GEORGE BAXTER

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 52, 24 November 1928, Page 27

GEORGE BAXTER

PIONEER COLOUR RRINTER

In the roar and bustle of London life a minor celebration went unnoticed in a flood of more important events, says the London correspondent of the “Sydney . Morning Herald.” Yet to those interested in colour printing—and surely that means everyone who buys or reads a modern magazine—the function marked a slight recognition of a pioneer’s work. The event was the unveiling of a memorial tablet on a house in Northampton Square in which for 16 years lived George Baxter, father of colour printing. Baxter is intimately linked with Sydney througli his son George, who conducted a picture business in one of the Sydney arcades. Some of the medals and important relics connected with George Baxter, senior, have been brought back to London during recent years from Sydney and other parts of Australia. These included a key drawing to a large and important picture of the coronation of Queen Victoria, having on it nearly 200 names of persons written in pencil by Baxter, who was given special permission to attend the coronation in order to make the sketch. This key drawing was found in Tasmania, and its discovery was regarded as important, because some of the 200 figures in the completed picture had not previously been known.

Baxter invented and patented a method of printing in oil colours in 1835. His process, though now obscure, was in effect a species of chiaroscuro work, with the difference that the first plate or block was fully engraved. and the subsequent blocks

were used for the purpose of introducing the various colours. Expert opinion to-day ranks him as one of the chief creative men of the nineteenth century. His colour sense was most delicate, and he was particularly successful in reproducing gradations of flesh tints. He painted pictures himself, and exhibited in the Royal Academy. But his greatest success and popularity came with the production of his colour prints. In the Fine Art Court of the 1851 Exhibition he had 60 examples of these prints, which were to be found in the palaces of Royalty and the humble homes of cottagers alike. In making some of these pictures Baxter had to give more than two dozen colour impressions or printings, from separate blocks, and with each block it was possible to make errors in “registering” and in depth of colour. He may be said to have painted pictures with oil colours and blocks much as other artists used oil colours and brushes. He did not rely on placing one colour upon another to obtain intermediate effects, because each colour gave its own particular subtle effect. He mixed his own colours, which were from earths and vegetable matter. Baxter's days were before the time of coal tar colours.

Baxter’s prints number about 400, though if minute variations resulting from the Irregular or partial manipulation of the successive blocks necessary to form a perfect picture are taken into account, they total several thousands. Baxter, the son of a printer, was born in 1804, and died in 1867.