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Unidentified photographer/creator
Dictionary entry: Background
1858
Book page
Google Books
LL/34635
In "A Dictionary of Photography" by Thomas Sutton, B.A. (London: Sampson Low, Son, and Co., 1858), p.29
Background. In taking portraits, it is generally necessary to place a background behind the sitter. This is made by stretching a sheet of canvas, previously wetted, on a deal frame, and painting it of an appropriate colour in distemper. The canvas should be in one piece, and not less than eight feet square. When nailed on to the edges of the frame in a wet state, it contracts on drying, and becomes perfectly flat and tight. The water in which it is wetted should be strongly sized: it will then be ready for painting on, when dry. Oil colour is objectionable, from its imparting a glaze to the surface. The colour should be perfectly dead and opaque, and of a neutral tint, made by mixing black, white, and red, in the proportion which is thought most desirable. As a general rule, the background should be a shade darker than the middle tints of the picture, but in vignetted portraits it may be a shade lighter. A shaded background is a great improvement to a portrait when judiciously done, but it involves so much extra trouble, that few professional portraitists have attempted it, as a rule. Painted backgrounds in which peeps of distant scenery, bits of balustrade, columns, curtains, &c., are introduced, are decidedly in bad taste. A very light background is also in general an offence against good taste, particularly when the figure is very dark, and the outline hard and sharp.
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