Dear Sir
Having returned from our General Assembly <1> I am going to begin to try your Calotype Process. <2> I see, however, that even if I succeed in obtaining good Negative Landscapes or Portraits I am ignorant of your method of obtaining from them Positive Pictures. Of course this is done by superposition; but your experience must have taught you the best way of doing them.
I cannot understand how any thing so sharp as the two Positive Portraits you sent me <3> can be produced by the Solar Rays after they have permeated, and been to a certain degree dispersed by, a sheet of writing paper. The Negative original will surely require to strongly pressed against the Sheet of Paper upon which it is to be positively impressed.
I am Dear Sir, Ever Most Truly yrs
D Brewster
St Leonards
St Andrews
June 12th 1841
H.F. Talbot Esqr
Notes:
1. Of the Church of Scotland. The right of a patron to impose a minister upon a congregation was being contested. Brewster was a prominent supporter of the anti-patronage movement. Just two years later occurred the Disruption of the General Assembly, when the Church split [see Doc. No: 04839]. It was the desire of the painter D. O. Hill to commemorate this historic event that led to Brewster introducing him to John Adamson’s brother Robert, thus beginning a brilliant photographic partnership.
2. WHFT had revealed the details of this new negative process to Brewster before they were generally published.
3. See Doc. No: 04247.