.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Talbot described his involvement with photomicrography to Samuel Highley, Jr. in a letter dated 10 May 1853 and published three days later in the Journal of the Society of Arts:
The first person who applied photography to the solar microscope was undoubtedly Mr. Wedgwood...but none of his delineations have been preserved, and I believe that no particulars are known. Next in order of time to Mr. Wedgwood'’s, came my own experiments. Having published my first photographic process in January, 1839, I immediately applied it to the solar microscope, and in the course of that year made a great many microscopic photographs, which I gave away to Sir John Herschel, Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan, and other friends....The process employed was my original process, termed by me at first '“Photogenic drawing,'--– for the calotype process was not yet invented. I succeeded in my attempts, chiefly in consequence of a careful arrangement of the solar microscope, by which I was enabled to obtain a very luminous image, and to maintain it steadily on the paper during five or ten minutes, the time requisite. From the negative, positives were made freely, in the usual way. The magnifying power obtained was determined by direct measurement of the image and the object itself, which gave for result a magnifying power of seventeen times in linear dimensions, and consequently of 289 in surface. The definition of the image was good. After the invention of the calotype process, it became of course a comparatively easy matter to obtain these images; and I then ceased to occupy myself with this branch of photography, in order to direct my whole attention to the improvement of the views taken with the camera.1
The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford holds the negative and two prints of this particular image. Prints of this image are very rare and this is the only known print in private hands.
1 L.J. Schaaf, The Correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot, University of Glasgow, https://www.foxtalbot.arts.gla.ac.uk, document 06774.
The first person who applied photography to the solar microscope was undoubtedly Mr. Wedgwood...but none of his delineations have been preserved, and I believe that no particulars are known. Next in order of time to Mr. Wedgwood'’s, came my own experiments. Having published my first photographic process in January, 1839, I immediately applied it to the solar microscope, and in the course of that year made a great many microscopic photographs, which I gave away to Sir John Herschel, Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan, and other friends....The process employed was my original process, termed by me at first '“Photogenic drawing,'--– for the calotype process was not yet invented. I succeeded in my attempts, chiefly in consequence of a careful arrangement of the solar microscope, by which I was enabled to obtain a very luminous image, and to maintain it steadily on the paper during five or ten minutes, the time requisite. From the negative, positives were made freely, in the usual way. The magnifying power obtained was determined by direct measurement of the image and the object itself, which gave for result a magnifying power of seventeen times in linear dimensions, and consequently of 289 in surface. The definition of the image was good. After the invention of the calotype process, it became of course a comparatively easy matter to obtain these images; and I then ceased to occupy myself with this branch of photography, in order to direct my whole attention to the improvement of the views taken with the camera.
The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford holds the negative and two prints of this particular image. Prints of this image are very rare and this is the only known print in private hands.