Luminous-Lint - for collectors and connoisseurs of fine photography
HOME  BACK>>> Subscriptions <<< | Testimonials | Login |

HomeContentsVisual indexes > Unidentified photographer/creator

 
  
Standard
  
  
Unidentified photographer/creator 
Photographic Painting of a Maiko 
1890 (ca) 
  
500 x 350mm 
  
Old Japan 
Images and text courtesy of Terry Bennett (Old Japan - www.old-japan.co.uk - EB-30020) 
  
 
LL/9214 
  
Unknown artist, unknown process, on silk(?) and pasted-down on new card, ca. 1890, measures 500 x 350mm, very light foxing and otherwise in excellent condition. Hand colouring of photographs with water colours had been common in Japan from the 1860s. But in the late 1870s the well-known photographer, Yokoyama Matsusaburo, started experimenting with a number of printing techniques and also developed a form of photographic oil painting (shashin abura-e). This involved peeling off the emulsion covering the face of a photograph and then painting the rear side with oil paints. One of his students, Azukizawa Ryoichi, developed and patented his own technique and described himself as a "Patent Oil-Painter on Photograph and Lithograph, and Common Oil-Painter and Photographer." In 1885 he was granted a fifteen-year patent and he applied this strange technique to the standard photographs of views and costumes usually found in souvenir albums. A number of Meiji-era photographers seem to have experimented with similar methods and with mixed results. Of the examples seen, it is difficult to tell whether the pictures are photographs or paintings. 
 

 
  
 
  
HOME  BACK>>> Subscriptions <<< | Testimonials | Login |
 Facebook LuminousLint 
 Twitter @LuminousLint