Depression Era Picture - Is this pointilism?

I've had this depression era tape framed picture for a number of years. I've always assumed it was a print but recently I got out the loupe and this is what I found. Is this pointilism? - it looks like several shades of brown and gray. Is it an original? Does the signature, E.Wilson, mean anything to any body. There is some writing on the back (last picture) but I doubt if it will provide any clues.
On a related topic, my parents came of age in the depression and there were always a couple of these tape framed pictures around the house and cottage. I've always referred to them as tape-framed but when I did a google search, I got zero hits. Are they called something else? I've always understood they were depression era but was this practice used before the 1930s? - perhaps earlier depressions? I'm in Canada.

 

The image itself is Social Realism but, from what I can see, it does appear to be painted using the Pointillistic technique. The artist is likely Ernest Wilson, a late Victorian. Here is a sample of his work from a book of poetry, The Harvest Fields, that he illustrated. I would assume yours is a print.

Debora

 

It looks to me like a chronograph using "Ben Gay" shading mediums.

This is from an earlier post of a lithograph that showed the same sort of texturing:
Bamber Gascoigne describes the use of stipple patterns to provide shading on commercial color lithographs (chromolithographs), noting that "The ordinary late nineteenth-century commercial lithograph, sometimes to the eye but certainly through a [magnifying] glass, will seem to have an advanced case of the measles."
These shading tints were first applied to the stone by hand with a pen and lithographic ink. In 1879 Benjamin Day, a New Jersey printer, developed transparent sheets embossed with a variety of tinting patterns which could be inked and pressed onto selected areas of the lithographic stone to produce various types of shading. These semi-mechanical "shading mediums" came to be called Ben Day mediums.

 

I've done a fair bit of graphic arts and I've used the rub on shading sheets that are the mid century equivalent of the Ben Day process (although we never called them that). Although they have an apparent randomness there is also a high degree of order which I don't see in this picture. The dots trail in the direction that the artist wanted them and differ in size and intensity as the artist desired. I'm pretty sure they've been applied manually in the original. But if as Debora has suggested it is a print, what would the printing process be?

 

So happy to have inputs above.

Debora

 

Here's a close-up of the title page of The Harvest Fields. Does look like something in printing process, not artistic.

Debora

 

I don't see any reason to change my mind about this being a chromolithograph, and I definitely would not call it pointillism. Even if patterned media were not used, it's still more like stipple.

 

Well, I can confirm that image comes from the book The Harvest Fields which was published in 1886. Here it is.

https://www.catawiki.com/fr/l/18837...ields-2-andere-romantische-uitgaven-1886-1892

Debora

 

And here's the poem it illustrates.

Debora

 

I think that nails it. Great work. Would this have been a page out of the book or were illustrations like this also sold separately at the time? The tape framing - could this have been from the 1890s?

 

It's not a page from the book because the quality of reproduction is quite different.

Debora

 

How big is this print?

 

roughly 6" x 8"

 

That's a book-sized print. The link from Deborah shows the book with a non-standard binding. Cut that bit of string and the whole thing comes apart. Could be from a book, but it's not impossible that they were also produced as independent pieces.

I don't know why Deborah says the quality of reproduction is different. The one from the link has been protected inside the book, while yours has been hanging in the open and probably has a degree of fading. The two images have lead different lives.

I don't think there is a special name for that taped framing... just an inexpensive way of presenting wall decor.

 

I was referring to the quality of resolution. The image inside the book has high resolution. The framed image doesn't.

Debora

 

Mine has been sandwiched under glass since the tape framing was done (my guess now would be the 1890s). However the back has been exposed. In the places where the tape is broken, there doesn't seem to be anything behind the print and it appears to be thicker and stiffer than what you would find in the average book. It looks a lot like photographic paper but it wouldn't have been printed photographically because photographic processes were all monochrome back then.