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and political gatherings that also served, as Lady Palm-
erston noted, “to amuse Fanny [Lady Frances].”
Queen Victoria took considerable interest in the
Palmerston family and invited Lady Frances to be one of
twelve young women to carry her wedding train in 1840.
The following year Lady Frances herself was married
to Viscount Jocelyn, the eldest son of the 3rd Earl of
Roden, who had recently returned from military service
in India and China. After their marriage, Viscountess
Jocelyn continued to be associated with the Royal Court
and was appointed an Extra Woman of the Bedchamber
in 1842. Four years later the Jocelyns moved to Northern
Ireland to Viscount Jocelyn’s ancestral estate. They had
six children before the Viscount contracted cholera
in 1854 when stationed at the Tower of London and
died. Following his death Viscountess Jocelyn and her
children returned to England to live with her mother.
In 1858 Viscountess Jocelyn began to take
photographs. It is possibly that she learnt the skill from
Lord Dudley de Ros, a member of the Royal Court and
amateur photographer who took portraits of the Royal
Family and court circle, including Viscountess Jocelyn.
Other photographers of her acquaintance included Dr
Ernst Becker, who had instructed the Royal Family on
photography in the 1850s, and Graham Vivian, a family
friend who was a member of the Photographic Society
and visited and photographed the Palmerstons in 1858.
By 1861 Jocelyn had joined the Photographic Society
of London and accompanied the Queen and Prince
Albert to a view an exhibition there that same year. In
1862 she had developed enough confi dence in her own
work to submit several landscape photographs of the
grounds of Broadlands to the International Exhibition,
London where she received a honourable mention for
“artistic effect.” She continued her involvement with
photographic associations until the late 1860s with one
of her works included in a group Amateur Photographic
Association album in 1867.
However, the main outlet for Jocelyn’s talents was
in the private not public arena. In common with other
aristocratic amateur women photographers, such
as Lady Milles and Lady Filmer, Jocelyn carefully
assembled photographic albums with her own and
commercially bought photographs. The impetus to
create such albums may have come, at least in part,
from the enthusiasm of Queen Victoria who had a well-
known passion for assembling and viewing albums of
photographs. A few of the aristocratic women of the
Royal circle, Jocelyn included, extended this practice
to include inventive photographic montages often
incorporating watercolour and drawing. As the audience
for these albums was presumably limited to friends and
family considerable creative freedom existed when
constructing and manipulating family and personal
narratives. Their work also differs from mainstream
nineteenth century practice in its lack of concern for the
‘integrity’ of the photographic image which is cut up
and over-painted where desired and for their disruption
of conventional notions of authorship with the frequent
use of commercial photographs as the raw material for
their own designs.
In the 1860s and 1870s, Jocelyn created at least six
large photographic albums that operate at the nexus
of creative expression, personal biography and social
history. In one of her major albums (held by the National
Gallery of Australia, Canberra), Jocelyn’s arrangement
of photographs of her family and their homes establishes
the continuity and solidity of aristocratic family life.
This view is established, in part, through the placement
of photographic portraits of family members in
hand drawn designs that emphasise permanence and
interconnectedness—such as diamond and honeycomb
shapes. Jocelyn also frequently includes flowers
carefully selected for their symbolic language such as
fi lial devotion and love.
While these portrait montages are largely assembled
from commercial photographs, Jocelyn’s albums
also include her own photographs. The NGA album
contains a discrete section titled, “Bygone Hours by
the Viscountess Jocelyn,” in which Jocelyn and her
children pose on the terrace and enclosed courtyard
of her house at St Leonards. There is little spontaneity
about these images with the participants adopting
carefully rehearsed postures as they read, embroider
or spin wool. The sense of stasis in these domestic
tableaux is reminiscent of the work of her contemporary,
Viscountess Hawarden, who similarly created scenes
within enclosed domestic spaces.
Jocelyn also created inventive and, at times,
whimsical montages constructed from her own and
others photographs. In one image she place photographs
of babies and young children in a hand-drawn tree,
complete with nests, thus playing on the notion of the
family tree. Other album pages are more formal and
show her inventive design sense with motifs including
jewellery, Japanese screens, letters with photographic
‘stamps,’ and a stained glass window design comprising
portraits of men in naval uniform and small head of
women mimicking carved gargoyles. Often these album
pages are only partially completed suggesting that
the process of assembling albums was a lengthy and
thoughtful one.
Writer Eugenia Parry Janis has noted “the
psychological directness” of collage work produced
by aristocratic women photographers and a number of
Jocelyn’s photographs appear to refer to her own life. In
the 1870s her family was dogged by tragedy with all six
of Jocelyn’s children eventually dying of tuberculosis.
A sense of personal vulnerability is apparent from one
of her most intriguing collages, a hand-drawn archery