[Tree]

Using William Henry Fox Talbot's calotype process (a photographic process where a negative is created first), one could make multiple prints from a single negative. This soon allowed for the potential of editions of photographs. Reverend Calvert Richard Jones (89.XM.75.1-.2, 84.XP.726.71, 84.XM.1002.17, and 85.XM.150.18) exposed more than three hundred paper negatives that he hoped could be used for this purpose; however Talbot's calotypes were unstable, and it was in France that the potential for uniform editions of photographs was first realized. Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Evrard created an establishment at Lille, France, similar to Talbot's workshop in Reading England, where the all-too-fugitive prints bound into The Pencil of Nature had been made (84.XZ.571). The French improvements to Talbot's calotype must surely have been motivated by Blanquart-Evrard's desire to facilitate the presentation of his own photographs. His work consisted of family portraits in the manner of Hill and Adamson and landscapes such as this study of a tree which is closely related in motif to works by Barbizon School artist Charles Marville (84.XM.505.20)

Adapted from Weston Naef, The J. Paul Getty Museum Handbook of the Photographs Collection (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995), 28. © 1995 The J. Paul Getty Museum.