The Herschel Album

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815 - 1879)

National Media Museum

1864 - 1867

The main illustration is a portrait of John Frederick William Herschel, mathematician, astronomer and pioneer of photography, and is part of a collection of 94 photographic portraits including ones of Carlyle, Tennyson, Holman Hunt, Browning, Trollope and G.F.Watts. She is known as England's greatest amateur photographer concentrating mostly on portraits of famous contemporaries. Her photographs are now regarded as one of the supreme visual chronicles of the Victorian era. Sold in 1974 to an American, the export licence for this collection was refused.

• Medium: photographs
• Dimensions: 35 x 30 cm
• Art Fund Grant: £5000 ( Total: £52,000; Export stopped)
• ArtFunded in: 1975
• Vendor: Mr Sam Wagstaff

Provenance

Cameron presented it to Sir John Herschel in 1864 but revised and restored it 3 yrs later. Then by descent in the Herschel family.

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