LONDON.- An intimate portrait of Julia Jackson by British photography pioneer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), one of the highlights of
Bonhams Photographs Sale, realised an impressive £57,250 today (17 November) at the auction houses New Bond Street saleroom. One of around fifty known portraits by Cameron of her niece, the earliest dating from 1864, it had attracted a pre-sale estimate of £25,000 35,000.
It dates from the spring of 1867 when Cameron visited the Jackson family in Kent and took a series of studies of the beautiful twenty-one year old Julia, who was later to marry Victorian intellectual and author, Sir Leslie Stephens. Jackson had four children with Stephens, including Vanessa (Bell) and Virginia (Woolf), who immortalised her mother as Mrs Ramsay in her 1927 novel To the Lighthouse.
Camerons portraits are currently subject to special focus in the Victoria and Alberts Museums new Photographs Gallery (which opened to the public on October 25).
Top prices were also paid for Robert Mapplethorpes Calla Lily, 1986, which made £39,650 and Albert Watsons Kate Moss, Marrakech, Morocco, 1993, which fetched £16,250, while highlights also included Albert Watsons Christy Turlington, 1990 (£5,625); Terry ONeills Brigitte Bardot, 1971(£5,000); and Sebastiao Salgados Sahara, Algeria, 2009 (£6,875).