+ Expand

Condition: All items are offered for sale subject to Swann Galleries' standard terms and conditions of sale, which are published in our catalogues.

+ Expand

Notes: The mounted plates include Plate II "View of the Boulevards at Paris" * Plate VI "The Open Door" * Plate IX "Fac-simile of an Old Printed Page" * Plate XI "Copy of a Lithographic Print" * Plate XVII "Bust of Patroclus" * Plate XVIII "Gate of Christchurch" * Plate XIX "The Tower of Lacock Abbey" * Plate XX "Lace."


The unmounted plates include Plate IV "Articles of Glass" * Plate V "Bust of Patroclus" * Plate VII "Leaf of a Plant" * Plate XIII "Queen's College, Oxford, Entrance Gateway" * Plate XV "Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire."


From the Collection of James B. Parks.


William Henry Fox Talbot published his seminal Pencil of Nature beginning in 1844 as a means of announcing his invention of the negative/positive process using a paper negative. The culmination of a decade's worth of work, the publication's six fascicles featured 24 plates as well as accompanying text detailing the history of Talbot's invention and its possible uses. His introductory disclaimer, that 'The plates of the present work are impressed by the agency of Light alone, without any aid whatever from the artist's pencil. They are the sun-pictures themselves, and not, as some persons have imagined, engravings in imitation,' speaks to the originality of Talbot's invention as well as the odds he faced in gaining recognition (Louis Daguerre's stunning silver-coated copper plates eclipsed Talbots initially ephemeral images).


At each textual turn, Talbot both highlights the incredible feat of the photograph, 'impressed by the agency of Light alone,' as well as sells the process to possible practitioners, considering how photography will be functional and indeed valuable. This is the first photo book, and can still be considered a highlight of the form. Seamlessly uniting the written word and the image, Talbot created a beautiful object that both contextualized and disseminated his work.


Offered here as a series of 13 plates both mounted and unmounted, these images—busts of classical figures, rows of glass bowls and vases, his seminal 'The Open Door,' a lone delicate leaf, and the grounds of his own Lacock Abbey, among others—evoke Talbot the revolutionary scientist as well as Talbot the delicate, exquisite artist.