William Henry Fox Talbot
Nelson's Column under Construction, Trafalgar Square, London

CultureBritish
Titles
  • Nelson's Column under Construction, Trafalgar Square, London
DateApril 1844
PlaceLondon, England
MediumSalted paper print from paper negative
DimensionsImage: 6 11/16 × 8 5/16 in. (17 × 21.1 cm)
Sheet: 7 5/16 × 8 13/16 in. (18.6 × 22.4 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the Brown Foundation Accessions Endowment Fund, The Manfred Heiting Collection
Object number2004.691
Non exposé

Explore Further

Department
Photography
Object Type
Description

In 1839, at nearly the same moment that Daguerre showed his invention, the Victorian polymath Henry Talbot announced a wholly different photographic process. Talbot’s was as yet inferior to the daguerreotype, but it would provide the path for nearly all subsequent photography until the digital age. Unlike daguerreotypes, each of which is one-of-a-kind, Talbot’s process was one of multiples: with materials and procedures that were relatively simple and inexpensive, Talbot could print numerous positive photographs from a single negative exposed in the camera.


In this image, made barely five years into the history of photography, Talbot found a daring composition and a compelling intersection of the religious and secular, the historic and present day. His photograph shows the unfinished base and part of the shaft of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, with the early-18th-century church of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields in the background. Curiously—and fortunately—Talbot chose not to show the entire column with its bronze capital and seventeen-foot-high stone statue of Nelson in a vertical format or from a more distant vantage point; instead he framed a more interesting composition in which the massive base of the column—not yet adorned with its bronze reliefs—dominates the foreground and the steeple of Saint Martin’s touches the top edge of the picture.


ProvenanceEx-collection Lacock Abbey; Hans P. Kraus, Jr., Inc., Manfred Heiting, May 24, 1990; MFAH, 2004.
Exhibition History"Ewan Gibbs: Arlington National Cemetery," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 11 November, 2012 - 10 February, 2013.

“History of Photography I: Selections from the Museum's Collection,” The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, November 1, 2014–February 22, 2015.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Marked in pencil, verso, lower left corner: "X2473"; lower right corner in ink: "LA309"
There is no evident signature.
Catalogue raisonnéSC3662

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

If you have questions about this work of art or the MFAH Online Collection please contact us.

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