3-044-528 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Ellen Terry at Age Sixteen, negative 1864; print about 1875. This image of Ellen Terry (1847-1928) is one of the few known photographs of a female celebrity by Julia Margaret Cameron. Terry, the popular child actress of the British stage, was sixteen years old when Cameron made this image. This photograph was most likely taken just after she married the eccentric painter, George Frederick Watts (1817-1904), who was thirty years her senior. They spent their honeymoon in the village of Freshwater on the Isle of Wight where Cameron resided. Pioneering British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron is considered to be one of the most important portraitists of the 19th century. She took up photography at the age of 48, after her daughter gave her a camera as a present.