Charles Hay Cameron

1864

Medium

Albumen silver print

Dimensions

29.2 × 22.4 cm

Status

In Museum Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-394941

> Charles Hay Cameron (1795-1880), once described by Alfred, Lord Tennyson as “a philosopher with his beard dipped in moonlight,” was educated at Eton College and Oxford University. An accomplished scholar, he had a highly distinguished career as a civil servant in the judiciary in India. He was fiercely devoted to legal reform and a proponent of education in the colonies. In 1835 he was elected as the British member on the Indian Law Commission and while in Calcutta served on the Supreme Council of India. He pursued his scholarly work without the benefit of institutional support, an example that surely stimulated his wife’s endeavors. > > When Julia Margaret Cameron met her future husband in 1835, he was writing his “Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful,” a thoughtful text that explores many of the concepts that were to be fundamental to her art. The aesthetics of the human figure, the interrelationship of sight and touch in the creation of works of art, and the metaphysical properties of language are some of the issues that are discussed. > > When he retired to the Isle of Wight in 1860, Charles Cameron led a sedentary existence, withdrawing from the customary throng of househol…