Nelson's Column under Construction, Trafalgar Square
first week of April 1844
Medium
Salted paper print from paper negative
Dimensions
Image: 17.1 x 21.2 cm (6 3/4 x 8 3/8 in.) Sheet: 18.7 x 22.5 cm (7 3/8 x 8 7/8 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Anonymous Gift and Purchase, Alfred Stieglitz Society Gifts; 2004 Benefit Fund; W. Bruce and Delaney H. Lundberg Gift; The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel; Susan and Thomas Dunn and Constance and Leonard Goodman Gifts, 2009
Accession Number
2009.279
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the bustling heart of 1840s London with William Henry Fox Talbot's *son's Column under Construction,algar Square* (1844), a pioneering salted paper print capturing the monumental column rising amid scaffolding in the newly formed public square. Erected to honor Admiral Horatio Nelson's victory at the Battle of Trafal, the column—designed by William Railton—symbolized British naval pride during the Victorian era's architectural boom. Talbot's image, taken in the first week of April, freezes a moment of urban transformation, blending raw construction with the era's grand civic ambition...
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...