ABSTRACT
Photography can bring one close to the famous Victorians. Mrs julia margaret cameron’s portrait is, in fact, a photograph taken for the purpose of revealing character through the face, a comparatively rare use of the Victorian portrait camera. If look at the full-figure photograph of Gladstone taken in 1861 by J. E. Mayall see a far more typical example of portraiture from the middle of Victoria’s reign. The energy, capacity and time of the photographer and sitter have been put into a display of convention which is as empty of purpose as the carrying of gloves on a summer’s day. Such displays of conventional decorum, blending the dictates of society and the studio, are among the characteristic marks of Victorian portrait photography. A drawing-room background, as in Mr Gladstone’s portrait, was the most widely used studio set of the 1860sd—the period of the carte-de-visite and the general expansion of portrait photography.
