[Rarebooks] fs: Photos in 1780 ???

[Joslin Hall Rare Books]

Boulton, M.P.W. "REMARKS CONCERNING CERTAIN PICTURES SUPPOSED TO BE 
PHOTOGRAPHS OF EARLY DATE"

London; Bradbury & Evans: 1865.

"In November, 1863, Mr. Smith, Curator of the Museum of Patents at South 
Kensington, laid before the Photographic Society evidence purporting to 
show that photography had been practised at Soho in the last century, and 
pictures were exhibited supposed to be specimens of the photographs then 
made. These consisted of two classes, viz., several paper pictures and two 
metal plates. The paper pictures were generally admitted to be of the date 
assigned, and to be specimens of a peculiar mode of making copies practised 
at Soho about 1780. The metal plates were generally admitted to be 
photographs; but the date of their production was questioned".

At which point M.P.W. Boulton stepped into the "picture"...

Matthew Piers Watt Boulton was the grandson of Matthew Boulton who, with 
his partner, James Watt, had invented a steam engine, an electroplating 
process for silver, and many other useful things in Soho at the end of the 
18th century and beginning of the 19th. M.P.W. Boulton soon found himself 
intimately involved in the controversy over the "photographs", as it was a 
servant of his named Price who had first come up with them, claiming they 
had been given to him by a Miss Wilkinson, Boulton's aunt, after having 
lain undisturbed in her library at Soho for 50 years. The man Price was 
thought to be honorable, which made for a confused case, since his 
assertion that Miss Wilkinson's library had been shut up for 50 years was 
demonstrably untrue, as Boulton knew. Price also alleged that the Lunar 
Society, a group composed of Matthew Boulton, James Watt, Joseph Priestly, 
Josiah Wedgwood, Erasmus Darwin, William Hershel, and others, had made the 
photographs in a tent using a method that sounded something like a camera 
obscura.

At about this time it was discovered, in an entirely different affair, that 
Price was not as honorable as all that after all, and that he had "engaged 
in most dishonest practices carried on under the cover of gross 
falsehoods". Price promptly fled the country to avoid prosecution, and 
Boulton published the first edition of this pamphlet in 1864, relating 
these points and supplying several illustrations showing that the 
photographs in question did not, in fact, represent the houses they were 
claimed to represent in 1780, and there the matter should have dropped, 
except that somehow such matters never do.

The original pamphlet brought on criticisms and replies, to which Boulton 
replied, and so on, and so on, to several editions, each a bit lengthier 
than the one before, culminating in this 74-page, 3rd edition in 1865. By 
the time we got here much of the material was of the "he said, she said" 
variety, a scholarly refutation of critics' points, parsed subordinate 
clause by subordinate clause. Boulton was still unable to convince certain 
people that Price was lying about the library, which understandably annoyed 
him.

Of more interest, perhaps, is the continued discussion about the two paper 
pictures, "specimens of a peculiar mode of making copies practised at Soho 
about 1780". What this "mode" was cannot quite be determined, but it seems 
to have been a mechanical reproduction technique using films and pigments 
which allowed color reproductions to be made, mechanically, from original 
paintings. The argument after that devolves into discussions of mezzotints, 
hand-coloring, pricing, catalogs and other technicalities all of a more or 
less speculative nature as Messrs. Boulton and Watt never did really 
describe the technique satisfactorily and abandoned it after a short time 
as not being especially profitable.

The discussion will be of great interest to historians of art, I am sure, 
while fans of photographs and fakes may take satisfaction in the enjoyment 
of a good tale of a rather brazen attempt at photographic fraud of an 
especially early date. Matthew Piers Watt Boulton would go on to be every 
bit as inventive and industrious as his famous grandpapa, translating 
classics, producing papers on solar heating and metaphysics, and coining 
the name "aileron" and getting a patent for this important aerial advance.

Self-wrappers; stitched; 6.5"x8.5", 74 pages, 4 lithographic plates; some 
light spotting, but pretty well near fine. [05477] $325.00

Pictures-
<http://www.joslinhall.com/images03/th-05477.jpg>

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