TALBOT, WILLIAM HENRY FOX
"Articles of Glassware." Salted paper print from a calotype negative, 5x6 inches (12.8x15.3 cm.), on the original mount, with the notation "4" on mount recto. 1844
Estimate $15,000-20,000

Plate IV from the pencil of nature. Talbot's photographic innovations were reported throughout England. "The Spectator" was impressed with the representation of "some articles of cut glass, exhibiting with a matchless truth the peculiar quality of the lights on transparent substances. " Talbot viewed this picture and his companion 'articles of china' photograph as useful to collectors since "the whole cabinet of a . . . collector. . . might be depicted on paper in little more time than it would take him to make a written inventory. . . The articles represented on this plate are numerous but, however numerous the objects--however complicated the arrangement--the Camera depicts them all at once."

Talbot expert Shaaf wrote ot this study: "Much of the fascination with glass is its intimate relationship with light. At once a reflector, a modulator, and a passer of the rays, glass can present infinite varieties of dark and light."

This image is also reproduced in first photographs, william henry fox talbot and the birth of photograph (New York: Powerhouse Books, 2001), p. 66, and Larry J. Schaaf's the photographic art of william henry fox talbot (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 192-93.

Sale 1959 - Lot 5

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