Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ca. 1888

Henry Herschel Hay Cameron (1852 - 1911)

RA Collection: Art

Photogravure from a photograph of Alfred, Lord Tennyson by Henry Hay Herschel Cameron. Henry Hay Herschel Cameron was named after his mother's friends, Henry Taylor and Sir John Herschel. In her manuscript Annals of my Glass House, 1874, Mrs Cameron describes her youngest son as a 'very remarkable photographer'. Mrs Cameron may well have encouraged Henry's photography to offset his ambitions to become an actor, which was causing her some anxiety. At some point after after his mother's death in 1879, Henry left Ceylon where he had been managing the Glencairn estate and returned to Britain. By 1886 he was running a photographic studio which specialised in portraiture, at addresses in Mortimer Street, Marylebone and Hanover Square, Westminster and finally in Brompton Road, Knightsbridge. In 1892, he became a founder member of the photographic society the 'Linked Ring'. Aside from his photographic activities, Henry retained his interest in the theatre and in the latter years of his life, acted in a number of small roles. He died in 1911.