CEEH Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica

Copied by the Sun
Talbotype Illustrations to the “Annals of the Artists of Spain”
by Sir William Stirling Maxwell

Author

Hilary Macartney and José Manuel Matilla

Characteristics

Catalogue raisonné: 368 pages; 265 color ilustrations; 14.5 x 23 cm; flapped paperback / Facsimile: 144 pages; 66 color ilustrations; 14.5 x 23 cm; hardcover

Publication

English; 2 vols.; jointly published with the Museo Nacional del Prado with the collaboration of National Media Museum, University of Glasgow and the support of Banco Santander; 2106

ISBN

978-84-15245-55-1 (complete work)

Price

86,54

In 1847 William Stirling Maxwell (1818–1878) published the three volumes of his Annals of the Artists of Spain in London. They were followed by a fourth – a limited edition of 50 presentation copies containing illustrations made using the new, experimental photographic technique of Talbotypes (also known as calotypes or sun pictures).

This publication is an “ideal” reconstruction of these reproductions in a facsimile edition of Stirling’s volume, as all the known copies are badly deteriorated due to the action of air and humidity. The work of the two leading specialists responsible for the project, with additional contributions by other major scholars in the field, it contains exhaustive studies on the technique and the art-historical context in which the Talbotypes were produced, along with a catalogue raisonné of the illustrations and a census of the copies in the edition.

Hilary Macartney is Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Glasgow, where she also directs the Stirling Maxwell Research Project. Her doctoral thesis for the Courtauld Institute of Art in London was on Stirling Maxwell’s role in the historiography of Spanish art. Other publications include Spanish Art in Britain and Ireland, 1750-1920: Studies in Reception in Honour of Enriqueta Harris Frankfort (2010), with Nigel Glendinning.

José Manuel Matilla is head of the department of drawings and prints at the Museo del Prado. Among other exhibitions, he has curated Alonso Cano. Dibujos (2001), El Grafoscopio. Un siglo de miradas al Museo del Prado (1819–1920) (2004) and Durero. Obras maestras de la Albertina (2005).