GEORGE BAXTER

Evening Star, Issue 20059, 27 December 1928, Page 1

GEORGE BAXTER

PIOHEER COLOUR PRINTER In the roar and bustle of London life a minor celebration went unnoticed in a flood of more important events (says the London correspondent of -the Sydney 1 Morning Herald ’). Yet to those interested in colour printing—and surely that means everyone who buys or reads a modern magazine—the- function marked a .slight recognition of a pioneer’s work. The event was the unveiling of a memorial tablet on a house in Northampton Square in which for 10 years Jived George .Baxter, father ol colour printing. Baxter is intimately linked with Sydney through his son George, who eondue tod a picture business in one of the Sydney arcades.. Some of the medals and important rblies connected with George Baxter, sen., have "been brought hack to London during recent years from Sydney and other parts of Australia. Tlie.se included a key drawing to a large and important picture of the coronation of Queen Victoria, having on it nearly 200 names of persons written in pencil by Baxter, who was given special permission to attend the coronation in order to make the sketch. This key drawing was found in Tasmania, and its discovery was regarded as important, because sonic ol the 200 figures in the completed picture had not previously been known. Baxter invented and patented a method ol printing in oil colours in 1805. His process, though now obscure, was in effect a .species of chiaroscuro work, with (he difference that Die first plate or block was fully engraved, and the subsequent blocks were used for the purpose of introducing the various colours. Expert opinion to-day ranks him as one. of the chief creative men of the nineteenth century. His colour sense was most delicate, and lie was particularly successful in reproducing gradations of llesh Lints. He painted pictures himself and exhibited in the Royal Academy. lint his greatest .success and popularity came with the production of his colour prints. In the Fine Art Court of 1851. Exhibition he had sixty examples of these prints, which were to be found in the palaces of royalty and the humble homes of cottagers alike. In making some of these pictures Baxter had to give more than two dozen colour impressions or printings from separate blocks, and with each block it was possible to make errors i;. “registering” and in depth of colour. He may be said to have painted pictures with oil colours and blocks much as other artists used oil colour,s and brushes. He did not rely on placing one colour upon another to obtain intermediate effects, because each colour gave its own paticnlar subtle effect. He mixed his own colours, which were from earths and vegetable matter. Baxter’s days, l were before the time'of coal trfr colours. Baxter’s prints number about 400, though if minute variations resulting from the irregular or partial manipulation of the successive blocks necessary to form a perfect picture arc taken into account they total several thousands. Baxter, the son of a printer, was born in 1801 and died in 1807.