The Mountain Nymph, Sweet Liberty by Julia Margaret Cameron

Photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron

1. Julia Margaret Cameron, The Mountain Nymph, Sweet Liberty, June 1866, albumen print from collodion negative, National Gallery of Art, Washington, New Century Fund 1997.97.1

2. Julia Margaret Cameron, A. Tennyson, 1865, albumen print, George Eastman House

3. Julia Margaret Cameron, Call I follow, I follow, let me die! (Mary Hillier), c. 1867, albumen print, The Royal Photographic Society, Bath, England

4. Julia Margaret Cameron, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1868, print c. 1893, photogravure print, George Eastman House

5. Julia Margaret Cameron, Julia Jackson (detail), 1867, albumen print from collodion negative mounted on paperboard, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Patrons' Permanent Fund 1995.36.66

Mountain Nymph was one of the "large head" portraits that Cameron began to make in 1866. Contact prints from large glass plate negatives, these unevenly focused portraits seemed almost sculptural. Mountain Nymph is a particularly good example; as Sir John Herschel wrote, [it] "is really a most astonishing piece of high relief. She is absolutely alive and thrusting her head out from the paper." Cameron included Herschel's letter, dated 25 September 1866, in her unfinished manuscript, "Annals of My Glass House."