Talbot, Constance: Woman at forefront of photography

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Many people with an interest in photography will now that its founding father was Henry Fox Talbot. Vivienne Smith explores the less well recorded assistance of his Markeaton-born wife, Constance.

A very early photographic image of Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, taken by its owner and the founder of modern photography Henry Fox Talbot

Constance Talbot photographed in 1860

An early photograph of Henry Fox Talbot taken in the 1840s. Talbot, who was married to Constance Mundy of Markeaton Hall, was the founder of modern photography

This faded image of Constance Talbot is the earliest confirmed photographic portrait on paper. It was taken in October 1840

A well-known photograph taken by the father of modern photography Henry Fox Talbot called “The Ladder”

The home-made wooden camera with which Henry Fox Talbot took some of the world’s first photographs

Constance Talbot and her daughters photographed in 1842

NOT without good reason is Henry Fox Talbot known as the father of modern photography. The process he first devised, 170 years ago, remained the basic principle of all photography right up to the recent advent of the digital camera.

Yet, perhaps a little of the credit for his breakthrough should actually go to his wife.

Derbyshire born and bred, Constance Talbot helped her husband develop some of his early photographs and is herself recognised as the world’s first female photographer.

Born in 1811, Constance was the youngest of six children of Derbyshire MP Francis Mundy and his wife, Sarah.

The family lived at Markeaton Hall.

The Mundys were particularly artistic and Constance herself became an accomplished watercolour painter. She was also a keen amateur botanist.

Her first real contact with Henry Fox Talbot, of Lacock Abbey, in Wiltshire, came in 1830, when her only brother, William, married Talbot’s cousin, Harriet Frampton.

Two years later, in the autumn of 1832, while on a tour of Derbyshire and Yorkshire, Henry spent some time at Markeaton Hall as a guest of the family.

Some 11 years older than Constance, Henry found the Mundys’ youngest daughter utterly charming. A love of botany was just one of the many interests he shared with the pretty 21-year-old.

And he found her cheerful nature the perfect foil to his own somewhat brooding temperament.

The couple’s courtship was brief, and they tied the knot in London, on December 20 of that same year.

Unfortunately, a proper honeymoon was out of the question at the time as Henry had just been elected MP for Chippenham.

However, he made up for it the following year by taking Constance on an extended wedding trip that lasted several months.

The couple left for the Continent in June 1833 and spent much of their time in northern Italy.

That October, by the shores of Lake Como, came the inspiration that was to make Henry Fox Talbot’s name.

Using a camera lucida (basically, a four-sided prism used as an optical aid to drawing), he attempted a sketch of the view.

But, to his great embarrassment, the end result was nothing like as accomplished as the picture his wife produced of the same scene.

Compared to her efforts, he found his “faithless pencil had left traces on the paper melancholy to behold”.

Completely mortified, Henry decided to search for another way of imprinting such images on paper. Constance’s superior skills as an artist thus helped to act as a catalyst for his ground-breaking invention.

Henry had no means of carrying out experiments while on holiday. But, on returning to Lacock Abbey, he began to follow up his ideas.

His first experiments, conducted in the spring of 1834, involved soaking sheets of writing paper in solutions of table salt and silver nitrate to make them sensitive to light.

By placing an object, such as a feather or leaf, on this paper, and by exposing it to sunlight, he succeeded in creating a white silhouetted image of the item on a black background.

Before long, the technique was sufficiently perfected for him to send samples to friends and family.

This included Constance’s sister, Laura, at Markeaton Hall. His efforts to make these first images permanent proved unsuccessful, as Laura Mundy herself discovered.

In fact, the letter she sent to her brother-in-law about them on December 12, 1834, is the earliest surviving reference to Henry’s photographic work.

She wrote: “Thank you very much for sending me such beautiful shadows...I had grieved over the gradual disappearance of those you gave me in the summer and am delighted to have these to supply their place in my book.”

Henry next used his special light-sensitive paper to record objects as seen through a camera obscura.

Popular with artists, this device was essentially a box fitted with lenses and mirrors which projected the image of a view onto paper so that it could be traced.

By the summer of 1835, Henry was taking his first pictures, which came out as negative images.

The oldest surviving negative is that of a latticed window at Lacock Abbey, taken by Henry that August. The cameras he used were little home-made wooden boxes.

Depending on the light, exposures could take up to an hour, so they were often left all over the house, leading Constance to nickname them mousetraps.

It was not long before Henry hit on the idea of using his paper negatives to create a positive print, a process which would continue in use right up to modern times.

The fixed negative was pressed onto sensitised paper, clamped between glass and left in the sunlight. By this means, any number of copies could be made from the same negative.

Inexplicably, Henry did not go public with his remarkable discovery.

Over the next three years, the only people who knew anything about it were his wife and their immediate circle of family and friends.

His thoughts became diverted to other scientific projects. Meanwhile, he and Constance started to raise a family.

Their first child, Ela Theresa, was born in 1835, followed by Rosamund Constance two years later. Then, early in January 1839, came the bombshell. Frenchman Louis Daguerre announced the discovery of the daguerreotype process for taking photographs.

By failing to publish his research, the man from Lacock Abbey now risked losing his claim to be the first in the field.

The nature of his photographic process was finally revealed to the world in a paper to the Royal Society on February 21.

Just four days later, Constance gave birth to their third child, Matilda Caroline.

The suggestion was even made that the baby should be christened Photogena in honour of her father’s great invention!

Daguerre did not publish details of his technique until some months later, but it proved to be quite different to Henry’s method.

The photographs were produced on specially-treated copper plates and, being one-off images, could not be reproduced.

The Lacock man’s negative-positive system would be the one to stand the test of time.

Determined to perfect his own method, Henry took up his research with renewed enthusiasm.

And Constance, who had always been highly supportive of his efforts, now became actively involved in the work.

Unlike her husband, she did not have the benefit of a university education. And, as well as being the mother of three young children, she had a large house to run and servants to organise.

Nevertheless, in the spring of 1839, the 28-year-old happily took up the challenge of mastering what was then a complicated and messy operation of processing negatives.

She did so at the request of her husband, who was frequently away in London on business. At the time, Constance was one of the few people who knew how to carry out the work.

And, as well as developing negatives, she became the first woman actually to take photographs.

Understandably, her earliest efforts did not always come out right.

For instance, on May 21, 1839, she wrote from Lacock Abbey to her husband: “I have been labouring hard at the photographs without much success for, though some of the pictures were pretty good, I spoilt them afterwards with the iodine.

“I ought to have begun my study of the art while you were at hand to assist me in my difficulties.

“As it is, however, I shall have gained experience by my successful attempts and, therefore, not wholly wasted my time and strength.”

That the woman from Markeaton took some of the world’s first photographs is not in question. But, unfortunately, there are no known surviving examples of her work.

However, this was not her sole claim to fame, for Constance Talbot was also probably the first person to have her portrait done as a photograph.

On October 10, 1840, Henry Talbot took the earliest confirmed photographic portrait on paper in the world, with his wife as the subject.

People treasure photos of their loved ones even today. So just imagine what a thrill it must have been to produce such an image more than a century and a half ago. Fortunately for Constance, just a few weeks earlier, her husband had discovered a way of dramatically reducing the exposure time by adjusting the chemicals he used.

As a result, she only had to sit perfectly still for 30 seconds while the photograph was taken, instead of half an hour or more.

Having perfected this method, Talbot went on to take many such pictures, especially of his children.

His crowning work as a photographer was The Pencil of Nature. Published just a dozen years after his life-changing honeymoon, it was the first book to be illustrated with photos.

As a founding father of photography, Henry Fox Talbot earned a place in history. Yet, surely his wife merits a passing mention too?

Despite a noticeable lack of scientific training, Constance gamely helped her husband in those pioneering days.

At the very least, the squire’s daughter from Derby deserves recognition as the first woman ever to take photographs.

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