Unidentified photographer / artist
1859
Title page for "How to Colour a Photograph; or, Lessons on the Harmony and Contrast of Colours" (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1859)

Title page
Google Books
Reprinted from the Photographic News.
 
PREFACE.
 
Colouring has been said to be "the sunshine of art, that clothes poverty in smiles, and renders the prospect of barrenness itself agreeable, while it heightens the interest, and doubles the charms of beauty." The reproduction of objects in. their natural colours, by means of the camera, is a subject which'has occupied much of the attention of many of the most illustrious pioneers of photography; but, as yet, without definite result. Until that problem is solved, to give photographic portraits their full value as likenesses to give them life and individuality the photographer must have recourse to the art of the painter. We purpose, therefore, in the following pages, to give the simplest and most efficient mode of colouring positives on glass and paper, in photographic powder colours, water colours, and oil colours, so as to produce satisfactory and artistic results.
 
In order that our work may be a manual for the amateur as well as the professional student, we shall begin at the beginning, and endeavour to make the matter clear to the most uneducated capacity : premising, however, that whilst much is possible to steady perseverance, there is not here, as there is not in any of the arts, any royal road to success. To obtain perfect results will require the constant exercise of a careful hand, a practised eye, and a cultivated judgment.
 
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