{
"data": {
"id": 151840,
"accession_number": "1984.166",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Queen of the May, 1875. Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815\u20131879). Albumen print from wet collodion negative; image: 34.9 x 26.6 cm (13 3/4 x 10 1/2 in.); matted: 66 x 55.9 cm (26 x 22 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1984.166",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Queen of the May",
"creation_date": "1875",
"creation_date_earliest": 1875,
"creation_date_latest": 1875,
"artists_tags": [
"female"
],
"culture": [
"England, 19th century"
],
"technique": "albumen print from wet collodion negative",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Photography",
"collection": "Photography",
"type": "Photograph",
"measurements": "Image: 34.9 x 26.6 cm (13 3/4 x 10 1/2 in.); Matted: 66 x 55.9 cm (26 x 22 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"image": {
"height": 0.349,
"height_inch": 13,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.75,
"width": 0.266,
"width_inch": 10,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.5
},
"matted": {
"height": 0.66,
"height_inch": 26,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.559,
"width_inch": 22,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Written in brown ink on recto: \"From Life Registered Photograph Copyright Julia Margaret Cameron Freshwater, May 1875 / 'For I'm [underlined] to be the Queen O the May-Mother' / 'I'm to be Queen O' 'the May'/ For the beloved Invalid.\"; in pencil on verso: \"oak & gilt\"; \"248 [circled]\"; \"-79-1749\"",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 309849,
"title": "Year in Review for 1984",
"description": "Year in Review for 1984. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 3-May 5, 1985).",
"opening_date": "1985-04-03T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 311875,
"title": "Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 24, 1996-February 2, 1997).",
"opening_date": "1996-11-24T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 286506,
"title": "Cheating Death: Portrait Photography\u2019s First Half Century",
"description": "Cheating Death: Portrait Photography\u2019s First Half Century. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 22, 2016-February 5, 2017).",
"opening_date": "2016-10-22T04:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "A major figure in the development of British photography, Cameron elevated the portrait to new artistic heights. She never opened a commercial studio or accepted commissions, but she was one of the first photographers to sell her photographs through a fine art gallery. Friends, neighbors, family, and servants were cajoled into modeling for portraits as themselves and as allegorical figures from history, religion, mythology, and literature. Little is known about Emily Peacock, who posed here as the protagonist in The May Queen by Britain\u2019s poet laureate Alfred Tennyson. Typically crowned with flowers, the May Queen is selected as part of the celebrations on May 1, a traditional spring holiday in many cultures in the Northern Hemisphere.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79935499"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1984.166-queen-of-the-may"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, and Tom E. Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. [Cleveland, OH]: The Museum, 1996.",
"page_number": "p. 28-29",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Turner, Evan H. \"The Year in Review for 1984.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72, no. 2 (1985): 163-207.",
"page_number": "p. 201, no. 35",
"url": "www.jstor.org/stable/25159897"
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1984.166",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1984.166/1984.166_web.jpg",
"width": "678",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "322505",
"filename": "1984.166_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1984.166/1984.166_print.jpg",
"width": "2581",
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"filename": "1984.166_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
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},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "John L. Severance Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 151840,
"creators": [
{
"id": 293,
"description": "Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815\u20131879)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Julia Margaret Cameron British, 1815-1879\r\n\r\nBorn in Calcutta to a French mother and an English father employed by the East India Company, Julia Margaret Cameron was a key figure in the development of photography both in Britain and abroad. She was sent, under the care of her grandmother, to France for her education. Marriage to jurist Charles Hay Cameron took her back to India in 1838, and to England in 1848, where in 1860 the family finally settled on the Isle of Wight. Three years later Cameron received her first camera, a gift from her daughter, as a way to pass the time while her husband was away on an extended trip to Ceylon.\r\n\tFor the next 15 years, Cameron's passion for photography, and her fortunate position among Britain's cultural elite, allowed her to produce a series of portraits, allegories, and illustrations that are among the most admired and influential of photographic images. Frequently marked by a loose, soft style, her portraits of well-known figures, such as Sir John Herschel, Thomas Carlyle, and Ellen Terry, reveal her subject's character in an unusually forceful manner. Her allegories and tableaux often include neighbors and friends like Lord Tennyson and her artistic mentor, the Pre-Raphaelite painter G. F. Watts. In 1874 she illustrated Tennyson's popular long poem Idylls of the King.\r\n\tIn 1875, after the death of her daughter, Cameron returned to Ceylon with her husband, joining their five sons. There she continued to photograph until her death in 1879. A later generation was introduced to Cameron's work by Alfred Stieglitz, who reproduced a selection from it in Camera Work. T.W.F.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1815",
"death_year": "1879",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1984-12-05T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1875,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1875",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-09-18 13:07:23.421000"
}
}