Odd painted prints?

I am going to go ahead and say these pictures weren't taken with a professional camera...

I bought these at auction where they were sold as 1800s lithographs.

The inscriptions read published by Henry Graves & Co.

The artist is De Montpezat, which Im guessing is Henri D'annecy Montpezat.

Engraved by Himely.

Henry Graves & Co was from 1844-1899

Montpezat was 1817-1859

and Im guessing the Himely is Sigismond Himely, an engraver, 1801-1866?


When I look at the gray sky color (through a 40x loupe) I can see what looks like little dots, but comparing it to other prints in the house its not really the same thing. It goes throughout the whole picture; for example, the gray horse, where there should absent color you see the same tint color
When I get down to color area is where things start changing.
Some of the colors look almost waxy; for example, the browns, oranges, pinks, some of the deeper blacks (ie parts of the reins, carriage).

Some of the colors almost look painted on; like the blue as it is a solid stroke that in some places over laps.

The shaded area (the gray horse for example) has your more spiratic/inconsistent dotting

The names/titles do not seem to be the dotted pattern either.

I removed one of the pictures from the frame. Whatever it is they glued it to a piece of cardboard



Any idea on what these are?




The print glued to cardboard


These pictures are of the two brown horses with the lady
The corners





Here is an example of the different types of inks
The horses with the sun reflecting off the ink


Waxy looking ink on dress


Blue Paint examples

 

Fascinating... I can't wait to see what our experts have to say!
Welcome to the forums. If you haven't already, you can post in the "Introduction" category and tell people a little about yourself and your interests.

 

hand tinted litho's....

 

While waiting for others, you could go to the Identification section of Graphics Atlas online. Here is a link. http://www.graphicsatlas.org/identification/

Click on the "Planographic" link in the first section (pre-photographic) and check the descriptions and close-up photos of the four different lithograph links that are listed. From what I can see in your photos, I would think they could be original to the mid-19th century but I'm certainly not an expert.

 

What I'm wondering about is what the application for the tinted background would be.
Ie:
If they had a certain tool they used to get an even application of "dots" or if the tinting "dots" would be as sporadic as the actual images shading

 

I think it would take a specialist to answer that question. I hope that somebody here knows the answer. I do like the prints.

 

It's hard to tell online, especially without a clear macro-level closeup.

If you're seeing dots, most likely the prints are either chromolithographs from the late 1800s or early 1900s, or offset prints from the late 1800s through the present.

Chromolithograph dots are irregular, photo offset dots are regular.

 

Pictures don't have to be grey fog. It's not the camera.





The prints look like routine hand coloured mid 19th C lithographs to me.

 

Thanks for the updated replies! They've help tremendously!