Getty Museum

Articles of China

Date

1844

Medium

Salted paper print

Culture

British

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

> In his 1844-46 treatise on photography, *The Pencil of Nature,* William Henry Fox Talbot observed that “the whole cabinet of a Virtuoso” might be photographed, “the more strange and fantastic the forms . . . , the more advantage in having their pictures given instead of their descriptions. . . . However numerous the objects—however complicated the arrangement—the Camera depicts them all at once.” > > Outside Lacock Abbey, temporary shelves, draped in black velvet, supported arrangements of objects relocated from indoors, not unlike a traditional museum exhibit. Talbot created at least two variations on this theme. This image and [*Articles of Glass on Three Shelves*](http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/46954/william-henry-fox-talbot-articles-of-glass-on-three-shelves-british-before-june-1844/) were published in [*The Pencil of Nature. The Milliner’s Window*](http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/63310/william-henry-fox-talbot-the-milliner's-window-british-before-january-1844/) shows a display of caps and bonnets on the same shelves. > > Larry Schaaf, *William Henry Fox Talbot*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2002), 78. ©2002 J. Paul Getty Trust.

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