Talbot Photo 9(2)

Genre: Fine Arts, Photography of

Plate 17 of a partially bound copy of the fourth installment of 'The Pencil of Nature', published on the 21 June 1845. The sculpture in full left profile, with the lower part of the chest and plinth having been cropped. Paper trimmed to size of image.

The accompanying text reads, 'Another view of the bust which is figured in the fifth plate of this work. It has often been said, and has grown into a proverb, that there is no royal road to learning of any kind. But the proverb is fallacious: for there is, assuredly, a royal road to Drawing; and one of these days, when more known and better explored, it will probably be much frequented. Already sundry amateurs have laid down the pencil and armed themselves with chemical solutions and with cameræ obscuræ. Those amateurs especially, and they are not few, who find the rules of perspective difficult to learn and to apply - and who moreover have the misfortune to be lazy - prefer to use a method which dispenses with all that trouble. And even accomplished artists now avail themselves of an invention which delineates in a few moments the almost endless details of Gothic architecture which a whole day would hardly suffice to draw correctly in the ordinary manner.'