1110
produced in the image of bringing the Camera Obscura
nearer to the statue or removing it further off, it becomes
evident how very great a number of different effects may
be obtained from a single specimen of sculpture.
In fact, sculpture featured prominently in Talbot’s own
repertoire almost from the inception of photography. In
a memorandum of March 1840 he placed sculpture fi rst
among ten divisions by which he classifi ed photogenic
drawings, and notes of photographs he took in 1840
establish that many of those depicted sculpture. The
Patroclus appears several times, and an Apollo, a Venus,
an Eve, and four Sabines are also listed. In fact, more
than a dozen negatives depicting a miniature version of
Giovanni da Bologna’s Rape of the Sabine Woman are
known. Although Talbot photographed the Patroclus in
the south gallery of Lacock Abbey, it was often the case
that the sculptural subjects would be carried outside to
be photographed in the grounds of the abbey, and in
some instances it is apparent that the object is standing
on grass. It is noteworthy, therefore, that Diogenes, a
sculpture in the entrance hall of the Abbey, was one of
the fi rst subjects Talbot photographed after discovering
the latent image. It is also signifi cant that a small-scale
replica of Antonio Canova’s The Three Graces is the sub-
ject of a photograph that is being made in the well known
panorama of Talbot’s Printing Works at Reading.
Photographs of sculpture likewise appear in all
Talbot’s photographically illustrated books. The fi rst of
these, the Record of the Death Bed of C. M. W., has as
its frontispiece a plate depicting a marble bust of the de-
ceased. The Patroclus is illustrated twice in The Pencil of
Nature, fi rst as plate V and again as plate XVII. Plate six
in Sun Pictures in Scotland is a photograph of a sculpted
effi gy of Maida, Sir Walter Scott’s favourite dog. The
volume of Talbotype Illustrations that was published to
accompany copies of Sir William Stirling’s Annals of the
Artists of Spain contains several photographs depicting
works of sculpture.
Sculpture was also among the fi rst subjects treated in
the earliest history of photography in France. In 1838
and 1839 Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre photographed
still-life compositions that included statuettes and
reliefs. One well-known daguerreotype representing
a collection of shells and fossils is effectively a miscel-
lany of sculptural objects. Sculpture was the principal
category of subject matter in the body of work made
by Hippolyte Bayard in 1839 and 1840. Photographs
mounted in an album preserved in the Société française
de photographie in Paris, for instance, show that he
photographed some forty different plaster casts in this
formative period. Bayard continued to photograph ar-
rangements of sculpture during the 1840s and 1850s.
Among these pictures is one beautiful composition
in which fi ve different casts form a fi gurative garland
around a replica of the renowned Venus de Milo.
Bayard, Daguerre, and Talbot evidently recognised
and exploited the fact that plaster casts, because of their
whiteness and stability, provided ideal practical models
for photography. However, Talbot’s interest in the Patro-
clus, the Sabines, and the Three Graces may also have
been stimulated by a wish to explore the possibility of
depicting expression and movement. The Patroclus is
an exceptionally animated sculpture, one that appears
physically and spiritually alive. Giambologna’s sculp-
tural group, described in John Murray’s Handbook of
1847 as “wonderful for its expression and its energy of
action,” neverthelesss stands patiently still for Talbot,
enabling him to capture its violent torsion and turbulent
energy. Similar points might be made with respect to
Charles Nègre’s renowned photograph of 1859 depicting
the sculptural group Boreas and Orythia in the Tuileries
Gardens in Paris.
David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson occasion-
ally introduced works of sculpture into their portraits
and subject pictures. In these portraits the sculpture
alludes to the nature of the sitter, much as books do in
Hill and Adamson’s portraits of churchmen, and in this
respect the sculpture serves as do the coins medallions,
and statuettes that appear in Renaissance portraits by
Bronzino, Titian, and others. A calotype of Elizabeth
Rigby, for instance, portrays her with a plaster cast of a
bronze by Pierre Philippe Thomire depicting two cupids
fi ghting over a heart. This group is clearly appropriate
to a portrait in which the sitter is depicted in a mood of
romantic reverie. A colossal head entitled The Last of the
Romans serves straightforwardly as an ‘occupational’
attribute in Hill and Adamson’s portrait of John Stevens,
the sculptor responsible for this work. This head func-
tions more allusively in The Morning After‘He Greatly
Daring Dined,’ a composition that is perhaps a lightly
moralising sermon on the effects of intemperance.
Transporting the sculpture to Rock House must in itself
have been a considerable challenge. In a more serious
vein, the sculptural tombs in Greyfriars Churchyard
provide settings for compositions by Hill and Adamson
that are in effect meditations on mortality.
In the spring of 1846 the Reverend Calvert Richard
Jones made two negatives in Florence from Giovanni
da Bologna’s Rape of the Sabine Woman. These stud-
ies recall Talbot’s earlier efforts to record his miniature
Sabines and serve also a form of homage to Talbot.
However, Calvert Jones’s pictures of Giambologna’s
sculpture and a precisely contemporaneous photograph
of Baccio Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus are also
instances of the employment of photography to docu-
ment works of art for touristic purposes. Such images
enabled the traveller—like Napoleon—to carry off
‘trophies’ of travel. Indeed, the fi rst catalogue produced
by the Fratelli Alinari consists entirely of architectural
views and photographs of sculpture. Such photographs