Autochromes by Lumière Brothers

Auguste and Louis Lumière were two of most important inventors and business people of the 20th Century.

In 1895, they invented cinema. In 1907, they invented colour photography (patented in 1904). The Lumière Brothers built one of the most successful and profitable businesses in the world. For 25 years, from 1907-1932, their invention of colour photography - the autochrome - was the first and only way to take photographs in colour anywhere in the world.

We are fortunate to have available for purchase some of the very first colour photographs taken by its inventors. The Lumière Brothers were amateur photographers themselves and took a very small number of photographs of their family, homes, and holidays. These photographs date from around 1907, as confirmed by a specialist curator at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

The majority of autochromes taken by the Lumières are in the collection of the Institut Lumière in Lyon, France, and museums like the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

The provenance of these autochromes is short and strong. All of them previously formed part of the collection of Mr Jean Winckler (born 1920), one of the nephews of Auguste and Louis Lumière, and son of France Lumière (1882-1924) and Charles Winckler (1882-1956) - see family tree. There were six siblings in the Lumière family, and four of them married into the Franco-German Winckler family, who ran a very successful restaurant and brewing business. The previous owner of these autochromes acquired them from the Wincklers in the 1950s.

Autochromes were made using the same foundations of what makes digital photography possible. Namely, that any colour can be made up of simply three colours: red, green, and blue (RGB). It was following this discovery in 1861 by the English scientist James Clerk Maxwell that the Lumières spent many years trying to perfect a method to create a reliable and scalable process of colour photography. Autochromes are made using many millions of tiny grains of potato starch to which red, green, and blue pigments are added and then applied to a glass plate. Once a photograph was taken using existing cameras used for B&W photography, the glass plate was then sent to a Lumière laboratory to be processed and stabilised with an additional glass plate added for conservation and long-term protection.

"The photographers [Auguste and Louis] had a thorough understanding of the rules of artistic photography, the role played by contrast, opposition and linear compensation. They were familiar with the notions of unity and balance, as well as being skillful colourists" (Natalie Boulouch, 1995). The Lumière brothers' showed themselves to be very sensitive to the harmonies of line and colour essential to the pictorial tradition, and even a certain inheritance from the Impressionists. The lines of the landscapes provide a lattice of diagonals, deliberate asymmetries, and touches of bright colour bring a vibrancy to the soft tones.

As all these photographs were personal, they were taken in locations where they had homes or close by. For instance, 'Coastal Woodland' was taken in La Ciotat, a coastal town in the Cote d'Azur where the Lumière family are widely known and documented to have spent their Summer holidays and where their father Antoine built in 1893 a large summer house called Chateau du Clos des Plages (later known as Chateau Lumière). The famous Lumière film "L'arrivée du train en gare à La Ciotat" was filmed in La Ciotat. 'Un Petit Repos', 'Forest Bridge with Mother and Child', and 'Portrait of Girl in Garden with Doll' were photographed in the public park 'Parc Tete d'Or' in Lyon. In the image 'Un Petit Repos’, the bench overlooked the lake.

ARTWORKS FOR SALE

We have an exceptional opportunity to purchase these rare autochromes. Each purchase includes:

i) the UNIQUE glass original autochrome; ii) a high-resolution TIFF digital file; iii) a beautiful large museum-quality print, printed with archival inks and framed in white-washed beechwood, with museum-standard conservation glass, matt, and backing (Edition 1 of 1); iv) Copyright and commercial rights of the image; v) certificate of authenticity.

The wonderful aspect of this is you can store the original autochrome safely in a box away from light for conservation benefits, taking it out only for very special occasions to show your friends. While you can keep and share the work digitally on your devices or screens at home or work, and have a unique framed print. If you wish to make the purchase as a NFT, we can happily arrange this for you so that the certificate of ownership is on the blockchain, along with the digital photo asset.

If you want to learn more about autochromes and the Lumière brothers, there is a large amount of literature online. Here is a short selection.

Short video by the Victoria & Albert Museum.
The Dawn of Colour Photography.
Stieglitz - Autochromes
Institut Lumière information on Autochromes (in French).

Note: Prices exclude tax and transport. All works can be sent anywhere in the world.