31 Sackville St <1>
Thursday
Dear Sir
As I think you have a party on Saturday evg I can bring you, if you like a few improved specimens of Photogenic Drawing <2> – These are, or I hope will be by that time, framed & glazed, and I shall want them back, to show to the Graphic Society <3> &c. but if you like I can make you some as good or better next month, to add to the little collection which I sent last Summer.
Yours very truly
H. Fox Talbot
Notes:
1. 31 Sackville Street, London residence of the Feildings, often used as a London base by WHFT.
2. With the early advent of bright weather in 1840, WHFT rapidly improved his photogenic drawing process, particularly in the camera, and showed some on the evening of 1 February 1840 at Babbage’s home. Sir David Wilkie (1785–1841), Scottish artist, and Sir Francis Leggatt Chantrey (1781–1841), sculptor, were among those present. See WHFT’s account of this evening in Doc. No: 04015.
3. This was to be WHFT’s third exhibition of photogenic drawings, reviewed in ‘Fine Arts, Graphic Society’, The Literary Gazette and Journal of belles lettres, science and art, no. 1217, 16 May 1840, pp. 315–316.