Jacob Christoph Le Blon – Wikipedia

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Jacob Christoph Le Blon (or in German Jakob Christof Le Blon ), born the in the free city of Frankfurt ( Free imperial city of Frankfurt , Saint-Empire) and died on In Paris, is a German painter and engraver.

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He is the inventor of the first three -color printing process (trichromy) from copper plates treated in black.

First page of the preliminary instructions of Coloritto or the harmony of the color de Le Blon (London, 1725).

Portrait of Louis XV , engraving after Nicholas Blakey (1715-1758), final color test (1739).

The ascendant of Le Blon is eminently artistic: his grandmother is the sister of the great engraver Matthäus Merian, father of naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian. His father, of Huguenote origin, is Christoph Le Blon known as “the old” (1639-1706), copper engraver and publisher in Frankfurt.

Jacob Christop Devenoon by 1696 to 1702 l’l clear of Carlo Maratta in Rome [ first ] . During his stay, he crosses the Dutch painter and engraver Bonaventura Van Overbeek (1660–1705) who undertakes the execution of sketches on Rome for a work which will appear after his death, in 1708: the frontispie which adorns this work is a portrait of the artist, drawn by the Blon [ 2 ] .

Van Overbeek takes him to Amsterdam where he settled from 1705 to 1717. He executed six plates from the illustration of a small anatomy treaty, entitled General proportion for the various length of the images , published in 1707 in a work by Lambert Ten Kate (in) [ 3 ] ; then he earns his life mainly by the production of miniatures [ 4 ] . He also paints landscapes with some success [ 5 ] . Meanwhile, he undertook a stay in London where he learned the technique of the shoe size, then lost his two young children: his wife, Gerarda Vloet, died in 1716. He binds himself to the painter Arnold Houbraken, which evokes The Blon in his work in a chapter relating to German painters [ 6 ] And which will engrave some of his painted portraits. In 1720, he developed his halftone color printing system to The Hague, supported on a “Color science” whose first tests date back to 1710; But not finding enough amateurs, he goes to Paris. Nor not finding in this city the means to set up his business despite the interest that his process arouses, he passes in England [ 7 ] .

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It is therefore in London that thanks to a patron and investors, he begins to exploit his invention by the sale of reproductions in color of paintings, and printed portraits of personalities known to the public: we know several dozen to date. He manages to obtain a privilege (equivalent of a patent) and publishes, still in London, an English and French bilingual treaty under the title Color (or The harmony of color in painting; Reduced in mechanical practice and to sore & easy rules: with color figures, to facilitate intelligence, not only to painters, but to all those who love painting ) which details its invention and even reproduces prints executed in color according to its technique.

However, he does not prosper and exhausts his funds before having been able to find a large enough clientele for his productions, the price of which, if he was much lower than that of a table copy made with a brush by an artist, was However much higher than that of the prints enhanced according to already existing techniques (coloring by hand raised, stencil, without forgetting the colored wood engraving and doll inking). He also tries in England to launch a technique intended for the mechanical reproduction of color images in the form of tapestries from red, blue, yellow and black threads, for which he had also obtained a patent. The fashion for the decorative tapestry that passed, his second commercial attempt failed in 1730. During his London period, he was pupil Jan l’Amiral [ 8 ] , and produced between 1737 and 1741 anatomical boards of the human body from the color process of the Blon [ 9 ] .

He finally came in 1735 to Paris, where he was already known, in the hope of doing better business. In 1739, he produced a portrait of the king Louis XV [ ten ] , after which he is granted a privilege for his color printing process. He produced several portraits of personalities like Cardinal Fleury. He remarried. He joined forces with the patron Antoine Gautier de Montdorge, a relative of the king. He works on anatomical boards integrating his technique, for which he receives important subscriptions: perhaps it is the future Complete color myology and natural size, composed of the test and the sequence of the anatomy test in printed paintings On texts by Joseph-Guichard Duverney (published in 1746) [ 11 ] .

After the death of Le Blon (who leaves a only daughter, Marguerite, barely 5 years old, for the sole heiress), one of her former students, Jacques Gautier d’Agoty, inherits the privilege and then disputes the contribution of Le Blon; He claims that the engravings of his former master should be retouched by hand, and that the Blon used more plates than the process prescribed it. He claimed, improperly, several improvements in the process, including the systematic use of the fourth color, black: these assertions are today considered false [ twelfth ] . D’Agoty specialized in the production of easier subjects, and used a simplified version of the process, based mainly on black engraving and flat colored when the Blon had aimed at the sale of quality and reproductions portraits painted paintings. On the other hand, he took advantage of this technique to honor the contract concerning the anatomy plates: it is very likely that Marguerite le Blon through his protector Gautier de Montdorge nevertheless could recover part of the paternal heritage, as seems to attest to the preface and the privilege attached to the reissue of the Color by Jombert in 1756 in Paris.

Printing in colored halftone: the process [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

The Blon invented not exactly the color print, because it already occurred before it, either in wood engraving, on copper, monochrome engravings on which flattened colors were applied, either engraved on wood, or Stencil, or hand spread out by workers in printed contours. The color printing in the Blon produces half-tone in color images [ 13 ] . He explains the principles in his Color of 1725 [ 14 ] .

The color print produced according to the technique invented by the BLON is an entirely artistic work, without intervention of optical or mechanical means (apart from the press). It is based on the work in a black manner of three or four copper plates. The artist draws processes to report exactly the darkest features, which are printed in the three or four colors, of a copper plate on the other. But above all, it requires an image analysis to translate the pattern into 4 fundamental colors: no system existed before the Blon and it was not until the years 1840-1860 that such a process was operational thanks to photographic techniques . The printing colors are chosen according to the subject to represent, so as to obtain the best rendering of the flesh tones if it is a portrait, skies and leaves if it is a landscape, etc.

This technique of postponing the pattern from a plaque on several others identically, the choice of colors, then the printing of the various intermediate tests, required a large address and a precision in the gesture, talent whose Blon does not Not missing, in view of the quality of his engravings: it would seem that this technique asked him above all a lot of time, and that the print market at that time was in great demand. According to Maxime Préaud, “The primary intention of Le Blon was to replace the masters of masters with color prints, to make a sort of cheap painting. In fact, he realized that it was much more expensive to make a color print than to make a painted copy. We always believe that engraving is not expensive to manufacture but it is not true at all. It requires hours of work, it is very complex, often much more than painting, and in this case it was necessary the genius of the Blon to weigh the exact quantity of blue, yellow and red which would allow us to find the original colors. The BLON understood that its process was an excellent way to reproduce the anatomy. It led later to the codification of the different parts of the human body: arteries in red, veins in blue, etc. [ 15 ] »

Color impression posed such considerable problems with the printer, and especially since these are large formats. It is not enough that the plates are rigorously superimposable; The paper must still have kept, from one pass to another, the same dimension. However, we print on wet paper, and each pass the boom and the lamin between two rollers (EF, p. 59). The press flattens the reliefs of copper, and after a few tens or hundreds of copies, the colors diminish, and we can only sell these less good prints at the discount [ 16 ] .

HOLDING TO Color [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

Nine pages presented in inset are offered by the Blon in its Color which consists of around forty pages in all. These numbered events I to VIII first show the three intermediate states allowing to obtain the final print in color of the portrait of a young woman (unidentified). The following five tests (V to VIII) show the reproduction of palettes in affixing to two engraved portraits containing according to the Blon, on the one hand “of the vermilion for the main dye”, on the other hand, of “the red earth for the General dye ”. The Blon thus lists the degrees of light and shadow: “La Mezze-Teint”; “The thoughtful dye”; “Reflex”; “The three different degrez of the Grand Shadow”; ” The key ” ; “The Luisant”; “The two shiny different”; “Fleeing him on the side of light”; “The two fleeting in the shade”.

  • Fig. I
  • Fig. II
  • Fig. III
  • Fig. IV
  • Fig. V
  • Fig. VI
  • Fig. VII
  • Fig. VIII
  • Fig. VIIII

Reception of printing in colors halftone [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

The Blon presents its invention in France while the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture and even the Court are still agitated by the color quarrel , and that the publication of the Opticks of Isaac Newton transforms the question of color between a problem of smelly craftsmen with dirty hands and dubious honesty [ 17 ] in philosophical question, discussed by scholars [ 18 ] .

The work of Le Blon imports to scholars, in that it proves by practice that three primary colors are enough to reproduce a multitude of others, and that it seems contradictory to them with the choice of Newton to distinguish, in the spectrum, Seven primitive colors.

He intervenes in the color quarrel In that in the black manner, moreover in color, the drawing appears as secondary, compared to its primacy in the chisel engraving. He cannot obtain the approval of the drawing party, dominating the academy. However, the color party, Roger de Piles the first, is not hidden that the colors obtained in engraving, even highlighted at best, that is to say the paper glued on canvas, varnish and framed (DPP ), do not reach the splendor of those of a Rubens. We only get “Tones approaching paintings that serve as originals [ 19 ] » .

If the talent and the profession of Le Blon have succeeded in producing quality engravings, its many successors seem to have cautiously confined to illustration work of botany or anatomy; “For tones of flesh, they are made up of a mixture that is too difficult to be able to expect a great success (AB, p. 125) » .

Writings [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

  • Jacob Christoph The Blon , Coloritto: the harmony of the color in painting; Reduced in mechanical practice and to sore & easy rules: with color figures, to facilitate intelligence, not only to painters, but to all those who love painting. , London, S.N., ( read online ) [ 20 ] : edition dedicated to Robert Walpole, increased by the appendix and the 4 inset boards, namely 2 additional versions of the young-daughter face, accompanied by the two corresponding colors-bilingual English-French.
  • Antoine Gautier de Montdorge and Jacques Christophe Leblon , The art of printing paintings , Paris, P.-G. The Mercier, ( read online ) – increased reissue, reviewed and corrected, taking up the Color English-French with a removal of the inadvertent planks [ 21 ] , and adding an illustrated essay on history and engraving techniques inspired by Abraham Bosse.

Blon preserved prints [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

Reserve of the National Library of France:

Other places :

  1. ↑ James R. Hobbes, Picture collector’s manual. Dictionary of Painters , Londres, T. & W. Boone, 1849, p. 148-151 – read online . For Heineken , General idea of ​​a collection of prints , ( read online ) , p. 210 , 1696
  2. ↑ Published by his brother Michel Van Overbeek, The remnants of the ancient city of Rome , (Amsterdam, 1708), it was translated into French the following year at Jean Crellius ( read online on Gallica).
  3. ↑ Catalogus of manuscripts , notice 1443, online.
  4. ↑ There are many in various public collections in particular (Amsterdam, London, etc.).
  5. ↑ His name in Dutch is written as follows: Kristofsel le blon .
  6. ↑ The Groote Schouburgh of the Netherlands Konst painters and painting , Amsterdam, 1718.
  7. ↑ Heineken 1771 ; Charles François de Cisternay du Fay, ” Physical observations on the mixture of a few colors in the dye », Memoirs (…) of the Royal Academy of Sciences , , p. 267 ( read online ) ; ‘ s.t. », Mercury of France , , p. 2678 ( read online ) .
  8. ↑ (nl) Jan L’Amiral’s file On the RKD.
  9. ↑ Rodari (1996), on. Cit. .
  10. ↑ ‘ Colorful prints », Mercury of France , ( read online ) .
  11. ↑ An announcement published in 1740 indicates the exceptional format large eagle, engravings; ‘ Plan of an anatomy book, to be printed with natural colors », Mercury of France , , p. 969-970 ( read online ) .
  12. ↑ Gascoigne Bamber, Milestones in colour printing (1457-1859) , Cambridge University press, 1997, p. twelfth .
  13. ↑ “P. Lastman would have, it seems, did test-size tests in the first half of the XVII It is century, but the true inventor of the genre is Jacques-Christophe le Blon » , writing Francis Courboin , The French print: engravers and merchants , Brussels, ( read online ) , p.  58sq .
  14. ↑ Abraham Bosse , The way of engraving with tight water and chisel: and of black engraving with the way of building modern presses & printing in a paid-size (new edition, increased by printing that imitates paintings . , Paris, Charles-Antoine Jombert, ( read online ) , p. 117-133 gives the details of the technique in black and color p. 123 .
  15. ↑ Cairn.info , Words collected by Marie Laubier, “Maxime Préaud and the reserve of prints”, BNF review , 2/ 2009 (n° 32), p. 55-65 .
  16. ↑ Antoine-Joseph Pernety , Portable paint dictionary, sculpture and engraving , Paris, ( read online ) , p. 368 sq. “Color printing works” .
  17. ↑ Teinturiers used fermentations and products like urine for color manufacturing. Since the end of XVII It is century, prescriptions govern the work and monitoring of dyers to prevent them from selling false complexion , whose color does not hold, for good complexion .
  18. ↑ Ulrike Forest camp , “The rainbow of Joseph-Marie Vien, oracle of a theory of color” , in Thomas W. Gaehtgens, Art and social norms in the 18th century It is century , MSH Paris, ( read online ) .
  19. ↑ AB, p. 123; Roger de Piles, Practical painting elemens , Paris, ( read online ) , p. 23 .
  20. ↑ Title in English = Coloritto or the Harmony of Colouring in Painting: Reduced to Mechanical Practice under Easy Precepts, and Infallible Rules, Together with some Colour’d figures, in order to render the said Precepts and Rules intelligible, not only to Painters, but even to all Lovers of Painting .
  21. ↑ Only a color board appears in this copy of the BNF.

Bibliography [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

  • The wave The borders , History of black engraving , Paris, J. Didot the elder, ( read online ) .
  • Florian Rodari et Maxime Préaud (dir.), Color anatomy: The invention of the color print , Paris & Lausanne, editions of the National Library of France / Olympic Museum Lausanne, 1996 (ISBN  978-2717719710 ) – Exhibition catalog (Paris, At  ; Lausanne, At ).
  • Color anatomy, the invention of the color print , directed by Henry Colomer, commentary said by François Marthouret, 16 min, Paris, Public information library, 1997.
  • Philip Ball ( trad. Jacques Bonnet), Living story of colors: 5000 years of painting told by the pigments [« Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour  »], Paris, Hazan, , p. 396-401
  • (in) John Gage, “Jacob Christoph Le Blon”, Print Quarterly , vol. 3, n O 1, 1986

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