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Hello, I am looking for information on this Julia Margaret Cameron photo 'The Neapolitan' by JMC, 1866, depicting her cousin, May Princep. This is a CDV sized print, 8.5 x 6 cm, pasted to a paper mount, 21 x 16 cm. This image is not on a Cameron CDV mount, so apparently pasted into a private album.
Ford and Cox's "Complete Photographs" notes that Cameron made private albums of her "Miniature" Photos for friends and family. I am wondering if anyone would have a guess as to where this image originated.
Are there private albums that included only a few Cameron photos? Was this image sold to the general public?
Thanks in advance for your consideration,
David McGreevy
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As Ken Jacobson suggests, while JMC CDVs are often found with the gold border and lithographed inscription, that's not always the case. A group was sold in April, 2017 at Phillips all of which were on plain CDV mounts comparable to yours (link).
Slightly off-topic, the name has been "Prinsep" since before 1800, and not just in Australia, although it was often misspelled by others.
Family lore is that the 'c' was changed to an 's' when one of them was working in the household of a princess. At the time 'ss' was represented by that now-obsolete character that looked like an 'f' but dropped down on the line like a 'p'. So (the story goes) "Princep" was easily confused with "Princef".
Whether or not that's true, here's my bid for the earliest correction: on the spines of a collection of John Prinsep's economic tracts, ca. 1790s, in contemporary binding. John was May's grandfather:
-- Tim
Dear David,
Cameron cartes de visite were 'published' singly, not just in the rare albums you cite. They usually had a thick gold border at the edge of the carte and a facsimile 'From life...' (also in gold) beneath the image. There were other carte-sized images, however, that appear just plainly stuck on pages in albums, often with some kind of Cameron association. Since Cameron probably gave, sold (through Colnaghi's ?) or used loose images herself, any kind of mounting is possible, i suppose. We've had a couple of albums where Cameron cartes de visite were combined with the use of photocollage and had Isle of Wight associations. I hope his helps a bit.
Best,
Ken
Thanks, Joanna!
Sorry I can't answer the question but her cousins in Western Australia spelt their surname Prinsep. Joanna
Victoria and Albert Museum's photography collection
National Science and Media Museum
RPS Journal 1853-2012 online and searchable
Photographic History Research Centre, Leicester
Birkbeck History and Theory of Photography Research Centre
William Henry Fox Talbot Catalogue Raisonné
British Photography. The Hyman Collection
The Press Photo History Project Mapping the photo agencies and photographers of Fleet Street and the UK
The correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot
Historic England Archive
UAL Photography and Photography and the Archive Research Centre
Royal Photographic Society's Historical Group
www.londonstereo.com London Stereoscopic Company / T. R. Williams
www.earlyphotography.co.uk British camera makers and companies
Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock.
National Portrait Gallery, London
http://www.freewebs.com/jb3d/
Alfred Seaman and the Photographic Convention
Frederick Scott Archer
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