My Dear Mr. Talbot,
We have just come to Town for the Winter to No 26 Rutland Street.
I see in the Photographic Exhibition <1> a very fine Copy on Steel, by your process <2> of my Carte de Visite. <3> It seems to me much sharper than the original
I am, Ever Most Truly yrs
D Brewster
26 Rutland Street
Notes:
1. Of the Photographic Society of Scotland.
2. Photoglyphic engraving.
3. Talbot exhibited ‘Specimens of Photoglyphic Engraving’ in the exhibition of 1864/65. The second of two reviews in the British Journal of Photography, v. 12, no. 246, 20 January 1865, observed that ‘In the less trodden walks of our many-sided art we must notice the large collection of specimens by the veteran founder and father of photography, Mr Fox Talbot. They are specimens of photo-engraving, some of them well known, others that ought to be so, and all of them intensely interesting. The character of the greater part of these interesting specimens seems to indicate too great density in the negative – a fault which gives an unequal character to them, and there is a general want of the perfect gradation of the photography, and of the levelness or equality of the blacks. The portrait of Sir David Brewster is perhaps the most promising.’