Articles of China
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.)
Classification
photograph
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
227552
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
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 ...
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...