nice too.  The Chapman family settled into life in Surrey society and Michael married Lilian Mackintosh in 1906.  Lilian's name might well be familiar to some of you...

Lilian (1904) G F Watts
Lilian Mackintosh was the orphaned daughter of friends of George Frederick and Mary Watts.  She was the love-child of Major General Henry Dyer Abbott and Alice Maud Mackintosh, and her mother died when Lilian was three. Lilian was befriended by the Watts' in 1889 and following her father's death in 1892, she became their adopted daughter or ward (how very Gilbert and Sullivan).  Maybe it was because of the connection to Julia Margaret Cameron or maybe it was just chance but Agnes and George Frederick Watts became family through the marriage of their children in 1906. It seems a shame that neither of them lived to see it, as Agnes died only a few months before Watts, in May 1904, at home in Crooksbury House, aged 54.

Much like most families of their generation, the Chapman family was not left untouched by the First World War.  Michael and Lilian lived in Toronto for a while before he went away to fight, and subsequently die in April 1918 in Nieppe, Nord-Pas-de-Calais.  His wife was left with two children, Anthea and Ronald, who remained close to Lilian's family in Compton.  Mary Watts designed the War Memorial in Compton where he is remembered on the first panel.

Compton War Memorial, unveiled in 1922
Agnes' grandson, Ronald, shared his mother's love of G F Watts and his work and published The Laurel and the Thorn in the 1940s. It seems a coincidence that two of Julia Margaret Cameron's models would become related through the marriage of their children but I suppose it is just indicative of how small social circles could be.  I like to think of it as a little bit of Cameron magic weaving together her muses from beyond the grave and I'm sure it would have made her happy to know how the extended family of her art remained together, after a fashion.

Monday 21 March 2016

World Poetry Day 2016: Portrait of Sophie Gray

Here we are on World Poetry Day again and I have written a poem inspired by the famous and wonderful portrait of Sophie Gray, painted by her brother-in-law, John Everett Millais....

Portrait of Sophie Gray (1857) J E Millais
Sophie's Heart
 
My sister wears a cross of wings,
The golden thread in her hair sings,
My hair is filled with flame and smoke,
That lifts my chin until I choke,
There’s barely any white to stitch,
My heart is picked out in the pitch.
 
I’m not so young as not to see
The pain you garlanded on me,
Your joy is tainted by a snare,
Your missteps taken into air,
Oh, how those shadows cloak your bark,
My heart is picked out in the dark.
 
Will I repeat mistakes and pain?
Will I know infamy or fame?
Will I be met with smile or sneer?
Will I evoke a laugh or tear?
No matter how defiantly,
I can’t foresee my destiny,
Your theatre pressed me to the back,
My heart is picked out in the black.

Wednesday 16 March 2016

Book Review: The Testament of Sophie Dawes

I've been very lucky with books to review of late and have had the pleasure of bringing you some marvellous non-fiction books, with yet more to come.  Today however I have the delight of recommending a novel for those looking for something Victorian and diverting from a rather splendid writer of historical fiction.  Robert Stephen Parry has returned to the nineteenth century and I am very happy indeed. His new novel The Testament of Sophie Dawes is released today - et voilĂ !


Set on the Isle of Wight in 1862, we follow the journals and letters of the newly appointed archivist at Osborne House as he sorts through the papers of the late Prince Consort.  Amongst the files he finds a letter, 'a testament', from a woman called Sophie Dawes which reveals scandal and betrayal which could have ramifications to the monarchy.


Queen Victoria in mourning, 1862
The book is actually quite tricky to talk about because of spoilers but what I can say is that what the archivist finds is only half the story.  The testament takes us to Revolutionary France, a time of chaos, of disrupting order.  Sophie Dawes struggles in her uncertain position as courtesan and consort to royalty and aristocracy in the changing tides of society.  Her story is at odds with the quiet and respectful mourning of Osborne and the Isle of Wight, but what slowly becomes apparent through the journal is that all might not be as it seems there too.

Sophie Dawes house in St Helens, Isle of Wight
What amazed me was the level of research that has gone into this novel.  I was fairly well aware of Osborne House and Queen Victoria's time there but I learnt so much more about those stifling months after Albert's death, and what exactly life must have been like living under such a shroud of enforced sadness.  I was unaware of Sophie Dawes but now want to know more and I'm sure other readers will be drawn to see her house and read more about her extraordinary life.  She is definitely a character, and one who seems to be more of a celebrity in France than her native land.


I have always had a weakness for novels written in the epistolary style after studying 18th century novels for my degrees, and so loved reading the journal entries and the letters. It feels so personal and you have an instant connection with the narrator. All that happens to him is admitted to the reader with pride, panic, shame and curiosity and you end up racing from entry to entry to find out the truth.  I loved the juxtaposition of Darwin's Origins, the endless birdwatching and ordering of his life with our narrator's choices later in the book and his slow realisation that order and science might not answer all his questions, either about the world or himself.  There is one moment especially where I yelped because things take such an unexpected turn you know nothing will be the same again.

Sophie Dawes (1812) Huet-Villiers
As always, the book is vividly written and full of exquisite period detail.  What Robert Stephen Parry excels in is lulling the reader into a sense of comfort by the gentle tone and pace of a piece adding impact into the revelations and mysteries.  If you loved The Arrow Chest then you will adore this, and I am very happy that Mr Parry has returned to both the Victorian period and the Isle of Wight, two of my favourite things.  His writing suits the era so well, being so graceful and insightful, but he brings scandal, sex, mystery and madness to the world of a quiet archivist who just wants to watch birds.  The result is a novel that is as compelling as it is unexpected, that contrasts the controlled heart of the Empire within the stifling walls of Osborne with the chaos life can bring.  It certainly is a story that will stay with you after its finale and that is recommendation enough.

To buy The Testament of Sophie Dawes visit Amazon UK here and USA here, or buy it on Kindle (UK and USA).  Enjoy!


Friday 11 March 2016

Book Review: Pre-Raphaelites, Beauty and Rebellion

You probably know that Liverpool have a massive Pre-Raphaelite exhibition on at present. Pre-Raphaelites: Beauty and Rebellion is currently running at the Walker Art Gallery (yes, I intend to claim that gallery at some point) until 5th June and the Walker family will be pottering up north to see it in April.  In advance of this, the kind people at Liverpool University Press sent me a copy of the catalogue to review.  Well, thank you very much...


This is a small, affordable catalogue, filled with good quality illustrations and a lot of interesting research on Liverpool's place in the Pre-Raphaelite story.  I'm liking the trend for mini-catalogues: don't get me wrong, I adore a massive £30 monolith filled with gorgeousness, but sometimes, if you already have a ton of books on the subject, a smaller catalogue is just as satisfying and won't break the bank or your back getting it home.  At £15, this is really good and contains many images I was not familiar with. What more can you ask for?

The Scapegoat (1854-5) William Holman Hunt
The angle the exhibition takes is a rather contemporary one: Dissatisfied with how London-centric everything was, Liverpool decided to take matters into its own hands, culturally speaking.  In the Georgian period, men were making money in new industries and began to pour it back into the local community, with institutions , schools and libraries, as well as building personal cultural collections.


Man of Sorrows (c.1859) William Dyce
The formation of the Liverpool Academy in 1810 began a run of exhibitions, lasting until the 1860s, which featured such superstars of the day such as Lawrence, Etty and Turner.  The Academy offered to pay transport costs to get the art from London (and ship it back if it didn't sell) and held its annual exhibition in September making it fall comfortably apart from the Royal Academy's May exhibition.  If your work didn't sell in May, then it became a staple to try again in the autumn.  By the 1820s, Liverpool Academy's exhibition gained national importance, reported in the newspapers and drawing the best art and artists. 

Oure Ladye of Saturday Night (1847) Ford Madox Brown
By 1851, the census recorded that Liverpool had the greatest number of artists living in a city beside London. It is unsurprising that it would draw the interest of the Pre-Raphaelites.  A number of Ford Madox Brown's pictures were seen for the first time in Liverpool including Oure Ladye of Saturday Night (also known as Our Lady of Good Children) which had been rejected by the Royal Academy in 1847.  The Art Journal of 1853 reported 'the Liverpool Academy has a decided penchant for Pre-Raffaelitism'.
Autumn Leaves (1856) John Everett Millais
The catalogue itself is split into two sections.  The first covers the paintings that graced the walls of the Liverpool Academy exhibitions, including ones such as Autumn Leaves (1856) by Millais which aren't actually in Beauty and Rebellion.  There are pictures by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and their followers such as Arthur Hughes, John Brett and George Price Boyce, as well as lesser known artists such as Frederick Smallfield.

Wedding Cards: Jilted (1854) John Everett Millais
The second part of the book concentrates on the Liverpool patrons, those men who made their money and invested in paintings, such as John Miller, Frederick Leyland and William Hesketh Lever, whose works became the Lady Lever Art Gallery.  It is obvious that William Holman Hunt did very well up north as many of his works are included, but there are also pictures by Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Millais' gorgeous Wedding Cards: Jilted.

Venus Verticordia (1863-8) Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Because I am married to Mr Walker, the curator of the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery, another collections made by a Victorian art lover, I already have an interest in the people who patronised the artists I love so much.  In fact Venus Verticordia from the Russell-Cotes is on display in Liverpool because it belonged to Mr Mitchell of Bradford but watercolour copies were requested by Liverpool patrons George Rae and William Hesketh Lever. It is another way of looking at art and artists because it has to be acknowledged that at times artistic inspiration came out of necessity.


The Gardener's Daughter (1868-9) John Ingle Lee
The catalogue is a smashing taster of the exhibition, making me eager to see it, but also if I was unable to travel to Liverpool, it covers the themes and subject well in an informative and enjoyable way.  The paintings are beautifully reproduced, some with their frames, but if I had to have a criticism (and it is a petty one) spreading an image over more than one page really doesn't work successfully without cracking the spine to see it all.

Jesus Washing Peter's Feet (1852-6) Ford Madox Brown
To buy this lovely book, go to the Walker Art Gallery shop here where you will also find further information on the exhibition. It is no doubt available through Amazon or your local bookshop too.  A lovely addition to anyone's Pre-Raphaelite library and an interesting path of research.

Saturday 5 March 2016

Lewis Carroll: Photography on the Move Q&A with Lindsay Smith

I had the pleasure of meeting Lindsay Smith last year at the Julia Margaret Cameron conference in Portsmouth.  She was the chair of the panel I was on and then gave a fascinating paper on Lewis Carroll and photography, which made me very eager to read her book.


Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (1863) Oscar Rejlander
Lindsay's focus is on Carroll's travels, both real and internal, recording and viewing the world as it was and as he wanted it.  Through Carroll and his photographs, Lindsay explores the man, the collector and the outsider, forever trying to see, understand and be part of his work. It's too easy to see Carroll's photographs as proof of modern opinion against him, and reading Lewis Carroll: Photography on the Move, you are reminded not only of the difference in how photographs of children were once viewed, but also how collecting may have been a greater passion than the subjects.

I must admit to a fascination with Carroll's relationship with Tennyson and Julia Margaret Cameron, and his attempts to become part of the community in Freshwater, but Lindsay's book takes us from Oxford through England and even as far as Russia.  What was he searching for and did he ever find it? One thing is for sure, Carroll's photographs are beautiful, outstanding quality and the ones in the book are beautifully chosen.

I was lucky enough to ask Lindsay a few questions about her new book...

Q. Do you think Lewis Carroll is hunting for something in his photographs? Do you think he knew what he was looking for when he traveled around or was it just an compulsive need to collect? 
Farringford from the Field (1864)
It is interesting to question whether Carroll was ‘hunting for something’.  I believe photographs function for him as complex forms of attachment to people and places.  As I attempt to show in the book, to contemplate a photograph is to activate memory in ways that Carroll found fascinating. As he arranges sittings, and buys photographs on his travels, there is certainly a sense in which, according to the impulse of the collector, each acquisition generates the desire for another to add to the set.

Q. When I read Alice in Wonderland I always assume Alice is Lewis Carroll, trying to make sense of the adult world. Do you think his photographs were an escape from real life or an attempt to capture it? 
Yes, I think that Carroll’s photographs allow him to inhabit other worlds as do his books for children. I don’t read them so much as an escape from the real world as a desire to capture his fascination for particular aspects of it that he relished. Photographs also preserved experiences, such as the theatre, that Carroll felt guilt at taking pleasure in.  As a technology of capture photography represented more than a hobby for Carroll. He enjoyed its conceptual possibilities, temporal peculiarities, its implications for memory and prophecy. But he also treasured photographs as material objects for their unique attachment to the subjects they represented whether that be a child or a particular place.

Saint George and the Dragon (1875)
Photographs functioned for Carroll as keepsakes and souvenirs, as in evident on his trip to Russia, and as they continue to do for travelers today snapping on their camera phones. But photographs also conveyed to him the physical closeness and presence of an individual in the manner of a signature, - hence Carroll’s practice of including the signatures of sitters in his albums. I regard photography for Carroll as part of a larger visual aesthetic fuelled by travel and enjoyment of even the most banal entertainments. This is why I consider some of those photographs he had taken at William Kent’s studio in Eastbourne. They demonstrate that Carroll remained invested in the medium during the 1880s even when, as far as we know, he was no longer taking photographs with his own camera.

Q. Lewis Carroll's relationship with the Tennyson family fascinates me - do you think he wants a father/child relationship with Tennyson or was it just hero worship?
 
Alfred Tennyson (1857)
Carroll’s relationship to Tennyson is a complex one. He clearly admired Tennyson’s poetry but he also made a nuisance of himself in wanting to photograph the poet. Carroll was not alone, however, in his pursuit of Tennyson for photography. One only has to think of Julia Margaret Cameron and the lengths to which she allegedly went to get Alfred to sit for her camera. Yet Carroll over stepped the mark on several occasions.  One that I mention in the book is his suggestion in 1872 of speech therapists for Lionel Tennyson. The poet appears to have taken offence at Carroll’s suggestion of such therapy for his son. Having considered the debilitating effects such ‘hesitancy ‘ had had upon him and upon his sisters, I believe Carroll wrote to Tennyson because he empathised with Lionel.

Hallam and Lionel Tennyson with Julia Marshall (1857)
In an earlier occasion in 1857, having taken photographs of Tennyson and his family in the Lake District, Carroll received a letter from Emily Tennyson ‘begging’ him to destroy the photographs he had taken of her and her husband, and including a professional portrait of the poet by the photographer Mayall. Tennyson was sensitive about his photographic portraits becoming available to the public and, since Carroll liked to make copies of his portraits for friends, it appears Tennyson was worried that he might distribute copies. Carroll’s visits to Freshwater indicate to me that he wanted to feel part of the incredible literary and artistic set that frequented that western part of the Isle of Wight. Yet, he remained somewhat marginal to it.  In my paper at the recent Portsmouth Julia Margaret Cameron bicentenary conference, I showed that Rose Franklin, a previously unidentified child model of Cameron, was first photographed by Carroll. What this occasion demonstrated was that Cameron’s subsequent interest in photographing the child most probably came from seeing copies of Carroll’s photographs of her in Freshwater.


Q. Do you think his name will ever lose its stigma? Do you think there should be a club for misunderstood Victorian men - he and Ruskin could be founder members...
Xie Kitchin as 'Tea Merchant' 'On Duty' (1873)
The question of ‘stigma’ is a difficult one.  As a nineteenth century scholar I am frustrated by the transhistorical ways in which people discuss sexuality, desire, perversion and paedophilia in the period– as if we can simply unproblematically apply a term, or current understanding of it, to the Victorians.  I found the film Effie Gray based on Suzanne Cooper’s biography disappointing in this respect. Although it succeeded in telling Effie Gray’s story, which was really important, it made no attempt to shed light on the infamous wedding night and instead presented Ruskin melodramatically slamming the door with a look of horror on having seen his wife’s naked body. Lost was an opportunity to attempt to understand in a nuanced way the well-known non-consummation of the marriage. In presenting Ruskin in sensational terms as a cruel sexual deviant no pressure was put on the accepted version of this notorious Victorian story

Relatedly, there exists an assumption that photographs can reveal particular practices and that they function as transparent, easy to read documents on the past. Indeed, people make assumptions about nineteenth century photographs in ways they would not dream of doing about paintings, drawings or engravings. This has to do with the indexical nature of the photographic image of course, that the person or object photographed was present at the point of taking, whereas for a painting they need not have been present to the painter during its production. It is however a simplistic distinction. For it bypasses the complex issues that come to bear when taking and looking at photographs in the Victorian period when the invention had not yet established a determinate relationship to other methods of representation. At the time that Carroll encountered it, photography was a novel medium and all aspects of its status and its relationship to other media were under debate.

Q. Do you have a favourite photograph of his?
The Tennysons and the Marshalls (1857)
It is difficult for me to single out a photograph but I have long been fond of Carroll’s The Tennysons and the Marshall’s (p. 181) taken at Monk Coniston Park in the Lake District in 1857. As I say in Chapter 5 of the book, it represents a rare portrait in Carroll’s photography of a father and infant son and conveys the intimacy between Tennyson and the young Hallam cradled in his lap. For me this tableau conveys the quality of touch that the medium is able to arrest along with memory that, as I explain, becomes here a form of prophecy. The intimacy between poet and his son is highlighted by contrast with the more formal arrangement of Marshall, his wife and daughter. It is a rare ‘domestic’ photograph of Tennyson and very different from those picturing him as revered laureate.

Ella Chlora Monier-Williams and a Younger Brother (1866)
For similar reasons, Ella Chlora-Monier Williams and a Younger Brother 1866 (p. 110) is a favourite photograph of mine and rarely reproduced.  In it Carroll has captured the closeness between the siblings and as I’ve suggested in the book he has arrested the contingent, the fleeting moment, as they pose concentrating on the dolls they hold. There is something deeply moving about the ways in which both of these photographs situate their child subjects.


Many thanks to Lindsay for answering my questions and I can thoroughly recommend Lewis Carroll: Photography on the Move which is  informative, entertaining and a joy to read. The photographs are reproduced in lovely quality and many of them are unfamiliar.  It certainly does give a new and refreshingly unscandalised examination of this intriguing Victorian photographer...

Lindsay's book is available from here (UK) or here (USA) or through all good bookshops.