Van Gogh Irises and Roses

"Irises" Vincent Van Gogh (1890)

The downside of viewing a large exhibit is that the volume can be overwhelming and works can get overlooked. Sometimes less is best, which is the case with “Van Gogh: Irises and Roses” at the Met—just four paintings to ponder and admire.

The paintings, two of irises and two of roses, were completed during Van Gogh’s last month at the Saint-Paul Asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in 1890 where he had admitted himself the year before. Brought together for the first time in 125 years, they are beautiful and striking. The paintings can be viewed as symbols of the optimism that Van Gogh felt, which he conveyed in letters to his family as he readied himself for leaving the asylum. Sadly, it didn't last; the artist would commit suicide just a few months later.

Known for his bold colours, Van Gogh was very particular about his paints. One in particular that he insisted on using was geranium lake, a scarlet pigment that was highly unstable, resulting in fading. Van Gogh used the colour in multiple works including these paintings. 

"Roses" Vincent Van Gogh (1890)

As a result, the colours in the paintings have changed over time. Using x-ray fluorescence mapping to examine the canvases, curators were able to discover the remains of geranium lake and digitally reconstruct what the paintings may have originally looked liked.

Monitors set up across from the paintings in the exhibit show these reconstructions for comparison. While the now blue irises would have been more violet, the white roses and white backdrops were originally pink—creating a more dramatic look. The vertical roses in the reconstruction are set against a complimentary green and pink backdrop with pale pink roses while the horizontal irises set against pink as opposed to a white seem to be more “Van Gogh.”

While we cannot know for certain exactly how they looked when Van Gogh painted them, it’s fascinating to think about. Whether pink or white, violet or blue, Van Gogh’s irises and roses are gorgeous.

“Van Gogh: Irises and Roses” is at the Met through August 16, 2015. For more information, visit here.

Contemplation

Almost a month has gone by since I've posted anything here. Without going into details, the past few weeks have been both busy and stressful with a lot of uncertainty thrown into the mix. I’ve been spending a good portion of my time contemplating my next move (running away to Paris to live in a garret and write is at the top of the list). As a result plans for posts that I wanted to write went out the proverbial window. There were the exhibits and gallery shows: Cubism and Madame Cezanne at the Met; Lincoln at the Morgan Library; Don Quixote tapestries at the Frick;  Marc Riboud’s photos of Asia at the Rubin Museum; and the gigantic Armory Show where I saw a lovely portrait by Moïse Kisling and a Robert Capa image from the Spanish Civil War. There was also a big Broadway show, On the Town, and Parallel Exit's delightful performance of Everyone Gets Cake. And, of course, movies.

Writing long posts take time so moving forward there may be fewer posts and sometimes shorter ones (a quick snippet and a photo or two) but there will be posts. I love sharing my thoughts about history and the arts with you and hope you enjoy reading them. In the meantime, be sure to follow me on instagram and twitter, and pinterest too (where I pin way too many photos of Frenchies and striped shirts). And if I wind up in that garret, I'll be sure to let you know.

PS: If anyone has any information about the photo above, please share. All I know is sitting around in ones lingerie, reading a book with a dog (even a stuffed one) seems ideal.

Night at the Museum

The Roman Sculpture Court at the Met. Photo by Michele.

One of my favourite books when I was a little girl was From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the story of siblings Claudia and Jamie Kincaid who run away to live at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Monday night I was able to experience my own version of sorts when I attended an after-hours Instameet at the museum sponsored by the Met and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

The evening began with cocktails and a chance to meet some fellow instagrammers. After that we were given a tour of the museum by the Met’s Chief Digital Officer Sree Sreenivasan. He was a perfect guide, pointing out some of his favourite pieces and relaying amusing anecdotes about various works. Everywhere we went cameras snapped away, capturing the art, selfies, and each other. There was even a group photo taken in the American Wing Courtyard of everyone lying on the ground.

 "Colossal Seated Statue of Amenhotep III, Reinscribed by Merneptah" (ca. 1390–1353 B.C.). Photo by Michele.

"The Temple of Dendur" (completed by 10 B.C.). Photo by Michele.

"The American Wing Courtyard." Photo by Michele

"Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii" Randolph Rogers (carved 1959). Photo by Michele.

Shadows in the Museum. Photo by Michele.

"Adam" Tullio Lombardo (ca. 1490-95). Take a good look. Once he's placed 

in his new niche later this year, you'll only get a front view. Photo by Michele.

"The Demidoff Table" Lorenzo Bartolini (1845). Photo by Michele.

"Marble portrait bust of the Empress Sabina" Roman (ca. A.D. 122-128).

 
Being in the museum at night with such a small group of people was exciting. Besides the bonus of not having to deal with crowds and their accompanying noise, there was the opportunity to see the museum literally in a different light. With no natural light and the electric ones dimmed (at least they seemed that way), shadows appeared and pieces took on a different look. During the day the Sackler Wing, home of the Temple of Dendur and the “Nile," is normally flooded with light from a glass wall but at night in the dark the place becomes more mysterious: the temple seems larger than usual, the "Nile" murkier (next time they should turn the overheads off completely and have lit torches at the temple entrance—just a suggestion). And I couldn't help but think that being in the Roman Sculpture Court, one of my new favourite spots in the museum, might be a bit unnerving if you were there alone at night (too many empty eyes staring at you). 

Going to an instameet and exploring the museum after dark are two things I'd love to do again. Thank you to the Met and Bloomberg Philanthropies for hosting such a wonderful event.

To see the museum at night, try visiting on Friday or Saturday evenings when the Met stays open until 9 pm. You may not get a private tour but the crowds will be thinner. And to find out what’s going on at the Met, download their new app here.

America Today

"America Today: City Activities with Dance Hall" Thomas Hart Benton (1930–31)

In 1930, painter Thomas Hart Benton was commissioned by Alvin Johnson, the director of the New School for Social Research in New York, to create a mural for the school’s boardroom. The result, “America Today,” is a sweeping portrait of American life in the 1920s.

The New School displayed the mural for 50 years before selling it to AXA Equitable Life Insurance for their New York headquarters (the school's provision when selling was that the mural could not leave the country nor be broken up). In 2012 AXA had to remove the work from their lobby for building renovations; they ended up donating it to the Metropolitan Museum of the Art where it is currently on display in the exhibit “Thomas Hart Benton’s ‘America Today’ Mural Rediscovered.”

Comprised of ten panels, “America Today” is epic in scope and quite stunning. The colours are rich and varied with aluminum leaf moldings created by Ziegfeld’s designer, Joseph Urban, framing the panels and defining individual scenes. The majority of the panels represent life in different parts of the country: New York, the South, the Midwest, and the West. The largest, “Instruments of Power,” showcases modern technological advances in power and transport while the smallest “Outreaching Hands,” symbolizes the Great Crash with hands holding money across from those reaching out for coffee and bread.

Included are multiple characters—flappers and mothers, farmers and steel workers, preachers and jazz musicians. I particularly liked the panel, “City Activities with Dance Hall,” which shows New Yorkers dancing, going to the movies, and drinking (illegally) while high above them a man on Wall Street watches the ticker tape.

In two nearby rooms, visitors can view Benton's studies for the mural including photographs of people who modelled for some of the figures (interesting note: Jackson Pollock, who was a student of Benton's, posed for his teacher). There are also related works by other artists including photographs by Berenice Abbott and Lewis Hines. Yet nothing compares to sitting in the room with the mural, surrounded by so much colour and life.

“America Today” is on display at the Met through April 19, 2015. For more information, visit here.

Death Becomes Her

This year I spent Halloween at a favourite place, the Met (you thought I was going to say a cemetery, didn't you?), where there were a series of activities including performances by a magician, drawing by candlelight at the Temple of Dendur, and readings of Edgar Allan Poe. The biggest attraction was a very fitting exhibit, "Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire,” featuring American and British mourning wear from 1815 to 1915.

The exhibit was crowded with visitors dressed up in all manner of costumes, including some very impressive Victorian outfits, and everyone’s favourite street photographer, Bill Cunningham, was there, snapping away while people took photos of him. It was all a bit too much so I went back another day to view the exhibit properly.

In the 19th-century, people had a different relationship with death than we do now. The high infant mortality rate and shorter life expectancy for adults meant that death was a constant reality for most people. The living chose to remember their dead in various ways: jewelry was fashioned out of the hair of the departed, photos were taken with the actual dead (creepy), and specific clothing was worn.

The Victorians, with their strict code of conduct, naturally created a whole industry around mourning wear with rules on what to wear and for how long based on the mourner and the deceased. The death of a parent or child called for one year whereas the death of a sibling was just six months. The longest time was reserved for husbands with widows expected to mourn for two years. 

Mourning itself was broken into four stages. Full mourning, which was what widows were expected to do for a year and a day, involved wearing all black including loads of dull crepe (no shiny materials allowed). Then came second mourning, which was less severe than full with some of the heavy crepe removed from outfits. Widows would observe this stage for nine months. Ordinary mourning saw the removal of crepe all together although clothes remained black. For a mourner like a sister, attending a ball was allowed. And finally the fourth stage, half mourning, which allowed mourners to forgo black in lieu of mauve, purple, and gray. Men had it much easier, often getting away with just adding a black tie and gloves to their usual dark suits. They were also only required to observe mourning for three months.

For widows, the donning of mourning wear could send out mixed messages. While a widow's black garb signified a loyal wife showing respect for her departed husband it also said to men that here was a sexually experienced woman who might have a huge fortune at her disposal. Included in the exhibit is an amusing series of illustrations by Charles Dana Gibson called “A Widow and Her Friends” from 1900 in which a young, attractive widow is hounded by interested suitors and finally winds up joining a nunnery to get away from them.

British evening dress of black moiré silk, lace, and jet, circa 1861.

There are 30 ensembles on display (including a few for men and children) and a selection of accessories and jewelry. The gowns run the gamut from demur and plain to downright glamorous. The French designed ones (surprise, surprise) seem the most fashionable like a silk gown by Charlotte Duclos (1910-12) that features glass beading while a British evening dress circa 1861 made of moiré silk has the most exquisite pattern woven into what appears at first to be solid black. Another gown of note is an American wedding gown from 1868 done in gray to acknowledge those who had died in the Civil War.

For the wealthy, mourning clothes for the most part followed the latest trends save for the colour. It’s easy to see how a pretty woman with means might have looked fetching in an off-the-shoulder black evening gown. Consuelo Vanderbilt’s husband, the Duke of Marlborough, upon seeing her in mourning wear for Queen Victoria, remarked, “If I die, I see you will not remain a widow for long” (their unhappy marriage ended in divorce before that could happen).

And speaking of Victoria, included in the exhibit are gowns worn by two very different queens. Queen Victoria famously wore mourning wear for the rest of her life after the death of her beloved Prince Albert. A gown from 1894-5, some 30 years after Albert’s death, shows the Queen still wearing solid black. Nearby are two half-mourning gowns owned by Queen Alexandra, Victoria’s daughter-in-law. Designed in 1902 by Henriette Favre (again, the French) in two shades of purple, they are light and sparkly, a far cry from Victoria's heavy black. 

World War I put an end to mourning wear. With so many men and boys dying, it was seen as self-serving to put on such a public show of grief. While people still wear black to funerals today, the age of mourning wear ended with the arrival of the modern age.

“Death Becomes Her” is at the Met through February 1, 2015. For more information, visit here. Photos: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Couple at the Opera

"Metropolitan Opera, New York" Garry Winogrand (circa 1951) 

At first glance this couple at the Metropolitan Opera (circa 1951) appear to be just another well-to-do couple enjoying some champagne between acts. Yet on closer inspection, one notices a few things. There is the tight cropping of the image that pushes them to the side, making the woman the center of attention. There is the woman's heavy make-up, her face a white mask compared to the muted shades around her. And then there are the raised glasses. Did they strike a pose, aware of the photographer, or did they just happen to be raising their glasses in a toast? And if so, what were they toasting? 

The photo is the work of Garry Winogrand (1928-1984), one of the great street photographers who documented life in New York and the rest of the country from the 1950s to the 1980s. He was a relentless chronicler of post-war America, shooting 26,000 rolls of everyone—the rich and poor, the famous and the unknown, animals at zoos and people at airports. Winogrand, who called himself a “student of America,” famously showed no interest in editing his work, preferring instead to be out shooting, forever on the hunt for his next subject. When he died, he left behind thousands of undeveloped images and contact sheets of work that were never exhibited, including this photograph.

Earlier this fall, I saw this in the Garry Winogrand retrospective at the Met. Of the 175 images on display, 65 were never seen during Winogrand’s lifetime. It was a fabulous exhibit that was also very inspirational. And it introduced me to this photograph that I find so intriguing.

The Met show has closed but if you’re in Paris, you can see this photo along with the rest of the retrospective at the Jeu de Paume through February 8, 2015. Or check out the catalogue here.

Pre-Raphaelites Revisited

"The Love Song" Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1868-77)

My first apartment in grad school was decorated with posters of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, most of them dark and foreboding. I loved their rich tones, their allegorical symbolism, their Englishness (to my credit, I was getting a masters in English Literature at the time so the decor suited the situation). My taste has since changed but when I saw that the Met had a small exhibit of Pre-Raphaelite works, I decided to check it out.

"The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy: British Art and Design" focuses primarily on works by Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the three leaders of the second wave of the Pre-Raphaelite movement whose original founders (Rossetti was one) had rebelled against academia and rejected classical art in lieu of the more ideal (to them) Quattrocento Italian art. The exhibit consists of 30 objects—paintings and drawings as well as furniture and pottery—by these artists and those who were influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite movement like Julia Margaret Cameron and Ford Madox Brown. Much of it is beautiful and can be admired for its craftsmanship, especially the pieces by Morris who went on to be a leader of the Arts and Crafts movement and whose textiles are still coveted by some designers today. 

Yet what struck me the most about the exhibit is how much my attitude had changed toward these artists. While I still found some of the paintings quite pretty, I didn't exactly love any of the work. Most of it seemed just too one-dimensional, populated with idealized women. The artists' models, who in real life tended to be either the lovers or wives of the painters (sometimes both), all appear to have the same features: large eyes and mouths, thick necks, and crazy wild hair. After a while it's just boring.

Sir Edward Burne-Jones' "The Love Song," the  painting at the center of the exhibit, was one of the more interesting pieces. It's very striking from the lovely colours to the medieval garb to the attention to detail like the flowers along the bottom. Yet ultimately it looks like an illustration from a book of fairy tales, which can be said about many of these works. In the case of the Aubrey Vincent Beardsley designs they were just that, illustrations created specifically for an edition of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

In the end, I realized that Pre-Raphaelite work is no longer my cup of tea (although I still admire a nice William Morris design) and that none of their prints will be decorating my place anytime soon.

"The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy: British Art and Design" is on display at the Met through October 26, 2014. For more information, visit here.

Concentrate

“I’ve told you a million times not to talk to me when I’m doing my lashes!”—Jean Harlow in Dinner at Eight.

Concentrating is what I will be doing this weekend: on my flat (I've started the long process of redecorating/rearranging my place so naturally it looks like a disaster zone at the moment), on some work projects, and sleep. A lot to cram into two days but it's amazing what you can accomplish when you buckle down and concentrate. But first, it's "April in Paris" at the Met tonight with some La Vie en Rose cocktails at the Balcony Bar. Have a wonderful weekend, everyone! 

The Photographer of Paris

"Passage Saint-Benoît (sixth arrondissement)" Charles Marville (1864-67)

“Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris,” an exhibit currently on display at the Met, allows visitors a glimpse of a forgotten Paris, one before planning and grand design turned it into the City of Lights that we know today, and a chance to discover the work of the photographer who captured it all.

In 1862, Charles Marville was made the official photographer of Paris, tasked by Napoleon III’s urban planner, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, to document the enormous renovation plans for the city of Paris. Marville made roughly 425 images of areas of the city that were slated for demolition as well as of the new construction taking place. Some of these images, collectively known as the Album du Vieux Paris, are included in the exhibit along with other works from Marville's career. 

Born Charles Bossu in 1813, he changed his unfortunate last name (which means hunchback in French) to the more pleasant Marville as a young man and went to work as an illustrator. Around 1850, he took up the fairly new medium of photography and travelled throughout France, Germany, and Italy photographing natural settings and architecture. Earning a reputation as a photographer of architecture, he was made photographer to the Louvre before being asked to document the newly created Bois de Boulogne in the 16th arrondissement, one of the earliest projects in the renovation plans for Paris.

"Haut de la rue Champlain (vue prise à droit) (twentieth arrondissement)" Charles Marville (1877-78)

"La rue Soufflot et le Panthéon" Charles Marville (1876-77)

Napoleon III had a vision of a grander, more modern Paris that would ease some of the burdens of the crowded city. To fulfill his plans, people and businesses were evicted and whole streets were torn down and replaced with wide boulevards and newer buildings of a similar size and design. The Gare de Lyon and the Gare du Nord were built at this time as was the magnificent Paris Opera; four major parks were created and existing ones were renovated; and water and sanitation systems were revamped, giving the citizens of Paris better living conditions. 

"Rue du Chat-qui-Pêche (from the Rue de la Huchette)" Charles Marville (ca. 1868)

"Colonne-affiches pour les Théâtres, menuiserie, fonte et zinc (Cie Morris)" Charles Marville (1876)

In the exhibit, you see the massive new opera house rising, Les Halles with its shiny glass ceiling, and the items that were to help the citizens and modernize the city—20,000 gas lights, public urinals, and those iconic Morris columns covered with advertisements. 

Unlike Brassaï, who famously roamed the streets of Paris at night with his camera, Marville worked mainly in the early morning (probably due to the exposure time needed for his images) so most of the photographs are void of people. We see deserted streets, a lone gaslight, empty parks. Occasionally a person will make an appearance, usually  looking away from the camera in a pose that was probably dictated by the photographer. 

The photos that are the most interesting in the exhibit are the before shots, the images of the places that ended up on the chopping block. These show a dirtier Paris, a medieval Paris that at times resembles a small village more than a European capital. Among these are images of various passageways that hint of mystery, beckoning the viewer to walk down them and see what's on the other side (you get the feeling that Marville was drawn to these as well). The one that I chose as my favourite was because of its name: the Rue du Chat-qui-Pêche (the fishing cat street), the narrowest street in the city, which luckily survived destruction.

"Cloud Study over Paris" Charles Marville (1850s)

Not all of the images in the exhibit are of the renovations. Though he rarely made portraits, there are some unusual ones of his assistant, Charles Delahaye, looking dark and brooding and even a few self-portraits of the photographer himself. There is also a series of images of the rooftops of Notre Dame including the various animals that decorate the top of the cathedral (it's not just gargoyles up there).

And then there are his pioneering cloud studies. In the early days of photography, clouds were difficult to capture and photographers often took to erasing them from the images all together. In 1855, Marville successfully made a series of cloud images from the roof of his studio using the new collodion negative process. In addition to being quite striking, they serve as a document of a skyline that would soon be altered. Marville, it seems, was already the photographer of Paris.

"Charles Marville" Photographer of Paris" is at the Met through May 4, 2014. For information, visit here.

Of Daffodils and Magnolias

After what seemed like endless weekends filled with rain and cold, the sun finally came out and so with camera in tow, I headed up to the 79th Street entrance of Central Park and slowly made my way across to the East Side.

I spent some time wandering around the Shakespeare Garden, which was filled with yellow daffodils, snakeshead fritillary, tiny chionodoxa, and various small tulips. Two bright red Northern Cardinals darted back and forth overhead while the squirrels were busy digging away. Leaving the garden, I walked toward Belvedere Castle, spotting bunches of yellow and white daffodils along the way. They were all lovely but the real beauty queens were the flowering trees.

There was a pretty cherry blossom tree in bloom near the great lawn while the magnolias were out in full force behind the Met, creating canopies of colour. One white magnolia was particularly fragrant, conjuring up memories of the South (or at least the magnolia perfume I found once in an old perfumery in New Orleans), and the saucer magnolias, with their pink and white cupped petals, were absolutely stunning. How wonderful it would be to sit underneath one and read a book or lay down and a take a little nap (preferably without so many people walking by). A little sparrow landed on a branch of one of the trees that I was shooting and just hung out, totally cool with me standing right in front of him. Finally, spring has arrived.

All photos by Michele.

Cats and Girls

"Thérèse" Balthus (1938)

“Cats and Girls—Paintings and Provocations,” an exhibit of works by the Polish-French painter Balthus currently at the Met, focuses on two of the major themes in the artist's work with uneven results.  

It opens with a self-portrait, “His Majesty the King of Cats” (1935), which shows a thin, almost dandy-like Balthus with a cat rubbing against his leg and a stone tablet that reads ““A Portrait of H. M. The King of Cats, Painted by Himself.” The painting establishes the artist’s connection with the feline world; some think that the cats featured in Balthus' works are actually stand-ins for the artist himself.

While cats show up in a handful of the paintings, girls can be found in the majority of the works with the best ones in the first gallery—a series of paintings he made of his young neighbour Thérèse Blanchard. Sometimes seen lounging in a chair, other times exposing a shock of white underwear, Thérèse appears bored, the epitome of sullen youth. The portraits also have a Lolita quality about them, leaving a feeling of unease with the viewer. Finding out that Thérèse died at the age of 25 makes these paintings all the more striking knowing the bold little girl never grew old.

“The Cat of La Méditerranée” Balthus (1949)

These works are so strong that the ones in the other galleries subsequently pale in comparison, sometimes quite literally. Even the large portraits done in the 1950s of Frédérique Tison, Balthus’ favourite model, and others where the girls are partially dressed or nude lack the impact of the Thérèse works. 

Yet the painting that I found the most shocking is “The Cat of La Méditerranée” (1949) made for a restaurant that the artist frequented. Featuring Balthus with a cat’s head and a rainbow made of fish, it is simply bizarre and was a surprise to see hanging on the wall of the Met.

"First drawing from Mitsou" Balthus (1921)

For me, the best part of the exhibit is found in a small, darkened gallery: 40 ink drawings done when Balthus was just 11 that tell the story of Mitsou, a stray cat whom he discovered one day and who became his companion until one morning when he just vanished, breaking the little boy’s heart. Published as a book in 1921 by Rainer Maria Rilke (a friend of Balthus’ mother), they are lovely to see with their almost woodcut quality and tell a sweet story. In the end, they made the exhibit worth seeing.

The exhibit is at the Met through January 12, 2014. For more information, visit here.

Museum Goers

Most weekends you can find me wandering around one of New York's numerous museums. I love museums. No matter how small or large or how many times you've been, there's always something new to discover, something to learn, something that is pleasing to the eye. When I travel, I always try to visit the local museum(s); it's a great way to learn about a city or a culture in a short amount of time. And they also provide you with a place to sit and take a break and, if you're lucky, a café so you can grab a coffee and a snack.

Museums are also a great place to people watch. There are so many types of museums goers (the art lover, the out-of-towner, the local, the bored partner, the first-timer, the frequent visitor, the know-it-all, the tour group member, the list goes on) not to mention the guards (I could do a whole post just on guards) that I often find myself observing them instead of the art. Here are some shots from a couple of the museums I visited this summer (side note, two of my favourite museums, the Frick Collection and the International Center of Photography, do not allow photos so those visits alas must go undocumented as do the ones where I didn't have my camera).

All photos taken by Michele at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Historical Society, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. 

Julia Margaret Cameron

"Julia Jackson" Julia Margaret Cameron (1867)

There is a small but powerful exhibit currently at the Met devoted to the work of the great Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879). Cameron focused her efforts on creating portraits and allegorical scenes that often bring to mind Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Her photographs are ethereal and beautiful, sometimes mysterious and always striking.

The mother of six didn’t take up photography until middle age when her daughter and son-in-law gave her a camera as a present. Unlike other photographers who strove for detailed clarity, she relied on soft focus and long exposures that often resulted in blurred images. Many of her fellow photographers mocked her work yet her images remain some of the most important photographs of the 19th century.

"Sir John Herschel" Julia Margaret Cameron (1867)

Friends with the leading artists and scholars of her time, Cameron would engage many of them as her models. We see Alfred, Lord Tennyson in an image that the poet dubbed “the dirty monk,” noted scientist Sir John Herschel whose solemn face and white collar gives him the look of a preacher of old, and Lewis Carroll’s muse, Alice Liddell, posing as Pomona the goddess of fruitful abundance.

"Sappho" Julia Margaret Cameron (1865). Notice the crack?

For me, my favourites are her images of women. Her niece, May Prinsep, is seen posing as Beatrice Cenci, the Roman woman immortalized by Shelley while her housemaid, Mary Hillier, makes a lovely Sappho in an image that Cameron was so fond of that she kept it even though the negative had a large, visible crack in it.

Unlike her male models, Cameron almost always posed her female models as famed characters from literature and mythology. One exception was the haunting photograph of her favourite niece, Julia Jackson (the mother of Virginia Woolf). Her face half in shadows, she is portrayed without any costume, her beauty allowed to speak for itself.

Cameron once said, “I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and at length the longing has been satisfied.” I believe she did indeed achieve her goal.

“Julia Margaret Cameron” is at the Met through January 5, 2014. For more information, visit here.