Magdalene (Brookfield)
May 1865
- Medium
- Albumen silver print
- Dimensions
- 27.1 × 22.2 cm
- Status
- In Museum Collection
- Collect24 Art ID
- C24-864704
Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone; And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the rose is blown. -Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in Maud The woman in the garden is a common theme of Victorian poetry and painting, often representing beauty and romantic love. Magdalene Brookfield, a family friend of Julia Margaret Cameron, is the dark-haired woman strolling through this garden. Her pyramid-shaped figure is centered in the photograph, and so is Cameron's focus. Brookfield's face, hand, and a part of a nearby bush are sharply defined. The rest of the image blends into soft-focus, emphasizing her mysterious, pointing gesture. Perhaps Magdalene represents the subject of a man's obsession, as in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's 1855 poem, Maud, in which the ephemeral qualities of love and a woman's beauty are ascribed to nature. Like Eve in the Garden of Eden, the woman in nature becomes part of a moral theme of the virtuous woman versus the fallen woman. Cameron probably made this outdoor, full-figure study at the London home of her sister, Sara Prinsep.
Provenance
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Registry history
- May 1865 — Recorded in the collection of J. Paul Getty Museum — photographs
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