The Seine at Rouen
May 1843
Medium
Salted paper print from paper negative
Dimensions
16.3 x 17.8 cm (6 7/16 x 7 in. )
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Rubel Collection, Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace and Anonymous Gifts, 1997
Accession Number
1997.382.3
Tags
Art Historical Context
William Henry Fox Talbot's *The Seine at Rouen (May 1843) captures a serene riverside scene along the bustling Seine in Normandy, France, featuring docks and boats that evoke the era's thriving maritime activity. This modest 16.3 x 17.8 cm salted paper print, housed in the Metropolitan Museum of's Photographs Department, offers a glimpse into 19th-century daily life through the lens of one of photography's founding fathers. Talbot, a British inventor and scholar, pioneered the calotype process—the first negative-positive method using paper negatives. Unlike the one-of-a-kind daguerreotype, hi...
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...