[Nicolaas Henneman]

From the Getty Museum record

> In April 1839 William Henry Fox Talbot published in the *Literary Gazette* the prediction that the “most important application of which the new art is susceptible” is perhaps “that of taking portraits from the life with a camera obscura.” He went on to say that “I have not yet accomplished this, although I see no reason to doubt its practicability.” Within eighteen months he had succeeded. Writing to the *Literary Gazette* in February 1841, Talbot reported that he “made trial of it last October; and found that the experiment readily succeeded. Half-a-minute appeared to be sufficient in sunshine, and four or five minutes when a person was seated in the shade, but in the open air. After a few portraits had been made, enough to shew that it could be done without difficulty, the experiments were adjourned to a more favourable season.” That season had just started when this photograph was taken. > > This portrait captures the strength and resolve of Nicolaas Henneman, the Dutch-born and Parisian-trained valet at Lacock Abbey. When photography was made public, he rapidly became Talbot’s most trusted assistant in the new art. Three other portrait negatives of Henneman are almost identical in size and in this very distinctive trimming. One, in the Snite Museum of Notre Dame, Indiana, and another in private collection are also unmarked, but the third, in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., is dated April 15, 1841. All three of these were most certainly made at the same session. [See [1985.74.20](https://talbot.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search/catalog/artifact-9387), [Private Collection](https://talbot.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search/catalog/artifact-10017), and [1995.0206.013](https://talbot.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search/catalog/artifact-4888)]. > > Larry Schaaf, *William Henry Fox Talbot*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2002), 44. ©2002 J. Paul Getty Trust.