The Fruit Sellers
William Henry Fox Talbot
British, 1800–1877
Calvert Richard Jones
British, 1802–1877
1845
A salted paper print made from William Henry Fox Talbot’s calotype negative that stages a small group of fruit sellers in a garden, showing Talbot’s effort to use photography to record everyday life with a painterly sensibility.
It reads like a soft‑focus genre painting—figures posed as a small tableau against a dark, leafy wall, bathed in diffused light with gentle midtones and slightly blurred edges that emphasize mood over sharp detail.
This 1845 print illustrates Talbot’s pioneering negative–positive method, which made reproducible photographic images possible and helped establish photography as both a documentary medium and an artistic language.
Medium
Salted paper print from a calotype
Dimensions
6 3/4 × 8 5/16" (17.2 × 21.2 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Anne Ehrenkranz in honor of John Szarkowski
Accession
104.1992
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
