First colour photoThis page was last revised on 2009-11-03
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First colour photo |
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Tartan Ribbon, photograph presented by James Clerk Maxwell (1831-79) in 1861. This is generally regarded as the first colour photograph. Maxwell had the photographer Thomas Sutton, editor of Photographic News, photograph a tartan ribbon three times, each time with a different colour filter over the lens. The three images were developed and then projected onto a screen with three different projectors, each equipped with the same colour filter used to take its image. When brought into focus, the three images formed a full colour image. The three photographic plates are now held by a small museum at 14 India Street, Edinburgh, the house where Maxwell was born. NB It has been plausibly argued that the success of this experiment was a fluke, as Maxwell's emulsions were insensitive to red light, and the red fabric dyes were actually also reflecting in the near ultra-violet, which was being passed by his deep-red ferric thiocyanate filter. See James Clerk Maxwell's Big Mistake.
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First colour photo of a person, and first colour portrait photo |
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No firm information yet located. A likely candidate is this c. 1904 autochrome of Antoine Lumière. The image is © Institut Lumière / Famille Lumière; permission pending. Laputan Logic includes a colour photograph of a man said to be by Louis Ducos du Hauron, and dating from 1876. I have not yet found corroboration for this.
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First colour photo of a woman |
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No firm information yet located, but this c. 1906 autochrome of Suzanne and Andrée Lumière (daughters of Louis and Auguste Lumière) with their cousins is a good candidate. The image is © Institut Lumière / Famille Lumière; permission pending. The Institut Lumière website includes an individual portrait autochrome of Marguerite Lumière, Auguste's wife, taken in 1907, presumably by one of the brothers. This must be one of the earliest individual colour portrait photos of a woman. NB On Flickr there are two colour portrait autochromes described as of Marie Weibel, née Adam (1875-1962), a cousin of the Lumière brothers; both photographs are given the date 1904. If this is correct, these predate both the above. See la belle bill 1 and 2.
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Earliest-born person to be photographed in colour |
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The likeliest candidate so far is Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910), the novelist. He was photographed in May 1908 by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky, using his own process. See the Tolstoy Studies Journal.
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Earliest-born woman to be photographed in colour |
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Jeanne-Joséphine Lumière's year of birth has yet to be traced, but as she married Antoine in 1861, and was probably close in age to her husband, she was probably also born about 1840. This image, of Mme Lumière and a granddaughter, is from World is Round (permission pending).
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© 2009 Benjamin S. Beck |
If you know of any earlier examples, please contact me.
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