Copy of the Title Page for "Inclytae Regiae Societati Londinensi"
c. 1840
Medium
Salted paper print
Dimensions
Image: 19.5 × 14.1 cm (7 11/16 × 5 9/16 in.); Paper: 22.2 × 18.4 cm (8 3/4 × 7 1/4 in.)
Classification
salted paper print
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
127287
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
A gentleman-scholar with an intense interest in science, William Henry Fox Talbot was one of the inventors of photography. His negative-positive process—using paper negatives to create potentially limitless prints—enabled the duplication and dissemination of images with relative ease. Among the many consequences of this new technology, it revolutionized the reproduction of art, as paintings, lithographs, and etchings could be made in reduced or enlarged sizes. For Talbot photography was intimate...
About the Artist
William Henry Fox Talbot · 1800–1877
William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877), a British polymath whose ingenuity transformed visual representation, was born on 11 February 1800 at Melbury House, Dorset, the only child of William Davenport Talbot of Lacock Abbey and Lady Elisabeth Fox Strangways, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Ilchester. His father died shortly after his birth, leaving the family in financial straits until his formidable mo...