Lot 8: - George Wilson Bridges (1788 - 1863) , South West view of the Erechtheum in negative, c. 1848

Calotype negative, extensively inked in the area of the sky. Titled on the reverse of the cover sheet, and with the positions of the various buildings (including the Portico of the Temple of Pandrosus, The Temple of Pandrosus, the Conservatory, and the Portico of the Temple of Minerva Polias) identified in ink on the reverse, and with 'Bridges' discreetly inked. Separated from its cover sheet.

measurements note 16.6 x 21.5 cm (6½ x 8½ in.)

Taylor, Roger, Impressed by Light, Metropolitan Museum of Art et alii, 2007.

The identities of the two Europeans lounging in this view will have to remain hypothetical, but it is more than probable that they are Bridges' fellow travellers to Athens in the late 1840s, Kit Talbot and Calvert Richard Jones, both intimate members of the circle of William Henry Fox Talbot.
George Wilson Bridges famously found it difficult to achieve satisfactory prints from his own excellent negatives and sent them back to England to be printed. He therefore did not see his own results in full until many months after each image was made. It is possible that the inked 'Bridges' on the reverse of several of the sheets in the present group was written there when they arrived to be printed at the Reading Establishment of W.H. Fox Talbot and his manager Nicholas Henneman.