Julia Margaret Cameron's Val Prinsep album, a previously unknown collection of photographs, has sold for £242,500 ($398,961) at Sotheby's London - a new auction record for the photographer.
The lot headlined the English Literature, History, Children's Books & Illustrations sale, which took place on December 10. The previous record was set at $249,069 at Sotheby's in 2001 - equating to an increase of 60.1%.
 Cameron's portrait of Julia Prinsep Jackson, mother of the author Virginia Woolf |
The present lot comprises 32 large scale photographs of Victorian-era luminaries, including Virginia Woolf's mother, and was commissioned for Cameron's godson, the artist Valentine Cameron Prinsep.
We have this signed copy of Virginia Woolf's Orlando: A Biography for sale.
Cameron (1815-1879) has proven enormously influential on subsequent generations of photographers, particularly her groundbreaking close-up portraiture.
She photographed many of the most iconic figures of the day, including Alfred Lord Tennyson and Charles Darwin, and was also a key figure in the pre-Raphaelite movement.
The Great Tree Treat, by the French writer and illustrator Jean de Brunhoff, made £80,500 ($132,439).
 The illustration was published in 1937 |
The festive work features his iconic character Babar the Elephant and was published in the Daily Sketch, a British tabloid newspaper, in 1937.
The character appeared in print in France in 1931, and was enormously successful from the outset. There has been much debate over the way colonialism is presented in the books, with some arguing that the stories are an exercise in apologism for French rule in Africa.
Another drawing, Babar Puts On His Thinking Crown, sold for £74,500 ($122,568) at the sale.
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