William Henry Fox Talbot MP (1800-1877)
Anna Katrina Zinkeisen (Kilcreggan 1901 - 1976)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1951
Materials
oil on canvas
Measurements
1270 x 1016 mm (50 x 40 in)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Lacock, Wiltshire
NT 996349
Caption
This portrait was possibly copied from a photograph, and shows Fox Talbot holding photographic apparatus, with Lacock in the background. As a pioneer of photography, Fox Talbot is perhaps the most renowned owner of Lacock. Whilst on honeymoon at Lake Como, in Italy, he was frustrated at his own artistic inability to capture the surroundings. From this experience his experimentation with photography began. Unfortunately, however, the Frenchman, Louis Daguerre, was the first to make public his own photographic images. Fox Talbot was something of a ‘universal man’, and was also a classicist, geologist, mathematician, physicist, botanist and astronomer. He was the son of William Davenport Talbot (1764 – 1800) and Elizabeth Fox-Strangways, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Ilchester, and grandfather of Matilda Talbot who presented Lacock to the National Trust. The artist worked for Wedgwood as a ceramics designer, was a mural painter, and specialised in clinical and pathological drawings.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, William Henry Fox Talbot MP (1800-1877), by Anna Katrina Zinkeisen (Kilcreggan 1901 - 1976), 1951. William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), inventor of modern photography. This portrait is painted from the photograph in the South Gallery, which is a copy of a Daguerrotype.
Provenance
commissioned from the artist by the National Trust
Credit line
Lacock Abbey (National Trust)
Makers and roles
Anna Katrina Zinkeisen (Kilcreggan 1901 - 1976) , artist