Early Hand Tinted CDV, Hamburg Home Guard?

L

Larmo

New member
Greetings All

Thought you might enjoy seeing this example of an early photography artists craftsmanship. It is a hand tinted, CDV sized image of a young Hamburg city militiaman (I think that's what he is, at least the backmark is from Hamburg) armed with what appears to be a Potsdam percussion musket. The quality of the tinting is suberb, almost looks like a vintage color photograph. He really looks alive doesn't he, nearly 150 years on.

Larmo


hpqscan0001u.jpg
 
Goodness Larry nice picture! this will be fun to try to identify it has a number six on the shako...... what date would you put on it?
 
Hi Joe, glad you liked him. Hard to date with any certainty, however the French style shako (even down to the pompom) would likely place this image prior to 1870 in my opinion. The CDV style of image was introduced in the early 1850's, being patented by Disderi of Paris. It began to lose popularity by the 1870's when replaced by the larger Cabinet Card photo style. Having said that, the CDV seemed to retain its popularity in Europe where the art of colorization was very popular in Germany especially so with military images. We've all seen the photos were the subject's face remains in black and white but the uniform details have been painted over in color. This fellow is interesting because the color enhances the original photo image rather than simply being painted over with a tiny brush. Further the clarity of the image is striking as well, it's almost as if we can reach out and touch him. Just wish I knew what military unit he belonged to.

Larmo

hpqscan0001.jpg


Notice the tinting detail in the second image, great care was taken with the brown hue applied to the table and chair and the pink of the cushion. Were two people at work on this?
 
Hey Larry,
Interesting photo, the colourizatin was done with dies that penetrated the emulsion of the photo, My mother did some of this in the 60s, and the results can be better quality than the colour film and paper that was available then.
It was great to meet you at SOS, the world keeps getting smaller.
Best wishes
Gus
 
Hey Larry,
I missed the second card, that one has the colour of the unifor painted over like you said, I had not seen one like that before.
We had a lot of beer left over, If you had shown up, it would have saved a lot of packing:)
Gus
 
Thanks Pierre, I'm glad you enjoyed them, we all certainly benefit from your efforts my friend..

Larmo
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top