Bowood
Medium
Salted paper print from paper negative
Dimensions
Image: 16.3 x 21.5 cm (6 7/16 x 8 7/16 in.) Sheet: 17.9 x 22 cm (7 1/16 x 8 11/16 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1936
Accession Number
36.37 (34)
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the dawn of photography with *Bowood* (1840), a pioneering salted paper print by William Henry Fox Talbot This delicate image captures the stately architecture of Bowood House, an elegant English estate, its facade rendered in soft tones of gray and subtle shadows. Measuring just over 16 x 21 cm, the print showcases Talbot's genius in fixing fleeting light onto paper, transforming a grand building into an enduring visual memory. Talbot, a British inventor and scholar, created this using his revolutionary calotype process—a paper negative that allowed for multiple positive prints, un...
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...