[Rarebooks] FS: Photographic Fraud in 1865- Boulton & the Lunar Society

[Joslin Hall Rare Books]

"Remarks concerning Certain Pictures supposed to be Photographs of Early
Date"

By M.P.W. Boulton. Printed in London by Bradbury & Evans in 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 our author, 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 they had
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, but never bound into covers. 6.5"x8.5", 74 pages,
4 lithographic plates. Some light spotting, discoloration along the bottom
edge of the cover, but otherwise clean and neat.  $325.00

Some Pictures =>

<http://www.joslinhall.com/images05/th-05477-cover.jpg>
<http://www.joslinhall.com/images05/th-05477-page1.jpg>

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