Julia Margaret Cameron
Thomas Carlyle, 1795 - 1881. Historian and essayist
Julia Margaret Cameron, Thomas Carlyle, 1795 - 1881. Historian and essayist
About this artwork
Thomas Carlyle, the ‘sage of Chelsea’, was a key figure in Victorian literature: Charles Dickens, John Ruskin and Alfred Tennyson all knew and admired him. But his contemporaries also noted his rough, overbearing nature and negative world view. In his essays, Carlyle identified key problems faced by his generation, such as the detrimental effects of industrialisation and laissez-faire economy on workers. He proposed that a ‘hero’, ‘a true leader’ rather than a democratically elected one, would restore order to the chaos of the nineteenth century. The unusual writing style in which he expressed these ideas – fervent, moralising, full of metaphors and references – became labelled ‘Carlylese’. Julia Margaret Cameron’s extraordinary animated portrait of Carlyle communicates something of the sitter’s forceful nature.
Updated before 2020
- Artist:
- Julia Margaret Cameron (1815 - 1879) British
- Title:
- Thomas Carlyle, 1795 - 1881. Historian and essayist
- Date:
- 1867
- Materials:
- Albumen print
- Measurements:
- Image size: 30.90 x 24.40 cm; overall: 55.80 x 40.70 cm
- Object type:
- Photograph
- Credit line:
- Purchased 2007
- Accession number:
- PGP 373.1
- Depicted:
- Thomas Carlyle
- Subjects:
- Scottish literature
- Artwork photographed by:
- Antonia Reeve
True colours
Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron was one of the most impressive photographers of the 19th century. Her photographs taken mainly in the 1860s consisted of religious, literary and allegorical tableaux and portraiture. She can be credited with the introduction of intense spiritual and moral concerns to…