Copy Print From "Celebrated Inscriptions Ancient Eugubine Tablets"
c. 1844
Medium
Salted paper print
Dimensions
Image: 19.9 × 14.2 cm (7 7/8 × 5 5/8 in.); Paper: 22.9 × 19 cm (9 1/16 × 7 1/2 in.)
Classification
salted paper print
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
38979
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
When William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the inventors of photography, presented his initial findings in January 1839, he proposed a variety of applications for his new discovery, which he called “photogenic drawing.” He presciently detailed how it could be used for portraits, landscape, architecture, and depictions of objects seen in the microscope—but also as a tool for copying drawings and engravings. Here Talbot—an expert in ancient languages as well as chemistry—photographically reproduced a p...
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...