Julien Vallou de Villeneuve (French, 1795-1866)

Standing nude, 1853-1854

Coated salt print from a paper negative

16.4 x 12.2 cm

Julien Vallou de Villeneuve was a French painter, lithographer and photographer. His photographic works are most closely associated with the painter Gustave Courbet who, during the 1850s, used some of Villeneuve's photographs as source material for his paintings.

William Henry Fox Talbot (English, 1800-1877)

"The Ladder," 1844

Salt print from a calotype negative

17.1 x 18.3 cm on 19.6 x 23.8 cm paper

This unusually rich, untrimmed print of one of Talbot's best known images is the only one from The Pencil of Nature to include people, among whom is Talbot's Dutch assistant, Nicolaas Henneman. The length of exposure times in photography's early days prohibited the capture of people in motion. However, as Talbot explained, "when a group of persons has been artistically arranged, and trained by a little practice to maintain an absolute immobility for a few seconds of time, very delightful pictures are easily obtained." This picture presents an artificial tableau, carefully composed by Talbot to simulate activity.

The creation of this picture was further complicated by the height of the loft door which might have forced Talbot to point the camera upwards, creating converging vertical lines unattractive to the artistic or pictorial eye. Instead, the picture presents a rather flat frontal composition, likely produced by elevating the position of his camera. In this finely executed composition we can see Talbot becoming one of the first photographic artists.

This image appeared as Plate XIV in Talbot's The Pencil of Nature. Arnold Crane told HPK in 2007 that when he agreed to sell his collection to the Getty Museum in 1984, he chose to keep this extraordinary print.

Julia Margaret Cameron (English, born in India, 1815-1879)

"The Kiss of Peace," 1869

Albumen print from a collodion negative

35.1 x 28.1 cm mounted on 57.6 x 45.2 cm paper, ruled in gilt

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) is known for her portraits of Britain's most celebrated figures and for her allegorical tableaux drawn from literature, poetry and the Bible. This albumen print, dated 1869, from a collodion negative of The Kiss of Peace found its inspiration in a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson. The costume of Cameron's sitters, Florence Anson (?) and Mary Hillier, Cameron's maid from 1861-1875, though of the Victorian period, makes no explicit reference to a specific historical era. Cameron believed The Kiss of Peace to be "the most beautiful of all my photographs."

William Henry Fox Talbot (English, 1800-1877)

Oak tree in winter, Lacock Abbey, probably 1842-1843

Salt print from a calotype negative

19.3 x 16.5 cm, corners clipped

Made in the earliest days of photography, this salt print of a majestic oak, devoid of leaves on the grounds of Lacock Abbey, is master of the landscape. Talbot was keenly aware of the value of timber on his estates, and the more lasting value of the place of grand trees in the landscape. In contrast to the other trees along the horizon line, here the inventor of photography emphasizes the oak’s size and structure silhouetted against the clear light of winter.

The negative for this photograph is in the collection of the British Library, London.

William Henry Fox Talbot (English, 1800-1877)

Articles of China, 1844

Salt print from a calotype negative

14.0 x 18.2 cm on 18.5 x 22.4 cm paper

When making this photograph, articles of china were laid out on portable shelves in the courtyard of Lacock Abbey. In the text accompanying this image in The Pencil of Nature (Plate III), Talbot observed of the collector that "the more strange and fantastic the forms of his old teapots, the more advantage in having their pictures given instead of their descriptions. And should a thief afterwards purloin the treasures—if the mute testimony of the picture were to be produced against him in court—it would certainly be evidence of a novel kind; but what the judge and jury might say to it, is a matter which I leave to the speculation of those who possess legal acumen."

NADAR (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) (French, 1820-1910)

Catacombs of Paris, “Pile of Skulls,” Crypt no 5, 1862

Albumen print

20.5 x 15.9 cm

Ernest Lamé-Fleury, the engineer responsible for the catacombs, invited Nadar in 1861 to document the transfer and arrangement of bones from the old Parisian cemeteries to abandoned underground quarries. Nadar was given exclusive access to the catacombs and a staff. In return, Nadar paid for the cost of the work and made official gifts of several albums of the photographs.

Among the most striking images obtained using the then new technology and the first to be made underground, this series of photographs is scarce on the market and is among the rarest of Nadar's work.

NADAR (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) (French, 1820-1910)

Sewers of Paris, “Part of the gallery converted into a wagon garage,” 1865

Albumen print

25.0 x 19.1 cm

The modernization of the Paris sewers began in 1855 under the direction of Eugène Belgrand, chief engineer in charge of municipal services, as part of Haussman's urbanization of the city. Nadar's pioneering underground photography, of which the sewer series is an important early example, presented unique challenges requiring the use of artificial lighting and flash photography.

Anna Atkins (English, 1799-1871)

"Lygodion-Volubile," circa 1851-1854

Cyanotype photogram

34.4 x 24.6 cm mounted on 48.2 x 37.4 cm paper

After Anna Atkins, one of the earliest women photographers, produced British Algae, the first published book printed and illustrated with photography, she turned her love of the photogram toward the production of images for sheer visual pleasure. Her cyanotypes of the 1850s are striking precursors of the expressive photography of twentieth-century and contemporary artists. Fellow botanists frequently gave Atkins specimens from their travels.

Duchenne de Boulogne and Adrien Tournachon (French, 1806-1875 & 1825-1903)

Portrait of the old man in profile, 1862, negative, circa 1856

Albumen print from a glass negative

22.1 x 16.5 cm oval on 22.8 x 17.5 cm paper

A pioneering neurologist and physiologist, Duchenne de Boulogne was the first scientist to explain that facial expressions were connected to human emotions. He demonstrated this by using electrical probes to trigger discrete muscle contractions and recording these in photographs by Adrien Tournachon. Duchenne believed the human face was a kind of map, the features of which could be codified into universal taxonomies of mental states and was convinced that it was through a reading of facial expressions alone which could reveal an accurate rendering of the soul's emotions. These notions Duchenne sought conclusively and scientifically to chart by his experiments and photography. Duchenne was certain that the "truth" of his experiments could only be effectively rendered by photography, the subject's expressions being too fleeting to be drawn or painted. "Only photography," Duchenne wrote, "as truthful as a mirror, could attain such desirable perfection." He worked with the talented young photographer Adrien Tournachon, the brother of Felix Nadar, in order to document his experiments. Their results of are illustrated in Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine, the first publication on the expression of human emotions to be illustrated with photographs, a milestone at the intersection of art and science.

Duchenne's primary subject was this old, thin-faced and toothless man whose features lent themselves to the sometimes dramatic, even disturbing, expressions documented in Tournachon's photographs.

Henri Le Secq (French, 1818-1882)

Angel with sundial, Chartres Cathedral, 1852

Coated salt print from a paper negative

32.9 x 24.1 cm

In 1853, the French literary figure, Henri de Lacretelle, wrote in La Lumière, “We are grateful to Mr. Le Secq for having further refined the process of reproduction. The illusion of reality is so strong that we are tempted to touch these prints.This is not paper, this is stone. It is as if Chartres Cathedral has let Mr. Le Secq steal all its marvels.”

Le Secq learned the paper negative process from Gustave Le Gray. In 1852, the Commission des Monuments Historiques appointed Le Secq to document Notre Dame of Chartres because they were so pleased with his photographs that “reconstructed stone by stone the cathedrals of Strasbourg and Reims.” A delicate exterior detail is recorded in this rare original salt print paired with a photolithograph proof.

Henri Le Secq (French, 1818-1882)

Angel with sundial, Chartres Cathedral, 1852

Photolithograph proof on chine collé

23.3 x 17.3 cm plate on 45.0 x 31.8 cm paper

Sold as a pair with the salt print

Charles-Marie-Isidore Choiselat and Stanislaus Ratel (French, 1815-1858 & 1824-1904)

Façade du séminaire, place Saint-Sulpice, Paris, circa 1843-1845

Daguerreian engraving on chine collé

12.7 x 16.6 cm on 13.8 x 17.3 cm plate

In the first decade of photography the majority of daguerreotypes were portraits, as the complicated procedures were best carried out in the controlled conditions of the studio. A few intrepid travelers, Choiselat and Ratel among them, carried daguerreotype equipment with them and made dazzling records of churches, castles, landscapes, classical ruins and more. The works by this pair were mostly made in Paris, the area around Grenoble, and in the south of France.

Hippolyte Fizeau was a French physicist who became fascinated with the potential reproducibility of daguerreotype photography soon after it was announced in 1839. He lived near Saint-Sulpice; Choiselat and Ratel were his neighbors. Fizeau’s experiments with photomechanical printing focused on adapting the traditional etching process to the daguerreotype plate in an effort to reproduce the image. In 1841-1842 Fizeau developed a process for etching daguerreotypes by converting the silvered daguerreotype plate into an intaglio printing plate and printing the duplicated image on paper. Choiselat and Ratel immediately began using this process in the Saint-Supice neighborhood, and improved it so much that their work was rewarded in 1843 by the Société d'Encouragement pour l'industrie. For the first time an original daguerreotype could be reproduced on paper, bringing the otherwise rare camera image to wider audiences.