Jane Martha St. John

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.

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.

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