crayon enlargements (photographic portraits)

Rebecca

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
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Vancouver, B.C., Canada
This is further to Emily's old convex photo post.

The best (probably only) book on this subject is "Forgotten Marriage: The Painted Tintype and the Decorative Frame, 1860-1910" by Stanley Burns. It is a great book - easy to read, with lots of good illustrations and quotes from primary sources.

The book covers all sorts of hand painted photographic processes, but the ones I was interested in are called "crayon enlargements".

"Crayon" in this case is a generic term, encompassing watercolor, pastel, oil paint, chalk, charcoal and other media which were used to embellish the very faint photographic image printed onto paper.

"Enlargement" refers to the enlarged image made possible by solar cameras (aka solar enlargers) patented by David Woodward in 1857. Woodwards design was later refined by Alfonse Liebert. Small format photographs were enlarged (the book isn't clear on this point, but I imagine that a glass negative was made from the original photo and used to make the enlarged print)to standard 14 x 17 or 16 x 20 sizes.

"The photographic image was prepared by making a faint print on a sheet of photographic paper mounted on a thin canvas or linen base". The print was then colored - often using airbrushes.

This was a huge industry.

"'Has it ever struck you that there is really no more stable industry, not to discuss its artistic features, than the making of copied portraits? Just think of it a moment. There are 60,000,000 or so of us here in the United States alone, all sure to die, and most ofus, thank Heaven, reasonably certain to leave some deluded mortal above ground who loves to be reminded of us. Will not the survivor, in nine cases out of ten, whether it can be afforded or not, order at once an 18x22 at the smallest, frame it expensively, and place it on the parlor wall.'

Ells, Cliford, "Photo-Copying", St. Louis and Canadian Photographer, Vol. V!, 1889, p. 111."

So a lot of the portraits are copies of much earlier photographs.

After the industry became well established, it was dominated by large copying companies. Small photographic studios would send the photos to be enlarged to these companies, acting as middlemen. Photographers often had their own "embellishers" on staff, or would contract out the work. The artists who would paint and/or draw over the faint photographic image were often women.

As an aside, many oil portraits from the second half of the 19th cen., that might now be assumed to be freehand, are actually painted over faint photographs.

This book is really fun, and has a lot of information about painted photographic portraits, and their frames.

But, alas, nothing about domed photos and the convex glass, so I am eagerly awaiting to hear what Eric's friends can tell us.

Rebecca
 
Rebecca what a wonderful description of these ubiquitous portraits. And I like the way they are described as "faint." We ended up with someone's unwanted photo (they had bought it for the frame!) so the photo was ours to keep. We taped it down the center and removed the "crayon" from one side. It was amazing how faint that actual photo was in its original state. You can barely make out the features of the face, mostly just the eyes are visible. It's positively creepy.


It is also interesting to see the wide range of talent in the artists who did this work. Some are exquisite, alive with detail, stunning, and some seem to consist mainly of heavy black lapels for the gents and heavy black pleats for the ladies.
 
check out page 30 of "Framing Photography" Vol 6. by Allan R Lamb. Through Columbia Publishing. Available through PPFA bookstore.

It a good reference book on photographic identification, conservation, and framing techniques.
 
Some studios still have "embellishers" on staff, I am one! Even though I now use a computer for most of my work, I have used oils and pastels and dyes in the past. Many of the women I learned from worked for studios before color photography exsisted. I miss the smell of oil paints and the feel of hand coloring a photo. Unfortunately, many of the best black and white fiber based papers used for oil coloring are no longer available.
 
Anne,

That is so neat! Now if I got a family portrait together, and e-mailed it to you, you could make a b&w print and make it all retro and interesting with oil paints??? Hmmm..... :cool:

Rebecca
 
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