Jane Martha St. John

Jane Martha St. John 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.

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 family was particularly wealthy as her mother inherited large estates in Wiltshire as well as Williamstrip in Gloucestershire. In his will, Henrietta Maria Beach's father had stipulated that Michael should take the Beach name. As a result, in 1790 the name "Hicks Beach" came into being by Royal Licence.

By the time 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 with his tutor Sydney Smith, was MP for Marlborough, leaving her as the only child at home. As her father was MP for Cirencester as well as a large landowner, the child's main occupation was probably to act as a companion to her mother.

When Jane Martha was 14, her brother Michael died of sunstroke while on holiday, leaving her mother with a daughter-in-law she apparently disliked. Jane Martha became protective of her mother 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 estate in Hampshire to Jane Martha's brother William who went to live there with his young family. Jane may have joined him immediately or after their mother died in 1837. At that point, she had certainly moved to Oakley to keep house for her brother and help look after his children. There is also documentary evidence that Jane Martha Hicks Beach, as she then 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 extended holiday in Germany, possibly inspiring her to take her later trip to Italy.

Jane Martha became acquainted with Edward William St. John, the only son of the Rev. Edward St. John and his wife Mary from the adjacent Ashe Park estate.

On 24 February 1848, Jane Martha, then 47, and Edward were married at the Hicks Beach family seat of Williamstrip. Her devotion to Edward, 14 years her junior, can be seen from all 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 need for a written agreement with his sister. It was only after his death on 22 November 1856 that a lease from his son, William Wither Bramston Beach, was signed with Edward St. John.

In the intervening years cousin Emma Thomasina Talbot sent Jane copies of family photos taken by her husband, the pioneering photographer John Dillwyn Llewelyn (later included in Jane's family album). Emma had herself taken a keen interest in photography from the beginning and assisted her husband by printing for him.

When Jane Martha St. John finally acquired a camera of her own some time 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 received from others as well as those she took herself.

In the late 1850s Jane and Edward had set off equipped with a camera and sensitised paper on a journey through France to Italy, where more than one hundred times she positioned her camera to record 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.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023