This early photograph, long attributed to William Henry Fox Talbot, was possibly made by Nicolaas Henneman, Talbot's valet turned photographic collaborator. Under Talbot's direction, Henneman left Lacock Abbey in 1843. He moved to the town of Reading in order to open and operate the Reading Establishment, the world's first commercial photographic printing operation. It was here that prints for Talbot's "Pencil of Nature" were produced, and the duo began to establish Photography as a leading and novel means of reproduction.

In an 1846 photograph of the Reading Establishment, illustrating the firm's services, Talbot is shown making a portrait, while another technician copies an engraving, and Henneman poses as though in the act of photographing the very same "Three Graces." In December of that year Henneman wrote to Talbot describing his persistent efforts to capture a good negative of the statuette: "I have been trying hard to day to get a good negative of the three graces by the new process but cant get any thing under 2 minutes 20 seconds." Henneman then compares his unsatisfactory results to those "I tried or we tried at Laycock." Whether Henneman eventually succeeded, or whether this photograph is one the two men made together at Lacock, remains unresolved.

This particular calotype is varnished, a period process implemented to preserve the print's tonality, and one discussed in multiple letters between Henneman and Talbot in late 1845. The print, alongside other early photographs on offer, came from a descendant of Robert Murray—an instrument maker and supplier of photographic chemicals who shared an address with Talbot in London, and is noted as having possibly been employed at the Reading Establishment.

In light of of the ambiguous attribution, the photograph represents an important collaboration between Talbot and Henneman, symbolizing the early days of photographic experimentation—a pursuit in which the roles of inventor and maker were seldom cleanly divided.