Talbot Photo 6(11)

Genre: Fine Arts, Photography of

Plate 11 of Matilda Gilchrist-Clark's bound copy of 'The Pencil of Nature'. A copy of Louis Leopold Boilly's 'Réunion de trente-cinq têtes diverses'. Paper trimmed to size of image.

The text that accompanies the plate reads, 'We have here the copy of a Parisian caricature, which is probably well known to many of my readers. All kinds of engravings may be copied by photographic means; and this application of the art is a very important one, not only as producing in general nearly fac-simile copies, but because it enables us at pleasure to alter the scale, and to make the copies as much larger or smaller than the originals as we may desire. The old method of altering the size of a design by means of a pantagraph or some similar contrivance, was very tedious, and must have required the instrument to be well constructed and kept in very excellent order: whereas the photographic copies become larger or smaller, merely by placing the originals nearer to or farther from the Camera. The present plate is an example of this useful application of the art, being a copy greatly diminished in size, yet preserving all the proportions of the original.'