Plans had been made some time previously to visit Roger Watson, a valued member of the Talbot Project’s Advisory Board and curator at the Fox Talbot Museum at Lacock Abbey. Or, as I prefer to call it, a happy confluence. Was he considering a photographic reference for a catalogue of his family’s art collection? Or was there something special about this particular painting that motivated him to take the risk? We will probably never know, but only days after Jaanika had added the last image to its record for our ‘Portrait of a Woman’ we had a significant unexpected development. It is a complex task with specific technical issues to overcome, but Talbot clearly felt this painting was important enough to risk taking it outdoors to photograph. To photograph an original artwork in direct sunlight isn’t as straightforward as you might think. He probably specified the Cloister wall as a good location, both sunny and sheltered from wind for the shoot, but to place the painting directly on the ground seemed risky to say the least, if not a tad disrespectful. If you zoom in on the image using the website’s ‘Image Viewer’ function you will see blades of grass overlapping the painting’s frame! Perhaps Henry instructed staff to remove the painting from its usual hanging place and take it out of doors so that it could photographed. The name of the sitter and attribution of the oil painting remained a mystery, for the time being.Įvery time I looked at Talbot’s photograph of the painting I was struck by the sheer audacity Talbot had shown by placing it directly on the ground. Later, I tried to track down our painting online, but it was elusive. The pose, the billowing satins and lace, the ringlets and curls, the unsmiling face set against the dark background setting, all endlessly repeated.
I had to admit they could be hard to tell apart. There we were able to peruse sumptuous portraits of women by both Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) and his near contemporary, Peter Lely (1618-1680). To shore up my sagging reputation I went to that modern wonder, the internet. Dear reader, try saying that out loud to realise how foolish it sounded. I said I couldn’t be certain, but thought the painting looked like a Lely or a Van Dyck.
Together we peered at the computer screen.
Jaanika knows I love trying to put names to the unidentified etchings, engravings, lithographs and occasional oil paintings Talbot turned his camera upon. What, if any, was her relationship to Talbot?
Tobalt audify how to#
I wondered, is that really how to treat a fine Baroque oil painting, never mind a portrait of a lady? We wondered who the woman in the painting might be, and which artist might have been commissioned to paint her. The canvas is framed, but placed directly on the ground while it rests against the Cloister wall so that it could be photographed by Talbot while the sun shone. To my eye it looked very much like a grand seventeenth century Baroque oil painting on canvas. The problem was, we couldn’t be sure as we didn’t know who she was. Our conversation turned to the photograph Talbot had taken of the portrait of a woman, indeed, probably of a lady. It’s a fascinating photograph of a magnificent oil painting showing a portrait of a woman, with an element of startling informality as the painting is nonchalantly propped against an outdoor wall in the sunshine of the Cloister of Lacock Abbey. Last week my colleague, Jaanika, asked me if I had any ideas for a new Talbot blog post and suggested writing about Schaaf number 3710 as she had recently added an image making it one of the records on the project website with all its records complete and fully illustrated with an image.
0 kommentar(er)
