William Henry Fox Talbot - The Odyssey of Collecting: Photographs from Joy of Giving Something Foundation, Part 1 New York Monday, April 3, 2017 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • Provenance

    Lacock Abbey Collection
    Charles Isaacs Photographs, Inc., New York, 1992

  • Literature

    Schaaf 1005
    Schaaf, The Photographic Art of William Henry Fox Talbot, pl. 60
    Arnold, William Henry Fox Talbot: Pioneer of Photography and Man of Science, pl. 51
    Buckland, Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography, p. 176
    Corcoran Gallery of Art, A Book of Photographs: Photographs from the Collection of Sam Wagstaff, p. 31
    Monterey Museum of Art, Passion and Precision: Photographs from the Collection of Margaret Weston, p. 5
    Phillips, Trachtenberg, Nickel and Keller, Taking Place: Photographs from the Prentice & Paul Sack Collection, pl. 14
    Santa Barbara Museum of Art, An Eclectic Focus: Photographs from the Vernon Collection, p. 28

  • Catalogue Essay

    William Henry Fox Talbot was the inventor of negative/positive photography which was, until recently, the medium’s dominant mode. While the photographs of his rival Daguerre were one-of-a-kind objects that could be reproduced only through copying, Talbot’s process produced an in-camera negative that could be used to print any number of positives. By the time Talbot made this view of Oxford in 1843, he had not only surmounted many of the limiting technical difficulties he had faced in the past, but also had developed his aesthetic eye. It is important to note that Talbot was one of the creators of the visual vocabulary of photography, a lexicon still very much in use today.

    This view of Oxford’s High Street, taken near its junction with Longwall Street, shows the sweep and grace of the town’s architecture. The strength of this print and evidence of its quality is the outline of the University’s Radcliffe Camera dome visible in the far distance, which punctuates the curved street and balances the composition. This is a detail which has sometimes faded in other surviving prints of this image.
    Talbot scholar Larry Schaaf has documented Talbot’s career for decades, and his recently launched on-line Talbot catalogue raisonné documents, in detail, this pioneering photographer’s extensive achievements: http://foxtalbot.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

14

Oxford High Street

1843
Salt print.
7 3/8 x 6 3/4 in. (18.7 x 17.1 cm)
Annotated 'LA 113' in an unidentified hand in ink on the verso.

Estimate
$50,000 - 70,000 

Sold for $56,250

Contact Specialist
Caroline Deck
Senior Specialist, Head of Sale

Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Deputy Chairman, Americas

General Enquiries:
+1 212 940 1245

The Odyssey of Collecting: Photographs from Joy of Giving Something Foundation, Part 1

New York 3 April 2017