Copy of a Large Italian Print, Reduced in the Camera

1835·Salted paper print·17.9 × 15.5 cm (7 1/16 × 6 1/8 in.)

<p>William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the inventors of photography, developed a negative-positive process that permitted the reproduction and dissemination of images with relative ease. In <em>The Pencil of Nature</em>—one of the first commercially produced, photographically illustrated books—Talbot noted an advantage of the new art form beyond mere duplication: “it enables us at pleasure to alter the scale, and to make the copies as much larger or smaller than the originals as we may desire. . . . Yet preserving all the proportions of the original.” Here Talbot reduced an 1829 engraving by Luigi Rossini of a Roman arch to approximately 15 percent of its original size. Even on a smaller scale, Talbot’s image retains the delicate lines and detail of the engraving.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1835
Medium: Salted paper print
Dimensions: 17.9 × 15.5 cm (7 1/16 × 6 1/8 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: William Henry Fox Talbot

Artist

William Henry Fox Talbot

Photography

William Henry Fox Talbot was an English scientist, inventor, and photography pioneer who invented the salted paper and calotype processes, precursors to photographic processes of the later 19th and 20th centuries. His work in the 1840s on photomechanical reproduction led to the creation of the photoglyphic engraving process, the precursor to photogravure. He was the holder of a controversial patent that affected the early development of commercial photography in Britain. He was also a noted photographer who contributed to the development of photography as an artistic medium. He published The Pencil of Nature (1844–1846), which was illustrated with original salted paper prints from his calotype negatives and made some important early photographs of Oxford, Paris, Reading, and York.

Dorset, UK

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