The Pencil of Nature is the first commercially produced photographically illustrated book (not to be confused with the first photographically illustrated book, by Anna Atkins). The Pencil of Nature, written and photographed by William Henry Fox Talbot, was published in a series of six volumes, referred to as fascicles, between 1844-1846. Each fascicle contains hand-printed photographs and accompanying text. The text serves to explain Talbot’s thoughts behind the production and potential use of each image. Talbot saw many uses for photography, including inventory purposes, replicating printed works, and documenting works of art. The prints in the fascicles were printed by Talbot’s assistant, Nicolaas Henneman at his photography studio in Reading, UK.
William Henry Fox Talbot image credit https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calotipo
Nicolaas Henneman holding a copy of The Pencil of Nature image credit https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaas_Henneman
Unfortunately, The Pencil of Nature did not sell as well, and production of the photographs proved harder than originally anticipated. What was originally supposed to be a series of ten to twelve fascicles with 50 or more photographs, turned into six fascicles with a total of 24 prints. To make matters worse, the photographs contained in the fascicles began to fade only a short time later. Many of you likely learned about The Pencil of Nature in history classes of various sorts. You maybe familiar with this image:
“The Open Door” plate six from The Pencil of Nature. This print is a variant of the print presented in the book. It was removed from it’s backing and remains in better condition than many others. Image credit https://talbot.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search/catalog/artifact-6341
Most may think of the prints within The Pencil of Nature to have roughly the same image density as the photo above. The reality is a bit more shocking. Most of the prints actually look something like this.
This copy remains mounted. Notice the number in the bottom right corner, and the ink line bordering the print. Image credit https://talbot.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search/catalog/artifact-5605
Fading in the prints is not uniform and is widely thought to be caused by environmental factors.
Irregular fading in a print of the Boulevards of Paris. This print is a variant of plate two in The Pencil of Nature. Image credit https://talbot.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search/catalog/artifact-627
The Yale Center for British Art holds four of the six fascicles of The Pencil of Nature. This project focuses on thoroughly analyzing and documenting these four fascicles to understand the photographs inside and their current chemical state. Some of this analysis has already begun, and will be discussed in future posts.
Our hope is that this information may be made available in the future, so that owners of fascicles of The Pencil of Nature may use the study as a baseline to compare their own copies, (assuming of course that they are stable enough to do so). Information collected in this way will help build a clearer picture of the condition of these images, and contribute to our understanding of early photographic processes.
If you’d like to read more about Talbot, The Pencil of Nature, early photography, or just want to look at the many, many photographs made by Talbot and Henneman visit: https://talbot.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/
