Architect: Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Brunel’s Camera Lucida: A Closer Look

Brunel’s Camera Lucida: A Closer Look

Pablo Garcia

A camera lucida is a 19th-century drawing aid. When you look into the eyepiece, you see a ghost image of your subject overlaid onto your paper. Since you can see your hand holding your pencil with your subject superimposed, you can trace directly from real life. Invented in 1807, before… Read More

DMJ – Brunel’s Camera Lucida

DMJ – Brunel’s Camera Lucida

Philip Steadman

In the Drawing Matter collection there is a camera lucida that belonged to Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859) (Figs 1–4,6).[1] The camera lucida is an instrument for drawing from life, patented in 1806 by the versatile English chemist and physicist William Hyde Wollaston (1766–1828).[2] The term camera lucida (‘well-lit room’) is… Read More

Barthélemy Enfantin

Barthélemy Enfantin

Helen Thomas

This strange, flat drawing in watercolour, ink and pencil comprises a sheet of studies thought to be made by French economist and political theorist Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin in 1849. It depicts ideas for the organisation of a military complex, a cité militaire, possibly with Algeria in mind as a location. Enfantin published… Read More