William Henry Fox Talbot
English, 1800-1877
Articles of China
INV-2275
William Henry Fox Talbot
English, 1800-18771843-44
Articles of China
William Henry Fox Talbot English, 1800-1877 →19th centuryphotographphotography
Date
1843-44
Medium
Salted paper print
Dimensions
Image: 13.7 × 18.2 cm (5 7/16 × 7 3/16 in.); Paper: 18.7 × 22.4 cm (7 3/8 × 8 5/8 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
The Mary and Leigh Block Endowment Fund
One of the inventors of photography, William Henry Fox Talbot also produced the first commercially published book to feature photographic illustrations. The Pencil of Nature, issued in six volumes between 1844 and 1846, included Articles of China as plate three of the first volume. Talbot used this image to extol the practical virtues of the new art, claiming that “the whole cabinet of a Virtuoso and collector of old China might be depicted on paper in little more time than it would take him to make a written inventory describing it in the usual way.” Moreover, he argued presciently, if a thief should take the treasures, such an image could provide a new kind of evidentiary record in court.
Also notable
Works in the same vein
