After SIR EDWARD COLEY BURNE-JONES BT ARA (1833-1898) - Receive artist alerts » - More items from this artist »
BERLIN PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPANY (1880-1920) - Receive artist alerts » - More items from this artist »

Paper Photogravures

No. 32

12.00cm wide    30.50cm high    (4.72 inches wide  12.01 inches high)

The Helman-Taylor Art Company, New York
The Forbes Library, Northampton, Massachusetts

Ninety-one works by Burne-Jones were photographed by the Berlin Photographic Company at the end of the century. The negatives from these exceptionally high quality photographs were then exposed onto a gelatin covered copper plate, etched with acid and printed in a similar fashion to an engraving. The edition was limited to 200. Burne-Jones’s work was often appreciated more abroad, particularly on the Continent, than at home; it became widely known there both through exhibition and reproduction. King Caphetua and the Beggar Maid (1884), for example, was particularly admired when it was shown at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1889 and resulted in Burne-Jones being awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honour.

It was in the 1890’s that photographic process blocks definitively replaced wood engraved blocks as the main medium for reproductive illustrations. The importance of these was their faithfulness to the original and their ease of reproduction as no expensive handwork was involved. These illustrations are exact photogravure reproductions of Burne-Jones’s paintings and these developments in reproductive technology had a great effect on original illustration. This was a revolutionary technique employed by the Berlin Photographic Company and did much to publicize and popularize images such as these.