A work made of thirteen pages of text on paper (approximately 6500 words) without illustrations, published by r. & j.e. taylor, london, 1839.

Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing, or the Process by which Natural Objects May Be Made to Delineate Themselves without the Aid of the Artist's Pencil

William Henry Fox Talbot · Read before the Royal Society, January 31, 1839

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Palette

Chalk
80% of the image
White & cream · text contrast 16.0:1

Bone white
12% of the image
White & cream · text contrast 14.3:1

Oyster
3% of the image
White & cream · text contrast 13.1:1

Pearl grey
2% of the image
White & cream · text contrast 13.1:1

Silver
1% of the image
Grey · text contrast 9.0:1

Pale stone
1% of the image
Grey · text contrast 11.3:1

Colours measured by this site from the museum image (k-means in CIELAB). Names are the nearest in our own list and describe how the colour looks, not the pigment. Text on each chip uses whichever of black or white contrasts more (WCAG ratio shown). How

Details

Artist: William Henry Fox Talbot
English, 1800–1877
Date: Read before the Royal Society, January 31, 1839
Type: Photograph
Medium: Thirteen pages of text on paper (approximately 6500 words) without illustrations, published by R. & J.E. Taylor, London, 1839
Size: 23.2 × 30 cm (9 3/16 × 11 13/16 in.)
Place: England
Period: 19th century
Main colour: White & cream · lightness 92, colourfulness 6

Art Institute of Chicago, Edward E. Ayer Endowment in memory of Charles L. Hutchinson. Museum record. Public domain: the museum's is_public_domain field read true when we last checked (2026-10-25); image released under CC0. Licence rules