107 Regent Street <1>
31 Mars 1854
Monsieur,
La peinture de la salle de réception <2> de mon établissement n’attend plus que votre portrait pour être terminée & j’espère que vous serez assez bon pour me l’envoyer le plutôt possible.
Je suis de retour de Paris où j’ai été passer un mois & pendant mon séjour dans cette ville d’où j’ai rapporté un grand nombre de belles épreuves de Talbotype, <3> j’ai été assez heureux pour trouver un portrait de Porta <4> dont j’avais besoin pour mon tableau allégorique. Ce portrait se trouvait en tête d’un ouvrage de Porta existant dans la bibiothèque du conservatoire des Arts & Métiers. <5> J’en ai fait tirer un négatif sur verre & si vous desirez en avoir une épreuve je serai charmé de vous l’offrir.
Je compte sur votre obligeance pour ne pas retarder davantage l’envoi de votre portrait.
Agréez, Monsieur, l’assurance de ma considération la plus distinguée,
A Claudet
Translation:
107 Regent Street
31 March 1854
Sir,
Only your portrait is needed to finish the decoration of the reception room in my establishment & I hope that you will be kind enough to send it to me as soon as possible.
I have returned from spending a month in Paris, and during my stay in this city, whence I have brought back a large number of beautiful Talbotype prints, I was lucky enough to find a portrait of Porta which I needed for my allegorical painting. This portrait was at the beginning of a work by Porta which is in the library of the conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. I have had a negative of it made on glass & if you would like to have a print, I will be delighted to present you one.
I rely on your obliging me by delaying no further in sending your portrait.
Please accept, Sir, most sincere regards.
A Claudet
Notes:
1. London.
2. See Doc. No: 06866.
3. Although WHFT modesty preferred the term calotype, Claudet and other close friends chose to honour the name of the inventor, in parallel with the Daguerreotype.
4. Giambattista della Porta ( ca1535–1615), was mistakenly credited with the invention of the camera obscura by Dominique François Jean Arago (1786–1853), French physicist, astronomer & man of science in his first report on the Daguerreotype.
5. Paris.
6. Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792–1871), astronomer & scientist. Although Herschel had been daguerreotyped, no calotype portaits of him have been confirmed. Gail Buckland has identified one, but without giving supporting evidence, in her Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography (Boston: David R. Godine, 1980), p. 41 (Schaaf 1255).