801
A copper plate was coated with a resin and then a
bichromated gelatin tissue similar to that used in carbon
printing. After exposure, the unhardened bichromated
gelatin could be removed and the plate etched. The
etched plate was then inked—the ink being held within
the etched areas to depths dependant upon the tonal
density of the image—and printed on a fl atbed printing
press. No ‘screen’ was necessary, and the process was
capable of rendering a considerable tonal range. This
process is now known as ‘grain gravure’ to distinguish
it from the later screen-based process.
But Klič’s vision extended well beyond the produc-
tion of single sheet-fed prints, and in 1895 he and his
collaborator Samuel Fawcett developed rotogravure. It
would appear that Klič and Fawcett had been working,
independently, towards the development of a rotary
intaglio printing process, and that their collaboration
brought the process to a successful conclusion. Klič
was, by the early 1890s, resident in England.
At some point c.1890 Klič made contact with the Sto-
rey Brothers in Lancaster, a fi rm of calico printers where,
according to company records, Fawcett was already
employed. By 1895 Klič, Fawcett and the Storeys had
established the Rembrandt Intaglio Printing Company to
exploit the new rotogravure process. Fawcett had been
working on a design for a rotary press for textile print-
ing, and Klič’s rotary photogravure expertise proved the
catalyst. It was at Klič’s suggestion that the company
moved from printing textiles to printing high quality
gravures of paper. Their Burlington Art Miniatures were
a signifi cant commercial success, and for several years
they led the world in high quality gravure printing, still
closely guarding the details of their techniques. Eventu-
ally, of course, other companies caught up with them,
and instigated technical improvements to the process.
By 1897 Klič was technical director of the company,
but in that year he left England and returned to Vienna,
leaving the operation of the Rembrandt Intaglio Printing
Company to Fawcett. He returned briefl y in 1906—by
which time he had perfected a close-registered three-co-
lour gravure process using a fi ne half-tone screen—but
he spent much of the remainder of his life in Vienna
where he died on November 16th 1926.
John HannavySee also: Talbot, William Henry Fox; Annan,
Thomas; Stieglitz, Alfred; Emerson, Peter Henry; and
Photogravure.
Further Reading
Albert, K., Karl Klietsch, Vienna, 1927
Coe, Brian, and Howarth-Booth, Mark, A Guide to Early Pho-
tographic Processes, London: Victoria & Albert Museum,
1983
Denison, Herbert: A Treatise on Photogravure in Intaglio by the
Talbot-Klič Process, London: Iliffe & Sons, 1895. (Reprinted
in 1974 by the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester)KLUMB, REVERT HENRY (1837–c. 1886)
Born in Berlin, Germany in 1837, Revert Henry (Hen-
rique) Klumb began working in Brazil in the early
1850s. After running the studio of French photographer
and lithographer Paul Theodore Robin, he worked for a
painter, François René Moreaux. In 1855, he opened his
own studio and pioneered stereoscopy in Rio de Janeiro.
Emperor Pedro II appointed him Imperial Photographer
on August 24, 1861. Around that time, Klumb opened
a studio in Petrópolis, the emperor’s mountain retreat.
After moving there in 1865, he lectured at the Imperial
Academy of Fine Arts and tutored Princess Isabel, the
Emperor’s daughter. In 1872, he published an illustrated
road guide on Brazil’s fi rst highway, between Petrópolis
and Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais. Renowned for his land-
scapes and bold use of close-ups when photographing
plants in Princess Isabel’s gardens, he exhibited his
works at the Petrópolis Horticultural Exposition in 1875.
After that, Klumb and his wife, Hermelinda Barreto,
went to live in Bahia and had two daughters there. By
1886, they were in Paris, from where he wrote to Em-
press Teresa Christina begging her to help him and his
family return home. His patroness agreed, but he died
shortly thereafter, possibly en route to Brazil.
Sabrina GledhillKNUDSEN, KNUD (1832–1915)
Norwegian landscape photographer
Knud Knudsen was born in Odda, Norway. He came
from a family of country merchants, but got interested
in photography quite early. He probably worked as an
assistant to Marcus Selmer from 1857, before he started
his own studio in Bergen in 1864. His business grew to
one of the biggest in the country, catering to Norwegians
and tourists alike and selling thousands of images.
His motives are mainly landscapes and documenta-
tion of the rapidly vanishing rural culture from which
he came. Knudsen was the fi rst to systematically pho-
tograph the whole of Norway, but with emphasis on
the Vest coast. In spite of some composition elements
inspired from painting, his images show us a skilled
photographer who uses photographic elements to the
full. Up to 1882 Knudsen used the wet plate and his
darkroom tent is sometimes to be seen in his images. He
developed an understanding for the special quality of the
collodion process and produced images that are full of
contrast and detail in the dark parts. To solve the diffi cult
problem with exposure time for light and dark surfaces