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The Fox Talbot Museum celebrates the life and work of William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-77), owner and resident of Lacock Abbey.
A gentleman scholar of considerable means and social standing, he studied the arts and sciences and kept detailed notes of his endeavours. His experiments in the mid 1830s led him to discover the negative/positive photographic process.
The idea of photography came to WH Fox Talbot whilst on holiday at Lake Como in Italy, using the camera obscura and camera lucida as aids to drawing.
The creation of the negative
© NTPL / Andrew Butler
Beginning in 1834, Talbot experimented with a process which he called photogenic drawing: coating drawing paper with salt solution and after it had dried, adding a solution of silver nitrate. By placing a leaf, or fern, or a piece of lace, on the paper's surface and exposing it to the sun, he obtained an image.
In August 1835, Talbot made the earliest known surviving photographic negative using a camera, a small photogenic drawing of the latticed window in the south gallery of Lacock Abbey. This rare item is now in the collection of the Science Museum at the National Media Museum at Bradford.
Talbot's findings were read to a meeting of the Royal Society on 31st January 1839, one of the first official announcements of the birth of photography.
A beautiful breakthrough
© NTPL / Andrew Butler
Continued experimentation by Talbot led to a breakthrough when he discovered that paper treated with a coating of silver iodide, exposed in camera, and developed in gallic acid mixed with silver nitrate and acetic acid would bring out a latent image. With elation and wonder on 23rd September 1840 he watched a picture gradually appearing on a blank sheet of paper. Talbot named this new process the Calotype, derived from the Greek word 'Kalos' meaning beautiful.
Talbot’s wide use of photography, creating landscapes, architectural studies, still lifes, portraits, and well composed scenes, defined the art of photography. Examples of all these types of photographs and an explanation of the uses of each appear in his publication ‘The Pencil of Nature’ – Published between 1844 and 1847, it was the first book to be illustrated entirely by photographs.
The interests of William Henry Fox Talbot were not confined to photography and, after showing his academic brilliance at an early age, he continued throughout his life, to study various subjects such as mathematics, chemistry, classics, philosophy, botany, Assyriology and archaeology.
The collection today
The collection has now moved to the British Library. Find out more about the relocation of the collection.
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