[Nicolaas Henneman, Holding up a Print in an Album]

Why this print by William Henry Fox Talbot was cut in half is a complete mystery. The negative used to make it, still whole and in a private collection, shows another man sitting across the table examining the picture that Nicolaas Henneman, Talbot’s former valet turned photography assistant, is displaying (unfortunately, not enough detail is preserved to identify it). Although most likely a page from an album, it could very well be a plate for a bound copy of The Pencil of Nature, Talbot’s 1844-46 illustrated treatise on photography.

By late 1843 Henneman had gained so much confidence in the new art that he left Talbot’s employ in order to start the world’s first photographic printing establishment. It was at this business, located in the active commercial town of Reading, about midway between Lacock and London, that he began to turn out editions of photographic prints, including the plates for The Pencil of Nature, and Sun Pictures in Scotland (1845), as well as many loose images. Some of these were purchased by Talbot himself to distribute to various people; others were sold through a network of printsellers, Here, Henneman was proudly showing off what he could produce. (For another image of Henneman, see 85.XM.150.63)

Larry Schaaf, William Henry Fox Talbot, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2002), 66. ©2002 J. Paul Getty Trust.