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William Henry Fox Talbot

Articles of China

1843-44
Salted paper print
13.7 × 18.2 cm (5.4 × 7.2 in)

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In the collection of Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago · as of July 2026

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FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

One of the inventors of photography, William Henry Fox Talbot also produced the first commercially published book to feature photographic illustrations. The Pencil of Nature, issued in six volumes between 1844 and 1846, included Articles of China as plate three of the first volume. Talbot used this image to extol the practical virtues of the new art, claiming that “the whole cabinet of a Virtuoso and collector of old China might be depicted on paper in little more time than it would take him to make a written inventory describing it in the usual way.” Moreover, he argued presciently, if a thief should take the treasures, such an image could provide a new kind of evidentiary record in court.

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