The Watercolours that Inspired Developments in Photography
December 1 2020
Picture: Watercolourworld.org
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Times has run an amusing story relating to the artistic jealousy of William Henry Fox Talbot (d.1877). It was while producing watercolours alongside his wife in the 1830s when Talbot decided that his efforts (pictured) were a "melancholic" mess and needed vast improvement.
It was this failure which is said to have inspired his experiments with early cameras. He eventually laid down ground-breaking work in the negative-positive process which became a key element of modern photography.
Lacock Abbey, now owned by the National Trust, have completed digitising over 1,000 watercolours from the Talbot family collection. The results of this brilliant work have been published on Watercolourworld.org, and really are worth having a look through.
