The
Brighton Talbotype Portrait Gallery at W H Mason's Repository of
Arts, 108 King's Road, Brighton.
The Talbotype - an alternative to the Daguerreotype
in Brighton
In 1839, the same year that Daguerre announced his method of fixing
images on a silvered copper plate, William
Henry Fox Talbot,
an English landowner, scholar and scientist published 'The Art of
Photogenic Drawing', an account of how he had managed to capture
images permanently on paper. Four years earlier, Talbot had produced
tiny photographic views of Lacock Abbey, his home in Wiltshire.
By treating the small pictures with wax, Talbot was able to use
them as negatives and print further copies. Although he had invented
a negative/positive photographic process, Talbot's early pictures
were small, required very long exposure times and lacked the sharpness
of detail and brilliance of the daguerreotype. Talbot continued
his experiments and improved the quality of his photographs by coating
his paper with silver iodide and developing the images with a gallo-nitrate
of silver solution. Talbot patented his new process in February
1841, describing his pictures as 'Calotypes'. Talbot protected his
photographic inventions by filing a number of all-embracing patents.
Under pressure from the Royal Academy and the Royal Society, Talbot
had, in August 1852, relaxed his control over the production of
calotypes, allowing amateurs and artists to use the process,
but he insisted that all professional photographers who wanted to
use his calotype process for taking portraits had to purchase a
licence, which usually involved an annual fee of between £100
and £150.
In 1852, Thomas Henry Hennah, a young London artist, together
with William Henry Kent, a photographic artist from the Isle
of Wight, purchased a licence from William Fox Talbot to make portraits
using the calotype process. The photographic prints were called
'Talbotypes' in honour of the inventor. By 1854, Hennah and Kent
had established a Talbotype Portrait Gallery in William Henry
Mason's Repository of Arts at 108 King's Road, Brighton.An
item in the 'Brighton Gazette' of 12th October 1854 indicates that
the Talbotype Gallery specialised in taking portraits of the nobility
and the upper ranks of society. The 'Brighton Gazette' enumerates
"a few of the distinguished persons who have recently honoured
these eminently skilful artists with a sitting", listing the
Duke of Devonshire, Countess Granville, Lord Carnworth, Lady Keats
and several other notable visitors to Brighton. Hennah & Kent
came into direct competition with William Constable who in July
1854 joined forces with another daguerreotype artist, Edward
Collier at 58 Kings Road to form the firm of Constable &
Collier.
Robert Farmer, who made his living mainly from taking daguerreotype
portraits, placed advertisements during November and December of
1853, which drew attention to his "Calotype views of the Pavilion,
The Railway Terminus etc taken by Gustave Le Gray's new waxed paper
process." [Farmer's advertisement would have annoyed William
Fox Talbot who claimed Le Gray's waxed paper process was an infringement
of his patent of 1843.]
Craven's
Locomotive No12 with John Chester Craven,his family and staff at
Lover's Walk,Brighton (May 1858) A talbotype had less detail than
a daguerreotype and the print often had a fuzzy and mottled appearance.
Stephen Grey and William Hall, who established their
General Photographic Institution at 13 St James Street in the summer
of 1854, offered to take portraits "by all the most recent
and improved processes by 'Licence of the Patentees'. Large sized
Talbotype portraits mounted in a gilt frame were offered at 15 shillings
(75p), while daguerreotype portraits were priced from 6 shillings
(30p).
Amateurs and artists who wished to use Talbot's invention could
turn to Lewis Dixey, optician and mathematical instrument
maker of 21 Kings Road, Brighton, who supplied "every description
of photographic apparatus for the Calotype" and iodized paper
for the Talbotype.
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Frederick Scott Archer and the Collodion
Process