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WILLIAM HENRY FOX TALBOT, (British, 1800-1877), BUST OF PATROCLUS [schaaf 2625], dated "22 Sept 1...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:30,000.00 - 50,000.00 USD
WILLIAM HENRY FOX TALBOT, (British, 1800-1877), BUST OF PATROCLUS [schaaf 2625], dated  22 Sept 1...
WILLIAM HENRY FOX TALBOT
(British, 1800-1877)
BUST OF PATROCLUS [schaaf 2625]
dated "22 Sept 1841" in negative
salt fixed print from calotype negative
image: 65/16 x 59/16 in. (16.1 x 14.2 cm)
paper: 9 x 113/8 in. (22.9 x 19 cm)
September 22, 1841
ESTIMATE: $30,000-50,000
<p>PROVENANCE
Acquired by the current owner from an old European collection
<p>LITERATURE
W.H.F. Talbot, THE PENCIL OF NATURE, London, Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, Part I, June 1844, pls. V and XVII (profile and frontal variants illustrated); reprinted as a facsimile edition with an introduction by Beaumont Newhall, New York, Da Capo Press, 1969
Richard R. Brettell, et al., PAPER AND LIGHT: THE CALOTYPE IN FRANCE AND GREAT BRITAIN, 1839-1870, Boston, David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc., and London, Kudos & Godine, Ltd., in association with The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and The Art Institute of Chicago, 1984, p. 84, pl. 5 (profile and frontal variants illustrated)
Ken and Jenny Jacobson, ÉTUDE D'APRÈS NATURE: 19TH CENTURY PHOTOGRAPHS IN RELATION TO ART, Petches Bridge, Essex, Ken and Jenny Jacobson, 1996, p. 114, fig. 21 (frontal variant illustrated)
SPECIMENS AND MARVELS: WILLIAM HENRY FOX TALBOT AND THE INVENTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY, New York, Aperture Foundation, Inc., 2000, pp. 55 and 57 (profile and frontal variants illustrated)
Larry Schaaf, THE PHOTOGRAPHIC ART OF WILLIAM HENRY FOX TALBOT, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 148 (illustrated)
Michael Gray, Arthur Ollman and Carol McCusker, FIRST PHOTOGRAPHS: WILLIAM HENRY FOX TALBOT AND THE BIRTH OF PHOTOGRAPHY, New York, Powerhouse Books, 2002, pp. 67 and 79 (profile and frontal variants illustrated)
The present work dates from the brief period during which Talbot was using the simple but reliable salt solution to stabilize his prints, before he fully accepted the more effective procedure of fixing in hypo, suggested to him by Sir John Herschel, and generally standard for him from 1842. Hypo was both expensive and unstable, at first causing as many problems as it solved; in addition, the color of the salt-fixed prints greatly appealed to Talbot. Such salt-fixed prints are potentially fugitive. Surviving examples with the clarity and beautiful color that characterizes the present print are of the greatest rarity in the market.
The negative of this image is in the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford, UK, ref. no. NMPFT 1937-2706. The museum holds two prints from the negative; another is in the Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock, Wiltshire, UK (LA879); and a fourth is in the Brewster Codex at the Getty Museum of Art, Los Angeles (JPGM 84.XZ.0574.066).
This print of the bust of Patroclus is a distinguished symbol of the crucial period between the discovery by Talbot of a potentially viable photographic process and his development of this primitive process into a consistently dependable and lasting technique.