Lacock Abbey
April 27. 1839
Dear Sir
I am very much obliged to you for the pictures, which I return herewith. M. Biot <1> expressed himself much pleased with those you sent him through me: he has been much occupied with experiments on guiacum resin, in which light produces certain remarkable changes and he says these have led him into quite a new field of discovery. I have discontinued lately the use of hyposulphite as a fixer, in consequence of having spoiled some pictures with it, without being able exactly to ascertain why <2> – But I think it arises from something in the paper, since others made at the same time were properly fixed – Probably a few experiments directly made for the purpose, would show the cause of failure, and the way to avoid it in the future.
When you are in Paris you will no doubt have an opportunity of seeing Daguerre’s pictures. <3> I shall be glad to hear from you, what you think of them. Whatever their merit, which no doubt is very great, I think that in one respect our English method must have the advantage. To obtain a second copy of the same view, Daguerre must return to the same locality & set up his instrument a second time; for he cannot copy from his metallic plate, being opaque. But in our method, having first obtained one picture by means of the Camera, the rest are obtainable from this one, by the method of re-transferring which, by a fortunate & beautiful circumstance rectifies both of the errors in the first picture at once. viz. the inversion of right for left; & that of light for shade. N.B. I have found that the Camera pictures transfer very well, & the resulting effect is altogether Rembrandtish. <4>
Your plan of making one picture adjust another is very curious, I should have thought à priori that the superposition would not have been sufficiently exact.
I have obtained a paper more sensible than the Bromine paper, & with the additional advantage of growing quite black, but at present I find it neither fixable, nor manageable, so that I am uncertain whether it will turn out of any advantage. I beg your acceptance of a Copy from old painted glass, re-transferred. I am much obliged by your offer of taking a packet to Paris. I will send a small one, and request you will have the goodness to send for it to 31 Sackville Street, Piccadilly; <5> as I cannot well enclose it to Capt. Beaufort, <6> not from its weight, but its quarto form which displeases the Post Office authorities.
Believe me Yours most truly
H. F. Talbot
Notes:
1. Jean-Baptiste Biot (1774–1862), French scientist.
2. Much has been made of this comment in the literature of photography, mostly concluding that WHFT abandoned the use of hypo, perhaps as a way to avoid giving Herschel credit. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Hypo was troublesome – to WHFT, to others, and even to Herschel. But its unique properties ensured its success in the long run. WHFT’s problems with hypo were only temporary and no more severe than anyone else’s. By 15 July 1839, he recorded in his notebook an experiment on “Common photogenic paper, picture made, then put in boiling water, then in weak ammonia, viz. one ammonia + 100 water. then in hyposulphite and washed out. Well fixed, and makes good transfers.” Notebook P, NMeM, Bradford. See Larry J Schaaf, Records of the Dawn of Photography: Talbot’s Notebooks P & Q (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
3. That is, daguerreotypes.
4. This appears to be WHFT’s first invocation of Rembrandt’s name as a comparison between the broad effects of light and shade in prints made from paper negatives and the Dutch artist’s work. The thought was not original to WHFT. In a 16 January 1839 letter, the Paris correspondent of the Athenaeum, on first seeing Daguerre’s productions, enthused that “some of his last works have the force of Rembrandt’s etchings;” 26 January 1839, no. 587, p. 69. In a 9 March 1839 letter from Samuel F.B. Morse to his brothers, he said that Daguerre’s “impressions of interior views are Rembrandt perfected;” The New York Observer, 20 April 1839.
5. 31 Sackville Street, London residence of the Feildings, often used as a London base by WHFT.
6. Sir Francis Beaufort, R.N. (1774–1857), naval officer, surveyor/explorer,and inventor of the Beaufort wind scale.