Cleveland Museum of Art

Winter Trees Reflected in a Pond

William Henry Fox Talbot

Date

1841–42

Medium

salted paper print from calotype negative

Culture

England, 19th century

Department

Photography

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Talbot captured tree branches flawlessly mirrored on the glassy surface of the pond at his family seat, the 13th-century Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire. A longer exposure, or a lusher season, would have risked a blurred image. The result was a radically abstract composition for its time—a starkly beautiful landscape, as expressive and personal as any painting. Talbot made this image just a few years after he invented the photograph on paper.

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