Winter Trees Reflected in a Pond

1841–42

Winter Trees Reflected in a Pond, 1841–42. William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800–1877). Salted paper print from calotype negative; image: 16.4 x 19.1 cm (6 7/16 x 7 1/2 in.); paper: 19.8 x 24.8 cm (7 13/16 x 9 3/4 in.); matted: 40.6 x 50.8 cm (16 x 20 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 2006.4 Talbot captured tree branches flawlessly mirrored on the glassy surface of the pond at his family seat, the 13th-century Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire. A longer exposure, or a lusher season, would have risked a blurred image. The result was a radically abstract composition for its time—a starkly beautiful landscape, as expressive and personal as any painting. Talbot made this image just a few years after he invented the photograph on paper.