Talbot Photo 6(4)

Genre: Still Life Photography

Plate 4 of Matilda Gilchrist-Clark's bound copy of 'The Pencil of Nature'. View of three shelves displaying glass goblets and decanters. Paper trimmed to size of image.

The text that accompanies the plate reads, 'The photogenic images of glass articles impress the sensitive paper with a very peculiar touch, which is quite different from that of the China in Plate III. And it may be remarked that white china and glass do not succeed well when represented together, because the picture of the china, from its superior brightness, is completed before that of the glass is well begun. But coloured china may be introduced along with glass in the same picture, provided the colour is not pure blue: since blue objects affect the sensitive paper almost as rapidly as white ones do. On the contrary, green rays act very feebly - an inconvenient circumstance, whenever green trees are to be represented in the same picture with buildings of a light hue, or with any other light coloured objects.'

For a discussion of this image, see Larry J. Schaaf, 'The Photographic Art of William Henry Fox Talbot' (Princeton University Press, Princeton and London, 2000), p. 192.