Edward Onslow Ford (1852-1901) - The Singer (1889), two antique book photos digitally tinted to simulate brown wax coating
Somehow or other this crept past my other photos to become the first, though it's now slipped down to second; with more than 34,000 views. Um... hooray? Just wish I knew more about those 34,000 statistically, but the Stats on Flickr are pretty crappy. Most of them don't even tell you which exact links people are clicking on to view the images.
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At the risk of repeating myself, here are two photos I uploaded earlier, only now I've combined them and added a tint. Not to make them look like sepia, but as it says in the title, to simulate the brown wax coating that had been applied as a preservative before these public domain photos were taken. In the combined version I've adjusted the scale of the two images so the girl's height, head to foot, is the same in both.
The Tate now has a fascinating set of articles discussing Ford's Singer and Applause and their context within British art and Ancient Egyptian influences thereupon.
www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/edward-onslow-ford
The original greyscale versions of these pictures are here:
www.flickr.com/photos/65986072@N00/4976739351/
www.flickr.com/photos/65986072@N00/4976739359/
And for the record, here's the text that accompanied those images:
"Just as a small addendum to my photos of The Singer at the Tate Britain gallery, I'm including two images from antique art books. Bear in mind that for many years these photos, and maybe one or two others that I haven't found yet, were the only images of this amazing statue available *anywhere*. To the best of my knowledge these black and white images are in the public domain due to their age.
"I have painstakingly whited out the original light grey background and adjusted the contrast for clarity.
"If you look carefully, you'll see that the old photos show a couple of small features that have since been lost or broken. The more obvious one is the spiralling spike on top of the ibis's crown at the base of the harp. More subtly, the uppermost tip of the harp itself is no longer there today. I don't think those are huge problems in terms of the statue's aesthetic value, though it would be nice if they could be replaced.
"You can also see that in the right-hand photo some of the harpstrings are bent. In the left-hand photo most of them have been straightened, and of course they were all fixed by the time I took the colour images.
"It's also worth noting that at the time these photos were taken the statue's polychrome decoration was concealed by a protective layer of brown wax. It was not until the 1990s that the Tate's restoration team were able to restore it to the state in which it appears in the colour photos."
Edward Onslow Ford (1852-1901) - The Singer (1889), two antique book photos digitally tinted to simulate brown wax coating
Somehow or other this crept past my other photos to become the first, though it's now slipped down to second; with more than 34,000 views. Um... hooray? Just wish I knew more about those 34,000 statistically, but the Stats on Flickr are pretty crappy. Most of them don't even tell you which exact links people are clicking on to view the images.
----
At the risk of repeating myself, here are two photos I uploaded earlier, only now I've combined them and added a tint. Not to make them look like sepia, but as it says in the title, to simulate the brown wax coating that had been applied as a preservative before these public domain photos were taken. In the combined version I've adjusted the scale of the two images so the girl's height, head to foot, is the same in both.
The Tate now has a fascinating set of articles discussing Ford's Singer and Applause and their context within British art and Ancient Egyptian influences thereupon.
www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/edward-onslow-ford
The original greyscale versions of these pictures are here:
www.flickr.com/photos/65986072@N00/4976739351/
www.flickr.com/photos/65986072@N00/4976739359/
And for the record, here's the text that accompanied those images:
"Just as a small addendum to my photos of The Singer at the Tate Britain gallery, I'm including two images from antique art books. Bear in mind that for many years these photos, and maybe one or two others that I haven't found yet, were the only images of this amazing statue available *anywhere*. To the best of my knowledge these black and white images are in the public domain due to their age.
"I have painstakingly whited out the original light grey background and adjusted the contrast for clarity.
"If you look carefully, you'll see that the old photos show a couple of small features that have since been lost or broken. The more obvious one is the spiralling spike on top of the ibis's crown at the base of the harp. More subtly, the uppermost tip of the harp itself is no longer there today. I don't think those are huge problems in terms of the statue's aesthetic value, though it would be nice if they could be replaced.
"You can also see that in the right-hand photo some of the harpstrings are bent. In the left-hand photo most of them have been straightened, and of course they were all fixed by the time I took the colour images.
"It's also worth noting that at the time these photos were taken the statue's polychrome decoration was concealed by a protective layer of brown wax. It was not until the 1990s that the Tate's restoration team were able to restore it to the state in which it appears in the colour photos."