Is this 1868 image likely a photograph or a lithograph/painting?
Asked 5/14/2018
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I found an image said to be an 1868 photograph of a site identified by some as Joseph’s Tomb. A color version of the same scene also exists. From a distance it resembles a photograph, but close up some areas look drawn or painted, especially the lighter structures in the middle. Based on visual clues and the existence of the color version, is this more likely to be an original photograph, a reproduction of a photograph, or a lithograph/artist’s rendering?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
8y ago
2 Answers
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This is probably a photograph, or a scan of a copy of a copy of a photograph, at least. There's nothing particularly that jumps out as not being consistent with that. And, on the other hand, an almost-abstract graphic composition like this would have been quite out of time for a painting or drawing in the mid 19th century. Compare this painting made a few years earlier:
You can see the same boulder and cylindrical structures, but with a very different representation. (Quick Internet research indicates the cylinders are plastered pillars with indentations for burnt offerings at the top.) I would expect other contemporaneous artistic renderings to be more in this style, rather than like your example.
Originally by user1943. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user1943
8y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Based on the community answers, the monochrome image is most likely a photograph, or at least a scanned reproduction of an old photographic print. Nothing in it clearly rules out photography, and its overall rendering fits an early photograph better than a mid-19th-century painting would.
The color version appears to be something different: a tinted lithograph associated with David Roberts, who made sketches and watercolors of Egyptian and Near Eastern sites that were later turned into printed lithographs. So the existence of a color version does not prove the monochrome image is painted; it may simply be a separate artistic rendering of the same subject.
Close-up “drawn” or soft-looking details can happen in old reproductions because of print texture, retouching, fading, multiple generations of copying, or low-resolution scans. Early photographs also often look less crisp than modern viewers expect.
So the safest conclusion is: the black-and-white image is probably photographic or derived from a photograph, while the color version is likely a lithographic artwork, not a color photograph.
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