271

Jas. A. Cutting, Photographer, Cutting & Turner, a self-portrait of the photography pioneer, using his rarely seen photolithography process.

Boston: Cutting & Bradford, circa 1858
Photolithograph, 8½ x 6½ inches, on thin paper, tipped on top edge to printed 10½ x 8½-inch mount; light wrinkling, moderate foxing and toning, minor edge wear; small "Turner Lith" inked stamp on verso, inked over.

James Ambrose Cutting (1814-1867) was responsible for patenting important improvements in the ambrotype photographic process, and helped popularize its spread--although the ambrotype was apparently not named in honor of his middle name Ambrose. In 1858, he and lithographer Lodowick H. Bradford patented a photolithography process which created a photographic image on a limestone printing plate. 


This portrait of Cutting, credited to "Cutting & Bradford's photolithography," looks somewhat like a salt print photograph at first glance, and under a loupe looks much like a lithograph. It is a photographic image, rather than a lithographer's artful effort to copy a photograph. We can find no other examples of the Cutting & Bradford process at auction and very few in institutions. The American Antiquarian Society holds another example of the present portrait, as well as a similar one of the lithographer Bradford, and two other specimens of their work.

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