William Holman Hunt

When she took up photography, Cameron had—by her own account—“no training in the art.” “I have had one lesson from the great Amateur photographer Mr. Wynfield,” she wrote early on, “[and] I consult him in correspondence whenever I am in difficulty.” Indeed, Wynfield’s portraits of fellow artists in historical costume possess many of the qualities that would come to characterize Cameron’s mature work: close proximity to the subject, a slightly softened focus and shallow depth of field, careful attention to lighting, and the evocation of literary, biblical, or historical figures. “To my feeling about his beautiful Photography I owed all my attempts and indeed consequently all my successes,” she said of Wynfield.
Within her first year behind the camera, Cameron photographed both Hunt and Watts, the latter having long been a close family friend living in Little Holland House, the London home of Cameron’s sister Sara Prinsep.