[Photographie] Lewis CARROLL
Photographie originale - Annie Rogers, aux ailes d'ange, assoupie à la méridienne
S.n., S.l. [juin 1861], carton : 19,1x21,5cm ; photo : 12,4x16,5cm, une feuille montée sur carton.
“You, I suppose, dream photographs” (Alfred Tennyson à Lewis Carroll)
Original photograph - A winged Annie Rogers dozing on a lounge chair
mount : 19,1x21,5cm ; photo : 12,4x16,5cm.
Original oval photograph by Lewis Carroll, mounted albumen print with a vintage inscription on verso: "Annie S. C. Rogers, June 1861. Aged 5 years, 4 months. C.J.D. fecit". Rogers' mother's initials, S.C. (Susan Charlotte) neatly ruled through in pencil and corrected with Annie's "AMAH", with the inscription "Dodgson No. 3".
***
Extraordinary portrait of Annie Rogers as an angel, taken by Lewis Carroll. The writer offered her one of the very first inscribed copies of Alice in Wonderland which he began writing the following year this photograph was taken. Only two other prints are known, and its rarity is furthered by its atypical staging within Carroll's photographic work.This exceptional depiction of early girlhood dates from the early years of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's photographic production. Its staging reflects one of the writer's greatest interests: dreams. We seem to be witnessing the inaugural scene of his masterpiece with Alice “sitting curled up in a corner of the great arm-chair, half talking to herself and half asleep”. On several occasions, Carroll used the photographic lens as a mirror for his writing. He also took photographs of children playing chess, foreshadowing the second part of Alice's adventures. A pioneer in the art of photography, Carroll pushed his mastery of the medium to the limit - despite the long exposure times that inevitably froze his portraits: "Carroll's interest in dreams caused him to craft his novels in order to fully reveal the content of dreams. Drawing on photographs like the image of Annie [Rogers], Carroll elaborated on still scenes, crafting a story that brought dreams to life" (B. Mahoney).
The striking portrait reflects Carroll's thoroughly Victorian conceptions of childhood, whose innocence stemmed from a relative proximity to God, guarding children from sin and damaging effects of society. Sleep is even more a state of mental abandon, of openness to the imaginary - and sleeping subjects are recurrent in Dodgson's work. However, the angel wings formed by the unfurled flaps of his nightgown are a rare and remarkable addition to his work. His Oxfordian neighbor and fellow pioneer photographer Julia Margaret Cameron used the same theme in her famous portrait of Rachel Gurney as a putto adorned with swan's wings.
Annie Marie Anne Henley Rogers "dozing" here on a lounge chair was the daughter of a professor of economics at Oxford and close friend of the writer. Carroll was also godfather to the girl's younger brother. He took several portraits of Rogers, this one probably one of the earliest. Carroll featured her in a photographic tableau in pure pre-Raphaelite taste, disguised as a murderous queen Eleanor alongside a pleading Fair Rosamund played by Mary Jackson; Carroll also photographed her on several occasions alongside her younger brother Henry. As one of Carroll's little girls, she received many amusing and affectionate letters from the writer. Among those that survive are an acrostic poem, and a long, humorous letter of apology after missing a photo session: "you have no idea of the grief I am while I write. I am obliged to use an umbrella to keep the tears from running down on the paper".
FROM ANGEL TO FEMINIST ICONBehind this portrait at the dawn of her life also lies the dream of a woman with a remarkable destiny. Annie Rogers was both the vangard of the movement to open Oxford university to woman and in her posthumously published memoirs, its historian. Her “childhood friend” the Rev. Dodgson is known to have supported her campaign. In 1873, her remarkable results to both examinations set by Oxford's Delegacy of Local Examinations entitled her a scholarship to the prestigious university. When it was discovered that Annie was a woman, her place and her scholarship were withdrawn and offered to a man instead. She went on to become a great classicist through separate degree-level examinations and finally achieved her fight for women's education in 1920: she was one of the first forty women to retrospectively graduate from Oxford.
Among Lewis Carroll's photographs, this portrait is extremely rare. Only two other prints of this photograph are known. One of them kept at Princeton University (Album 2, no. 100) shows some foxing with blurred edges hiding much of Roger's wings and feet, as well as cutting off some of the background.
An exceptional premonition of Alice's adventures by Carroll himself. Behind the mirror of the lens, Carroll shows the dreamer, her wings ready to transport her to the fantastic world soon to be created by the famed writer.Provenance: Dr. M.A.T. Rogers (thence by descent); Sotheby's London, July 8, 2004, lot no. 318; French private collection.
Bibliography: Taylor and Wakeling, 184.
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