Technique: Photogravure on Paper

Date: c. 1863

Description: Signed and numbered "No. 8022" below the image, titled and inscribed "Photographische Gesellschaft in Berlin". This was an art publisher, founded in 1862 by Emil and Albert Werckmeister. Towards the end of the 19th century, the company excelled in the technique of heliogravure. Gallery works and numerous individual pictures were sold by catalogue to art dealers. Heliogravure was a photographic fine art process of intaglio printing on gelatin-coated copper plates (a precursor of later intaglio copper printing). As a further development of the old aquatint process already begun in the first half of the 19th century, heliogravure made it possible to reproduce photographs and illustrations by means of a complex photomechanical printing process in such a way that real and very differentiated half-tones could be represented and an expressive plastic depth effect of the image could be created. With the technical improvements towards the end of the 19th century, heliogravure became the dominant graphic process, especially for sophisticated and artistic photography and other image originals.

Keywords: 19th century, Figurative, Portraits, Germany,