The novelist Anthony Trollope visited the Isle of Wight, where Tennyson and the Camerons were also living, in 1864. This was soon after Julia Cameron had taken up photography. She was able to get him to sit for her "at least twice" during his and his wife's five-day stay (Super 176), producing two photographs, one with a hat and one without. [Commentary continues below; click on the image to enlarge it.]

A. N. Wilson writes that Trollope "was an early trouvail," and that as such her "'imperfect vision' has made of the borders of the picture what Sir Joshua Reynolds would have made in some of his oil sketches. They are just a smudge, leading our eye directly into the features of the subject" (218). He looks squarely, almost challengingly, at the camera here, and it seems difficult to avoid his piercing gaze. — Jacqueline Banerjee

Bibliography

Super, R. H. The Chronicler of Barsetshire: A Life of Anthony Trollope. pbk ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990.

Wilson, A. N. "Julia Margaret Cameron." In Eminent Victorians. London: BBC Books, 1989. 203-36.

Last modified 1 March 2015