315
Laynaud, L., La Phototypie pour tous et ses applications directes,
Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1900.
Naudet, G., La photocollographie sur supports souples, Paris:
Desforges, 2nd ed., 1903.
Rouanet, E., La photocollographie pratique, Paris: Société gé-
nérale d’éditions, 1893.
Schnauss, J.C., Collotype and Photo-Lithography Practically
Elaborated, London: Iliffe & Sons. Transl. by E.C. Middle-
ton, 1889.
Vidal, Léon, Traité pratique de Phototypie, ou l’impression à
l’encre grasse sur une couche de gélatine, Paris: Gauthier-
Villars, 1879.
Wilkinson, W.T., Photo-Engraving, Photo-Etching, and Photo-
Lithography in Line and Half-Tone; also, Collotype and
Heliotype, New York: Edward L. Wilson, 3rd ed., 1888.
Wilson, T., The Practice of Collotype, Boston: Amer. Phot. Publ.
Co., 1935.
COLLS, LEBBEUS (active 1840–1860s)
Lebbeus Colls and his brother Richard were art dealers
in London with premises at 168 New Bond Street. They
commissioned work from many contemporary painters,
including Samuel Palmer and John Linnell.
Colls became interested in photography before 1850,
using Talbot’s calotype process, and with his brother,
exhibited ‘sun pictures’ at the 1851 Crystal Palace
exhibition.
When Linnell expressed an enthusiasm for photog-
raphy in spring 1852, Colls offered to sell him a 12 ×
8 inch calotype camera, with lens and stand, and this
transaction may mark Colls’ transition from calotype
to collodion.
He later sold his own photographs through his gallery,
including several calotypes to Linnell. Prices ranged
from 10/- to £1 per print. He also exchanged photo-
graphs with Linnell for sketches and paintings.
The Colls brothers photographed widely together, but
while Richard exhibited collodion images in Glasgow
in 1855, Lebbeus seems to have eschewed the exhibi-
tion circuit.
His subjects included landscapes, cloud and sunset
studies, and locations in Chepstow, Raglan and Tintern,
His view of Lynmouth in Devon, published in January
1857, was one of two which appeared in Paul Pretsch’s
Photographic Art Treasures. With two other images,
‘Lynmouth’ also appeared in The Sunbeam, published
by Philip Delamotte in 1859.
Colls was still supplying photographs—‘printed by
Mr Cundall’—to Linnell in 1868.
John Hannavy
COLNAGHI, PAUL (1751–1833) AND
DOMINIC (1790–1879)
The imprint of P & D Colnaghi is synonymous with
the publishing and distribution of high quality photo-
graphy from the mid 1850s. The company entered the
photographic arena when they became the commercial
distributors of Roger Fenton’s images from the British
Museum in 1854. In 1856, they became joint British
publishers—along with Thomas Agnew of Manches-
ter—of Fenton’s images from the Crimean War.
The partnership with Agnew was an enduring one,
as the two business co-published the fi ve volume il-
lustrated Photographs of the Gems of the Art Treasures
Exhibition, Manchester, in 1857, with photographs by
Caldesi and Montecchi.
Paul Colnaghi entered the employment of art dealer
Anthony Torre 1783, eventually taking control of Torre’s
business. By developing strong relationship with artists,
he ensured that the gallery exhibited the best of contem-
porary art. Paul was joined in the business by his son
Dominic, and the name P & D Colnaghi was adopted.
In the 1850s, in addition to the Fenton material,
Colnaghi published war artist William Simpson’s works
The Campaign in the Crimea, and in the 1860s, acquired
exclusive commercial rights to market the photography
of Julia Margaret Cameron.
The company withdrew from the photographic mar-
ket at the outbreak of the First World War, returning to
it in the mid-1970s.
John HannavyCOLOR THEORY AND PRACTICE:
1800–1860
Color photography, both theory and practice, has a his-
tory as long as black and white photography, but one
rather more full of disappointments. From the beginning
of photography as an enterprise in 1839 with the pub-
lication of Daguerre’s and Talbot’s results, commenta-
tors noted color’s absence and experimenters sought
to invent a process for it. Richard Beard, the holder of
the British rights to the Daguerreotype process wrote
in 1843:
“It was color that was wanting to crown all the other
improvements and give perfection to the whole.”
Sir John Herschel, perhaps the greatest physicist of
his time, and a close friend of Fox Talbot’s, famously
gave Talbot his 1819 discovery of sodium thiosulfi te
as a solvent for unexposed silver halides to use as a
photographic fi xer in 1839. He then began immediately
to experiment on Talbot’s and other photochemistries,
and by 1840 and for the next several years tried many
experiments aimed at recording color. Some of these
were reported to the Royal Society, while others were
recorded only in his notebooks and in letters to Talbot.
Herschel tried experiments with vegetable extracts, some
of which gave quite beautiful and permanent colors, but
like his well known invention based on iron salts, the