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process of 1839 recorded natural colors. Overexposure
of the sky could lead to solarized daguerreotypes in
which the sky, appropriately, looked blue, but otherwise
there was no color. This was a disappointment to the
general public, but did not really slow down the arrival of
the new market in photographic images. It exploded.
The appeal of color was very strong. The failure
of photography to provide it left a hole in the market.
Soon, artists who had specialized in painted miniature
color portraits stepped in by learning to hand-color
daguerreotypes, and later also Talbotypes, ambrotypes,
tintypes and other black and white processes that soon
appeared. The images by the latter processes were hand
colored up to about 1900. For daguerreotypes, beautiful
results were achieved, but they required great skill. The
colors were applied as powdered pigments by brush
onto the Daguerreotype surface. The image layer, a
thin surface fi lm, could be marred or removed by the
slightest misapplication.
In the 1840s Edmond Becquerel, a member of the
Becquerel physics “dynasty” at the National Museum
of Natural History in Paris, experimented with varia-
tions of the daguerreotype process, and found that he
could create a color-sensitive coating by dipping the
standard polished silver plate into a solution of chlori-
nated water and sending a current through the solution,
using the plate as an electrode. He observed the plate
go through color changes and stopped the process when
a certain color was achieved. This succession of colors
was almost certainly due to light waves refl ected off
the mirror[-]like plate interfering with incoming waves
in the thin fi lms he created during sensitization. These
were analogous to colors seen in thin fi lms of gasoline
fl oating on puddles of water. He exposed these plates
to the solar spectrum and recorded the spectrum colors
relatively faithfully, according to his 1848 paper and
contemporary accounts. However, these images were
fugitive in light. A few remain, kept in the dark, at
the Centre National des Arts et Metiers in Paris, at the
Musée Niépce at Chalon-sur-Saône, and at the Science
Museum in London.
At almost the same time the Reverend Levi Hill of
New York explored the same problem. He announced his
success in making colored daguerreotypes prematurely,
which created a market stoppage for black and white
portraits and a considerable controversy. When he fi nally
published his technique in 1851 it was so complicated that
no one repeated it, even though the well known inventor
Samuel Morse testifi ed favorably as to the results. This
process was widely labeled a fraud, but recent reconsid-
eration suggests otherwise. William Becker published
articles which carefully examined the controversy and
reproduced some of Hill’s images. He concluded that Hill
had succeeded. Then Joseph Boudreau tried Hill’s recipe,
and published his experiments in 1987. More recently
Arron Miller also repeated the process with unspecifi ed
modifi cations and essentially equal success.
Examination of the surviving Hillotypes and Bec-
querels shows that there is no question that each man
recorded color, but of a peculiar and perhaps related sort.
The prevalent color in each case is now a deep aubergine.
On the Hillotypes one can make out just two instances
of another reasonably saturated color, yellow. On the
Boudreau image at the Smithsonian there is a wider
variety of colors, including blue and green as well as
yellow and a faint red, but none saturated, all dark, and
underlain by aubergine. Its wider color range may well
be the result of its lower age. The colors probably fade,
at least in light, though the Hillotype colors seen recently
at the Smithsonian look similar to those published by
Becker 20 years ago.
The Becquerel images in Chalon, like the Hillotypes,
can be viewed briefl y in dim light. The colors orange and
red at one end of the spectrum are clearly visible, and
the other colors are very faint if present, along with the
aubergine. Because there are no notes or marks on the
plates, it is impossible to say what parts of the spectrum
these correspond to.
In 1849–52 Niépce St. Victor (Niépce’s cousin)
did an all-chemical version of Becquerel’s process,
for which just a few examples survive. It was recently
reprised by David Burder, and consisted of subjecting
a metal plate to several metal salt solutions resulting in
a silver chloride sensitive layer. Burder’s exposure time
to contact print a color transparency was several hours.
The colors were initially essentially correct as to hue,
but not well saturated. Exposure to light causes them to
fade. Their surface, like Becquerel process images (and
unlike daguerreotypes), is quite durable. Their color can
be restored somewhat by rubbing.
Alphonse Poitevin, working into the 1860s, repeated
and extended the earlier work with silver chloride on
paper by Sir John Herschel and others. After pre-expo-
sure to light, he bathed the paper in metal salt solutions
(also various plant extracts) and exposed it while damp.
He achieved some color by contact printing through
stained glass (never in camera). The images were not
stable. In the Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1867 his
images and those of Niépce de St. Victor were shown in
locked albums only opened briefl y and upon request. No
examples of Poitevin’s images are known to survive.
Very recently John Hurlock of Chicago made da-
guerreotypes sensitized with silver chloride that show
a strong yellow image of a yellow house. They seem to
be permanent.
The physical explanation for these (in some cases
poor) colors is still to be determined. Zenker, in 1868,
maintained that they were entirely interference colors.
Wiener, who reconstructed Becquerel’s process in the
1890s and conducted various tests on the resulting