SUN PRINTING IN OIL COLORS.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1367, 3 July 1878, Page 3

SUN PRINTING IN OIL COLORS.

[From the “Art Journal,” March, 1878.] During the present generation there has been no discovery that has done more to assist and popularise art than photography, and it still appears to be in its infancy. Much has been said against photography, lithography, and kindred devices, as destroying, and not creating, artists. But is not the primary object of all lovers and teachers of art to disseminate jt, in order to educate and train the eye of the skilled artisan so that he may produce the best and most beautiful forms ? Were it not for ingenious reproductive processes of printing books, multiplying woodcuts and engravings, all the great standard vforks would still have been written upon vellum, and the groat pictures have existed only in cathedrals and the mansions of the nobility. The defect urged against photographs was the unstable nature of the production, but since the carbon process was discovered and perfected by Mr Ppuncy, of Dorchester, even that objection has been withdrawn. Out* attention has been called to some reproductions of ancient and modern oil paintings by a process of sun printing in oil color. They vary in size from a locket miniature to a colossal picture by Rubens. The invention being at present a secret, we cannot publish the different processes each picture undergoes, but we are psurud by the inventor that there is no nitrate of silver. This chemical is the principal ingredient used in photography, and is supposed to ho the main cause of their fading. In the new process no chemical is used other than the ordinary ingredients which constitute the oil color, and there is not one likely to produce a change in color or deterioration by the action of light or time, The productions have been subjected to v.y. of the first chemists, and manent. In the earlier steps had recourse to for the pur- ; •>> i > g or enlarging, but it plays no tm..: .;:>!■ equent processes, although the etail and delicacy of drawing .1 i.’ - 1 ' o* to suppose it had. Copies fi . art by ancient or modern jrpduccd upon wood, stone, : . or any suitable material for , . ■' ses, and could bo used most , ■ the form of panel or cabinet “ have netore us a copy on w>: >H Wapiu Scbaw,” by John 1 7S, ... 'espect like a beautiful sepia o’ •' a ■ d so a specimen on canvas of the si of which perhaps we cannot ve the artist’s opinion, who , ■ t'K nnturc and careful considera- ' )lo and results of your inven- [ ;,n, ; T _ ■’,!■. that your fac-eimilco arc Iho production hitherto seen; I o m f :*vomuch pleasure in ihaiu-et-(bo copies of n>y original ’ ED.” mm specimens of paintings on , Sidney Cooper, George 'r.™ an y portraits, which have 'I truth of the originals. In ' b * e paint is thick and uneven, he ugh pit cm with the palette knife, .vo".: at objectionable smooth) css in chromolithographs uvd • “o('v:y‘, . i ’■ eg almost a mechanical pro■u!"“i'AXO^ l ‘'pies are improved by a few

touches from the artist’s brush, and are thus considerably enhanced in value. Those not in color require no re-touching, no matter how minute and delicate the drawing and chiaroscuro may be, as every touch of the brush is faithfully represented, so as to make them invaluable as entirely .truthful reproductions of the manner of the artists. They are executed in a few days instead of years, as is the case with the best engravings. Mr Bouncy, of Dorchester, who wo have before stated was the first to introduce the permanent photography known as “ the carbon process,” lias gone on steadily working in the same direction for the last twenty years, in the hope of improving the stability of that process. Wishing to introduce color into them, he has succeeded in discovering the method to which we call attention, of producing oil-color photographs. No one who has not seen specimens of paintings reproduced by the process in question can have any adequate idea of the wondrous fidelity of the copy to the original. No human copyist, of whatever skill possessed, could produce a work of such unerring accuracy, a d such perfect fidelity of form and color, light and shade, without variation of tint or tone, or subtlest effect of the original painter’s skill. The manner of the pigment observed in the original is found in the copy. The chromolithographs, the oleograph, marvellous as they are as mechanical productions, present only a general imitation of the picture copied; the common eye knows them to be copies, since they are entirely wanting in individuality and force, while the fac-similes by this process are exactly what the term implies. They are not merely fac-simile of general effects, they are fac similes of actual effect, even more completely than if the copy had been born of the original picture. For purposes of pleasure, or education, or connoisseurship, they are complete. A small gallery *.f such pictures would be as adequate for the promotion of taste or the education in the characteristics of the master, as a gallery of the originals would be. The invention appears to be one of the most marvellous additions to imitative art ever made known.