Rare 18th century colour print discovered
AN artwork displayed at a National Trust property and seen by thousands of visitors each year has been identified as a rare surviving work by a printmaker credited with inventing colour printing.
It had always been assumed that the copy of the Sir Anthony van Dyck portrait, the Three Eldest Children of King Charles I, displayed at Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk was oil on paper.
But the artwork was found to be a rare print by 18th century printmaker Jacob Christoff Le Blon when it was sent away for conservation treatment at the Trust’s Royal Oak Conservation Studio at Knole in Kent.
The German-born painter and engraver, who died in 1741 aged 73, was the first to create a threecolour printing process - the forerunner of the CMYK colour printing used today.
His method used mezzotint - a monochrome printmaking process with separate plates inked in blue, yellow and red and superimposed on one another in order to create an endlessly variable depth of hue.
Until then, artists had inked colours one beside the other on a single printing plate.
National Trust curator Jane Eade said van Dyck’s portrait, in the
Royal Collection (1635-6), was ‘much copied’ but ‘only three Le
Blon prints of it were known to survive.’
“To have discovered a fourth is really exciting, especially as it is the only version that remains hanging in its historic setting,” she said.
Analysis of the piece helped identify the colours Le Blon is known to have used, such as indigo and carmine or red lake.
Le Blon moved to London in 1718 where, calling himself James Christopher, he was granted a royal privilege by George I to practise his trichromatic printing.
Royal patronage gave him access to Kensington Palace to copy paintings - including the van Dyck of Charles I’s children.