Mrs Cameron photographed by her son, Henry in 1870

Ellen Terry photographed by Mrs Cameron

Watts: Time, Death and Judgment, 1868-84

Watts: Choosing (Dame Alice Ellen Terry) 1864

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815 - 79)

and

George Frederick Watts (1817 - 1904)

Julia Margaret Cameron was one of those unusual people that the Victorian era was so good at producing.

At the age of 48, when she was living at Dimbola, her house at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight, Mrs Cameron was given a camera by her daughter. She immediately starting photographing everyone she knew - family, friends, servants and children. Photography appealed to all her traits - curiosity, tirelessness, ambition and a fascination with the emotional and personal aspects of religion.

Mrs Cameron lived a few hundred yards from Farringford, Alfred Tennyson's home on the Isle of Wight. She was firm friends with Tennyson and a frequent photographer of him and many in his circle, including the painter-sculptor George Frederick Watts, the actress Ellen Terry, the Rossettis and Thomas Carlyle.

George Frederick Watts, who lived at Compton, a few miles from Farnham, was one of the best known artists in Victorian Britain. His gallery, a Grade II* listed Arts and Crafts building, was established by his second wife. (His first wife, very briefly, was the sixteen-year-old Ellen Terry). The gallery came second in the 2006 series of BBC TV's Restoration. Together with the adjacent cemetery chapel that Mary Seton Watts created, it provides an extraordinary insight into a rich period of Victorian history and thought, and symbolises the flowering of the Arts and Crafts Movement.

The collection at the Watts Gallery embraces masterpieces, experiments, sculpture, drawings, portraits and some of Watts's great symbolist works.

Around the time of the NFRAC's rehearsed reading of Freshwater, the gallery will be mounting a major exhibition of Julia Margaret Cameron's work.

Travellers to the Isle of Wight can visit Dimbola Lodge, the museum of the Mrs Cameron's work in the building that was her home.

G.F.Watts photographed by Henry Cameron

Watts: Endymion, 1903

Watts: Hope, 1886

Watts: Love and Life

1892 - 93

Link:

www.wattsgallery.org.uk/