Talbot Photo 6(13)

Genre: Architectural Photography

Plate 13 of Matilda Gilchrist-Clark's bound copy of 'The Pencil of Nature'. A tightly composed view of the entrance to Queen’s College, Oxford, taken from an upper window on the opposite side of the High Street and centred on the cupola containing the statue of George II's wife Caroline, with the clocktower beyond. Paper trimmed to size of image.

The text that accompanies the plate reads, 'In the first plate of this work I have represented an angle of this building. Here we have a view of the Gateway and central portion of the College. It was taken from a window on the opposite side of the High Street. In examining photographic pictures of a certain degree of perfection, the use of a large lens is recommended, such as elderly persons frequently employ in reading. This magnifies the objects two or three times, and often discloses a multitude of minute details, which were previously unobserved and unsuspected. It frequently happens, moreover - and this is one of the charms of photography - that the operator himself discovers on examination, perhaps long afterwards, that he has depicted many things he had no notion of at the time. Sometimes inscriptions and dates are found upon the buildings, or printed placards most irrelevant, are discovered upon their walls: sometimes a distant dial-plate is seen, and upon it - unconsciously recorded - the hour of the day at which the view was taken.'

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. 154.