of Lady Jocelyn, c. 1841. This is a copy that Queen Victoria commissioned in 1882. The widowed Lady Jocelyn turned to photography in 1858, possibly with the encouragement of Dr Ernst Becker (1826–1888), Prince Albert's tutor, librarian and private secretary, who was himself encouraged to learn photography by the Prince, and who became a founding member of
Royal Photographic Society. Lady Jocelyn soon developed into an accomplished photographer in both landscape and portraiture, and it was clearly an activity of high importance to her in this period of her life – despite being a titled member of the British nobility, she gave her occupation as "photographer" in the 1861 Census. In 1859 she was elected as a member of the
Royal Photographic Society and later also joined the Amateur Photographic Association, formed in 1861. In 1862 she exhibited four landscape photographs of the Palmerston estate,
Broadlands, at the
International Exhibition in London, where the jurors of the Exhibition's Photography Department awarded her an "honourable mention for artistic effect in
landscape photography". Several of her photographs were shown under the heading of "Groups and Landscapes" at the International Exhibition in Dublin in 1865. Women were among the first to engage in the emerging field of photography, whose flexibility, when compared to other art forms, allowed women more freedom to engage in subject matter that interested them, since there was no hierarchy or body of regulations that governed their work. Most women photographers focused on domesticity, choosing to feature their families in an array of images. Keeping within this trend, Lady Jocelyn produced a series of albums in the 1850s. Her photographic collages – collections of cut-up images inserted onto painted backdrops – and use of watercolours "subverted the realistic nature of photography," according to the
Encyclopaedia of Nineteenth-century Photography. This publication also describes the work of her and
Lady Mary Georgina Filmer as "demonstrat[ing] the creative energy and inventiveness that could be invested in the production of photographic collages". Viscountess Jocelyn's interest in photography declined in the 1870s. She spent much of her time travelling with her children, visiting seaside resorts in England and France for her health. She died on 24 March 1880 in
Cannes, France. All five of her children died before their mother. Several years after her death, Queen Victoria commissioned the artist Eduardo de Moira to copy a
miniature that William Ross had made of Lady Jocelyn decades earlier. == Issue ==