George Baxter was an English artist and printer based in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. He is credited with the invention of commercially viable colour printing.

Though colour printing had been developed in China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 centuries before, it was not commercially viable. However, in early years of the 19th century the process of colour printing had been revived by George Savage, a Yorkshire

Yorkshire

Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

man in London. It was to be Savage's methods upon which Baxter, already an accomplished artist and engraver, was to improve. In 1828, Baxter began experimenting with colour printing by means of woodblock

Woodblock printing

Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper....

s.

Baxter's life

Baxter was born in 1804 in Lewes, Sussex, and was the second son of John Baxter

John Baxter (publisher)

John Baxter , was an English printer and publisher.Baxter was born at Rickhurst, Surrey, 20 October 1781. Early in life he settled in Lewes as a bookseller and printer. Among the earliest of Baxter's enterprises was the publication of a large quarto Bible, annotated by the Rev...

, a printer. At 20 Baxter was illustrating books printed by his father; at 23 Baxter moved to London to be apprenticed to Mr Williams, a wood engraver. In 1827 Baxter set up business on his own and married Mary Harrild, daughter of Robert Harrild, a printing engineer and a friend of Baxter’s father. Baxter now began to experiment with his own methods of colour printing – his first known colour print, Butterflies, was published in 1829. Baxter's experiments first bore commercial fruit in 1834, with two small vignettes published in Mudie

Charles Edward Mudie

Charles Edward Mudie , English publisher and founder of Mudie's Lending Library and Mudie’s Subscription Library, was the son of a second-hand bookseller and newsagent. In 1840 he established a stationery and book-selling business in Bloomsbury...

's "British Birds".

In 1835 Baxter was granted Patent No. 6916 – Improvements in Producing Coloured Steel Plate, Copper Plate and other Impressions, which outlined the combined intaglio and relief process he would continue to use for the next thirty years. Baxter’s original patent ran for 14 years; after the renewal of his patent in 1849 for another five years he began to sell licenses for the use of his printing process to other printing firms.

Despite his technical excellence and the general popularity of his prints, Baxter’s business was never profitable – his process was laborious and it seems likely that his perfectionism prevented him from completing many of his commissioned works on time. In 1860 he held a sale of all his stock and equipment, most of which was not sold. Eventually he sold his plates and blocks to the printer Vincent Brooks, who later republished some of Baxter’s images. Baxter was declared bankrupt in 1865 and died in 1867, after an accident involving a horse omnibus.

It is estimated that Baxter himself printed over twenty million prints during his career.

Baxter’s licensees

A number of printers purchased a licence from Baxter, following the renewal of his patent in 1849. The most well known of these was Abraham Le Blond. Other firms who worked under Baxter’s license include Bradshaw & Blacklock; William Dickes; Kronheim & Co.; Joseph Mansell and Myers & Co. Other printers known to have used Baxter’s methods after his patent expired included George Baxter Jr.; Vincent Brooks; Edmund Evans

Edmund Evans

Edmund Evans was a prominent English wood engraver and colour printer during the Victorian era. Evans specialized in full-colour printing, which became popular in the mid-19th century...

; Benjamin Fawcett; Gregory, Collins & Reynolds; Leighton Bros; Moor & Crosby and William Russell. George Cargill Leighton, a former apprentice of Baxter’s, never worked under Baxter’s licence but became a prominent printer in his own right, becoming the printer and later owner of the Illustrated London News, the first journal in the world to include regular colour plates. Leighton could not use a metal intaglio plate as a base without infringing Baxter’s patent, although “… the fact that he had to do without it probably helped to ensure his commercial success”. Nevertheless, Leighton did often use an aquatint base.

Kronheim

Joseph Martin Kronheim

Joseph Martin Kronheim was a German-born lithographer and wood engraver known for founding Kronheim & Co. and working with George Baxter.-Biography:...

and Dickes both used Baxter’s process from 1849 onwards, and both were large suppliers of colour plates to book publishers, “competing on price rather than quality”. Baxter’s patent process was not necessarily strictly followed by his licensees – for example, both Kronheim and Dickes were lithographic printers as well as wood engravers, and most likely mixed all of their printing methods together. In fact, it is often impossible to say exactly how a given colour print of this era has been produced. Generally, Baxter’s licensees used fewer colour blocks than Baxter himself and, in the opinion of many, “none surpassed him in quality, being more concerned with cheapness”.

Baxter's method

Baxter’s process for producing colour prints combined relief and intaglio printing methods. A ‘key’ plate was prepared, usually made of steel and using any combination of engraving, stipple, etching and aquatint. Baxter also appears to have used mezzotint and lithography to create his key plate on occasion. The key plate provided the main lines of the image and much of the tone, light and shade. It was usually printed in a neutral tone, such as light grey or terracotta. Often Baxter used more than one colour to ink the key plate – for example, to gradate the image from blue in the sky, to buff in the middle distance and to a darker colour in the foreground; i.e. inking the plate à la poupée. Usually Baxter used aquatint for landscapes and stipple to work faces and figures.

Following printing of the key plate, relief blocks were prepared, usually from wood but also from zinc or copper, using impressions of the key plate to create the blocks. Usually one block was prepared for each colour, although sometimes two or more colours or tints were included on the same block, requiring hand inking of each individual area. Each colour was applied and allowed to dry before adding the next colour. It is thought that Baxter usually started printing with a blue tint and then progressed through the other colours in a predetermined order – all blocks were numbered sequentially and labelled with the colour to be used. Sometimes up to 24 separate colours were used, although ten could be considered an average number. Baxter achieved his precise registration by fixing the print over a number of spikes, over which the blocks would also fit.

Baxter is thought to have used hand-colouring for finishing touches on occasion – for example, “… extra touches of red on the mouths, high white lights upon jewels …”. It is also believed Baxter occasionally applied glaze via an additional printing step all over the image, composed of his usual varnish with a ‘hard drier’ added to make it insoluble in water. More often, however, it is thought that Baxter glazed areas of the print selectively by hand using a glaze composed of gum arabic, egg white and Castile soap.

External links

• Baxter Color Prints digitized 1919 book, includes illustrations
• The George Baxter and his Licensees' Prints Collections at the Victoria University Library at the University of Toronto
• The New Baxter Society