Jane Martha St. John (née Hicks Beach, 1801–1882) was an early English photographer. She is remembered for her calotypes of Rome and other towns in Italy, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
St. John made over 100 photographs in the late 1850s when travelling with her husband in Italy. Her introduction to photography probably resulted from the connections her privileged family enjoyed with John Dillwyn Llewelyn and the pioneering Talbots. St. John’s work included portraits, travel views, and scenes of the grounds of houses. The photographs of the Hotel des Étrangers in Naples and the view of the waterfront are remarkable for the period. Unlike her contemporaries, she was interested above all in capturing the scenes of her travels but her images were also carefully composed. This is particularly evident in her photograph of the Roman Colosseum with the adjacent Arch of Constantine. Her individual approach to her work makes St. John one of the more interesting amateur photographers of the mid-19th century.
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Biography
Jane Martha St. John was born Jane Martha Hicks Beach (not as has been mistakenly reported Jane Martha Beach) on 24 July 1801 at Williamstrip Park, Coln St. Aldwyn, Gloucestershire. She was the fourth daughter of Michael Hicks (Beach, 1760–1830) and Henrietta Maria Beach (1760–1837). The relatives was particularly rich as her mother inherited large estates in Wiltshire as with ease as Williamstrip in Gloucestershire. In his will, Henrietta Maria Beach’s daddy had stipulated that Michael should take the Beach name. As a result, in 1790 the name “Hicks Beach” came into swine by Royal Licence.
By the period Jane Martha was nine, her three sisters and two of her brothers had died. Her brother Michael, 21 years her senior had married, and her brother William, 18 years older than his sister, having completed his education at Eton and Edinburgh, the latter later his tutor Sydney Smith, was MP for Marlborough, leaving her as the isolated child at home. As her dad was MP for Cirencester as skillfully as a large landowner, the child’s main motion was probably to achievement as a companion to her mother.
When Jane Martha was 14, her brother Michael died of sunstroke while upon holiday, leaving her mommy with a daughter-in-law she apparently disliked. Jane Martha became protective of her mommy as can be seen in her correspondence to her sister-in-law at the time, tactfully suggesting that she stay away from Williamstrip.
In 1832, their uncle, Wither Bramston, died, leaving his Oakley Hall home in Hampshire to Jane Martha’s brother William who went to stir there in the atmosphere of his young family. Jane may have allied him rudely or after their mommy died in 1837. At that point, she had unquestionably moved to Oakley to keep home for her brother and help look after his children. There is as well as documentary evidence that Jane Martha Hicks Beach, as she after that was, received correspondence addressed to her at Oakley but for the attention of her brother. In 1844/45 William, with Jane Martha and the children, took an Elongated holiday in Germany, possibly challenging her to take her later trip to Italy.
Jane Martha became acquainted gone Edward William St. John, the lonesome son of the Rev. Edward St. John and his wife Mary from the next-door Ashe Park estate.
On 24 February 1848, Jane Martha, then 47, and Edward were married at the Hicks Beach family seat of Williamstrip. Her loyalty to Edward, 14 years her junior, can be seen from whatever the photographs of him she included in her album. It was probably in 1848 that her brother William installed them in Oakley Cottage on his estate, but understandably he saw no obsession for a written appointment with his sister. It was single-handedly after his death upon 22 November 1856 that a lease from his son, William Wither Bramston Beach, was signed behind Edward St. John.
In the intervening years cousin Emma Thomasina Talbot sent Jane copies of relatives photos taken by her husband, the pioneering photographer John Dillwyn Llewelyn (later included in Jane’s associates album). Emma had herself taken a fervent interest in photography from the coming on and assisted her husband by printing for him.
When Jane Martha St. John finally acquired a camera of her own some mature in the 1850s, she sent her photos to friends and family. Some can be seen in the album of her cousin Emma Thomasina’s daughter, Emma Charlotte (1837–1929), now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was not until the late 1850s that Jane made a family album of her own which she used for the photos she standard from others as competently as those she took herself.
In the late 1850s Jane and Edward had set off equipped when a camera and sensitised paper on a journey through France to Italy, where greater than one hundred times she positioned her camera to LP the scenes that she liked most, to be dwelt upon when she got home. Her album of that tour containing one hundred and six of these Italian views is now in the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Last update 2021-08-06