Provenance: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Rubel Collection, purchased 1997 Hans P. Kraus Jr. Rubel Collection (R151) Christie's, South Kensington, June 18, 1981, lot 295 Basset Down House, Wiltshire
This arrangement of chicken feathers if one of the earliest experiments by Nevil Story-Maskelyne who as a teenager home from school during the summer of 1840, saw a demonstration of Talbot's process of photogenic drawing and tried his hand at the new art.
