[Buckler Fern]

One of William Henry Fox Talbot’s few close friends outside his family was the Scottish journalist and scientist Sir David Brewster. The two men, initially drawn together by mutual interests in light and optics, were truly comfortable with each other in a way that eluded them with most of their colleagues. Brewster was among the first to hear of Talbot’s new art and immediately became one of its strongest supporters. Perhaps with the help and encouragement of his wife or daughter, he compiled what was to become one of the major resources in the early history of photography: the Brewster Album. Now in the Getty Museum’s collection, it brings together the pioneering work of Talbot, Brewster, and his various acquaintances in Scotland, including David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson.

This picture, signed and dated by Talbot in ink on the verso, was one of the first photographs that Brewster ever saw. It is part of a group that Talbot made in a feverish attempt to get examples distributed to important people in 1839 and must have been created on a rare day that year when the sunlight remained strong. The same exact fern specimen was used by Talbot to make at least six negatives; in two of them, obviously produced after this one, a branch dropped off in the handling.

Larry Schaaf, William Henry Fox Talbot, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2002), 24. ©2002 J. Paul Getty Trust.