Julia and Ethel Arnold

1872

Lewis Carroll

(British, 1832–1898)

Culture

England, 19th century

Medium

albumen print from wet collodion negative

Measurements

Image: 14.9 x 12.5 cm (5 7/8 x 4 15/16 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 in.)

Credit Line

John L. Severance Fund 1996.11

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Location

Not on view

Description

Best known as the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, mathematician, lecturer, and church deacon Charles Dodgson was an avid amateur photographer. His subjects were wide ranging but he has become best known for his portraits of children, which avoid the formal, formulaic quality of studio portraiture of the time. Julia was 10 and Ethel was 6 when this photo was taken in Dodgson’s rooftop studio at Christ Church College, Oxford, on June 15, 1872. Ethel reminisced 57 years later that the times spent with Dodgson were “oases of brightness in a somewhat gray and melancholy childhood.” She also remembered that “for a nervous child . . . to keep still for forty-five seconds at a time was no mean ordeal.”