William Henry Fox Talbot
The Bridge of Sighs, St. John's College, Cambridge

CultureBritish
Titles
  • The Bridge of Sighs, St. John's College, Cambridge
Date1845
PlaceCambridge, England
MediumSalted paper print from paper negative
DimensionsImage: 6 7/16 × 8 3/16 in. (16.3 × 20.8 cm)
Sheet: 7 3/16 × 8 7/8 in. (18.3 × 22.5 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by The Brown Foundation, Inc., The Manfred Heiting Collection
Object number2004.689
Non exposé

Explore Further

Department
Photography
Object Type
Description

A graduate of Cambridge University with wide-ranging
interests including chemistry, mathematics, and botany, Egyptology and Assyriology,
philosophy, philology, and art history, Talbot was nonetheless a frustrated artist.
In the late 1830s, he devised a means of making pictures with light and
chemistry alone. The basic principle of his process— creating a camera negative
from which multiple positive images could be printed—remained at the core of
nearly all subsequent photography until the digital age.



Only a decade old in
this photograph, the Bridge of Sighs at St. John’s College is named after the



similarly shaped covered bridge in Venice.




Provenanceex-collection Lacock Abbey; Robert Hershkowitz Ltd., Sussex.

Bought by Manfred Heiting from Robert Hershkowitz Limited, Sussex, on 4/30/1986.
Exhibition History"Wenn Berlin Biarritz wäre . . . ", Museum Folkwang, Essen, 2001;
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Marked in black ink, verso, lower right corner: "LA144"
There is no evident signature.
Watermarked: J WHATMAN 1846
Catalogue raisonnéSC143

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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