Almost 200 photos by William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877), one of the inventors of the medium, will be auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York next month. The collection, which will be offered as a single lot, is expected to fetch between $300,000 and $500,000.
The sale shows a glimpse of daily life in the 1840s, with both indoor and outdoor scenes, portraits, still lifes, and landscapes and includes both individual prints and photographic albums such as The Pencil of Nature and Sun Pictures in Scotland. Collectively, the photographs represent “arguably the most important lot of 19th-century photographs to ever come to market,” according to the auction house.
Talbot was discovering how to make photographs on paper, which he called calotypes or talbotypes, using a sodium solution to permanently fix images projected inside a camera lucida onto photosensitive paper coated with silver iodide. The process produced a translucent negative that could be used to copy the image through contact printing. Talbot made his prints with silver chloride paper, or salted paper, which he developed through his earlier photographic experiments. It was watershed development in photographic history, greatly influencing camera technology moving forward.
The collection which Sotheby’s is offering was a gift by the photographer to his half sister Henrietta Horatia Maria Gaisford, and has been in her family ever since. This collection includes prints of some of Talbot’s best-known works, such as Nelson’s Column under construction and Bust of Patroclus, but other photographs in the set may be the only surviving copy of the image.
The works will hit the block as part of Sotheby’s photo department’s 50th anniversary celebrations, which includes a joint New York and London sale titled “50 Masterworks to Celebrate 50 Years.”
