Charles Darwin Signed Photographic Portrait, Julia Margaret Cameron, Freshwater, Isle of Wight 1868
You can view our Signed Photographic Portrait here.
Presented by Ben Houston, Rare Books Specialist at Peter Harrington Rare Books.
Albumen print. Mounted on carte-de-visite card. Very good condition, light dust-staining, small unobtrusive stain in upper background. Image size: 9 x 6 cm Card size: 10 x 6.3 cm
Darwin said of this image: “I like this photograph very much better than any other which has been made of me”. Darwin and his family spent six weeks at Freshwater in July and August 1868, renting a cottage from the Camerons and getting on famously with another of her visitors, Alfred Tennyson. Darwin was in fact one of the few sitters who paid for the privilege of being photographed: “Darwin left the Isle of Wight having been entirely charmed with Cameron’s renowned wit and her photographic camera. That week she made four exposures of Darwin, which lend extraordinary depth of tone and detail to Darwin’s increasingly well-known beard and penetrating gaze” (Cox & Ford).
