Hand coloured portraits, methods and styles of different eras

Ian Grant · Sep 25, 2017

Art, (@gr82bart) has posted a thread today on hand coloured Japanese portraits. I came across an old family photo the other day and showed it to my sister - who would like it It's hand coloured dates I'd guess to about 1960 or veery early 1961.

Now I'm on the right aged 6 or just 7, I remember the session but not this particular image being taken, the photographer was Clifford Barlow, Worcester (UK) but there's a second signature and that must be the colourist.

The base B&W image isn't that sharp which is surprising as the B&W images I remember being taken (and now own) from the same session are. The attention to detail in the hand colouring is remarkable. I have three more hand coloured images from the same photographer/studio, all individual portraits taken when we were each around 18months-2 years, I think the one of my youngest sister (5½ years younger) was taken at the same time as the posted image. What's amazing is all three images look like they were made in the same session yet there's 2 years between the first and second and another three years before third. Note that the first two are on the mantle place to the left of the clock in the image posted here.

Ironically today I hate this style of hand colouring *as a current technique), OK digital means we can manipulate but I honed my hand colouring skills back in the early 1980's and so very different. Bob Carlos Clarke was the expert, jsut streets ahead and never been remotely equalled.

Ian

Bob Carnie · Sep 25, 2017

Wow Ian your ears have shrunk with age, my ears grew with age.

Lovely image of you and your sisters.. I personally like this style of craftsmanship, My new Gum colour prints look a bit like this.

pentaxuser · Sep 25, 2017

Ian, this brings back memories. This is almost exactly the same colouring that was applied to a photo of me in the mid-fifties. While I quite like this colouring effect, I think with hindsight it would have been better if my parents had ordered the B&W version. In those days colouring was such a rarity that any decent photographer with a talent for sales could probably persuade most customers to buy "colour"

pentaxuser

gr82bart · Sep 25, 2017

I love this image! Norman Rockwell was my first thought!

Regards, Art

pentaxuser · Sep 26, 2017

The dog and rabbit must be "getting on a bit" now as we say in the U.K. when we have aged considerably

pentaxuser

Cloudy · Jan 9, 2021

I resurrect this thread because I LOVE hand coloured portrait and this is the cutest. The only thing that baffles me is why the colourist gave you that light blue eyeshadow

Irrev.Rev. · Jan 9, 2021

My wife was a photo colorist for a N.Y. lab back in the "60's. The prints were Sepia toned and then treated to the transparent colors. As I recall,
red and blue were the avoided colors when possible. Couldn't believe how quickly she could work; of course, production incentives kept them moving!

Ian Grant · Jan 10, 2021

I no longer have this photo as I finally gave it to my sister last year, the younger one passed away 20 years ago. I can remember the occasion and the photographer shooting my youngests sisters portrait with her sat on a table, this was for a head shot to go with the two earlier ones which are in small oval frames and on the mantle piece on the left of the clock.

The colours are a good representation of the room at that time so someone took meticulous notes.b The paper was probably a slightly warmtoned, the surface is lustre finish and it's nottoned.

Irrev.Rev. said:
My wife was a photo colorist for a N.Y. lab back in the "60's. The prints were Sepia toned and then treated to the transparent colors. As I recall, red and blue were the avoided colors when possible. Couldn't believe how quickly she could work; of course, production incentives kept them moving!

I had spell where I did a lot of hand coloured images, I would selectively tone before hand colouring with colour retouching dyes, it was suprisingly quick to do once you had a littleexperience.

Ian

pentaxuser · Jan 10, 2021

Ian, when I look at the details for instance in the far left girl's dress just in terms of the precise and different blue dots It makes me wonder how anyone one managed this is less than a few weeks but clearly someone did without taking anything like that amount of time, given what could be charged for hand colouring in order to make these within people pockets. It is nothing like the cheap coloured postcards that you could buy where on a more detailed examination you realise that these were coloured much more in an Impressionist style and need to be looked at in that way.

pentaxuser

wyofilm · Jan 10, 2021

Ian,
When, how did the colorist get involved? Was he present at the shoot and make notes for colorization? Did he use his imagination on coloring? How true was the coloring to reality?

Very cool photograph. I don't know if this was a thing in parts (all) of the US, but I really don't remember seeing such images. Thanks for posting.

Ian Grant · Jan 10, 2021

wyofilm said:
Ian,
When, how did the colorist get involved? Was he present at the shoot and make notes for colorization? Did he use his imagination on coloring? How true was the coloring to reality?

Very cool photograph. I don't know if this was a thing in parts (all) of the US, but I really don't remember seeing such images. Thanks for posting.

The colouring was as true to reality as I remember,, that was the carpet colour, the armchair and cussion as well, also the fire place still looked like that when my parents moved out around 18 years ago. So it seems no artistic licence, I don't remember now it's over 60 years ago but its probable the photographer had an assistant who did the colouring, they may have revisited the house while we were at school.

I think it was a short lived niche phase after WWII, reserrecting old techniques, colour films were just becoming more common, my father had been shooting Kodachrome for a year or so but colour print films hadn't really reached a similar quality that didn't really happen until C41, my mother's C22 shots with a 1963 Instamatic don't reach the quality of thefew Agfacolour films . I used before switching to C41 films.

What I do remember was the photographer was meticulouus, this was the third time he'd taken my photo, first at 18 months to two years old, gain when my firts sister was a similar age, and then this third session when my second sister was a similar age. I think his name was Clifford Morris, he possibly took my parents wedding photographs as well which I have somewhere. I should add at teh time my father was Works Engineer/Works Director for a large International carpet company they actually had quite a large in-house photographic department, 3 or 4 photographers and also assistants. So he'd have asked their advice, in all areas there's always one portrait photographer who stands out and I guess Clifford was the one around here.

Ian

wyofilm · Jan 11, 2021

Ian Grant said:
The colouring was as true to reality as I remember,, that was the carpet colour, the armchair and cussion as well, also the fire place still looked like that when my parents moved out around 18 years ago. So it seems no artistic licence, I don't remember now it's over 60 years ago but its probable the photographer had an assistant who did the colouring, they may have revisited the house while we were at school.

I think it was a short lived niche phase after WWII, reserrecting old techniques, colour films were just becoming more common, my father had been shooting Kodachrome for a year or so but colour print films hadn't really reached a similar quality that didn't really happen until C41, my mother's C22 shots with a 1963 Instamatic don't reach the quality of thefew Agfacolour films . I used before switching to C41 films.

What I do remember was the photographer was meticulouus, this was the third time he'd taken my photo, first at 18 months to two years old, gain when my firts sister was a similar age, and then this third session when my second sister was a similar age. I think his name was Clifford Morris, he possibly took my parents wedding photographs as well which I have somewhere. I should add at teh time my father was Works Engineer/Works Director for a large International carpet company they actually had quite a large in-house photographic department, 3 or 4 photographers and also assistants. So he'd have asked their advice, in all areas there's always one portrait photographer who stands out and I guess Clifford was the one around here.

Ian

Thanks for the recount. It's clear to me that a good deal of work and planning had to go into the photograph. A wonderful family photograph to be treasured.

eddie · Jan 11, 2021

Cloudy said:
I resurrect this thread because I LOVE hand coloured portrait and this is the cutest.

Do you do any hand-coloring?

Cloudy · Jan 11, 2021

eddie said:
Do you do any hand-coloring?

I've only done it once and it was lots of fun, so I would like to try again, but I need the right picture for it

eddie · Jan 11, 2021

Cloudy said:
I've only done it once and it was lots of fun, so I would like to try again, but I need the right picture for it

I do a lot of it. In fact, almost all of my photos are hand colored. It works for portraits, landscapes, architecture... If it can be photographed, it can be painted.

Cloudy · Jan 11, 2021

eddie said:
I do a lot of it. In fact, almost all of my photos are hand colored. It works for portraits, landscapes, architecture... If it can be photographed, it can be painted.

Awesome, well done you! Do you have any examples to show us? I'd love to see them

eddie · Jan 11, 2021

The vast majority of my Gallery images are hand-colored:
https://www.photrio.com/forum/media/users/eddie.7343/

Cloudy · Jan 11, 2021

eddie said:
The vast majority of my Gallery images are hand-colored:
https://www.photrio.com/forum/media/users/eddie.7343/

Thanks for sharing

fgorga · Jan 11, 2021

I have been experimenting, over the past several months, with hand coloring inkjet prints (but not portraits) using colored pencils.

One can see a few examples and a description of the method in this post: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/hand-colored-inkjet-print.179779/

There are a few more examples on my blog, here: http://gorga.org/blog/?p=4921

One needs the right photo, but it is fun and 'different'!

Cloudy · Jan 11, 2021

fgorga said:
I have been experimenting, over the past several months, with hand coloring inkjet prints (but not portraits) using colored pencils.

One can see a few examples and a description of the method in this post: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/hand-colored-inkjet-print.179779/

There are a few more examples on my blog, here: http://gorga.org/blog/?p=4921

One needs the right photo, but it is fun and 'different'!

thank you for sharing, this thread is definitely make me want to give it a go again

eddie · Jan 11, 2021

I like the results you're getting, Frank. Have you tried oil pencils yet?

Hand coloured portraits, methods and styles of different eras

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