Portrait photograph of Charles Darwin

Near half-length, facing right, albumen print, signed by the photographer under image “From Life Registered Photograph (Copy Right)/ Julia Margaret Cameron”, mounted on card (with embossed stamp of Colnaghi), image size 340 x 280mm., mount size 510 x 407mm., [Freshwater, I.O.W., copyright 23 July 1868]

Julia Margaret Cameron took a series of photographic portraits of Darwin when he and his family rented Dumbola Lodge from in Freshwater from the photographer in the summer of 1868 during which time he enjoyed the company of other visitors such as Alfred Tennyson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Joseph Hooker. “Darwin left the Isle of Wight having been entirely charmed with Cameron’s renowned wit and her photographic camera. That week she made four exposures of Darwin, which lend extraordinary depth of tone and detail to Darwin’s increasingly well-known beard and penetrating gaze” (‘Darwin’s Photographic Portraits’, Darwin Correspondence Project website).

Darwin was one of only a few sitters who actually paid for the photographs and he believed that Cameron’s were the best photographs that had been taken of him.