This study of a young girl was one of eighteen examples illustrating how the intaglio technique of copper engraving, normally a black-and-white process, could be applied to color printing by using multiple plates to create the image. The exhibition’s section on intaglio featured examples of mezzotint, aquatint, etching, and drypoint, as well as the crayon manner seen here.

Over the course of his career, Koehler gathered historic and contemporary images that captured printmakers engaged in their craft. Koehler knew the sitter of this etching, Peter Moran, having featured his work in American Art Review and included it in his 1885 book Etching: An Outline of Its Technical Processes and its History, with Some Remarks on Collections and Collecting.  

This was one of three “photoglyphs” by English photography pioneer Henry Fox Talbot included in the exhibition under intaglio processes in the photo-mechanical section. It was published in the Photographic News on November 12, 1858.

A small section of the exhibition focused on how printmakers used etching to lay the groundwork for engraving, essentially as a means to accelerate the process of preparing a plate for printing. This monumental plate shows both techniques. The portrait head of Lincoln is etched, while the jacket shows significant engraving. The MFA also holds several proofs from this plate.

This rare example of dry flong, a mold for casting a stereotype printing plate, is part of a sequence of process materials in the exhibition that demonstrated key steps in reproducing an image in a newspaper. In this instance, the image is a drawing based on a photograph taken at the 1891 Harvard–Yale football game, which took place less than two months before the exhibition opened.

Koehler selected this particular proof to illustrate the process of drypoint, since its white lines are readily visible, as noted in the exhibition catalogue. Koehler also showed McLaughlin’s work in an 1888 print exhibition in Cincinnati, the artist’s hometown. 

The exhibition presented six examples of photo-aquatint and photo-gravure by Boussod, Valadon et Cie., which showed the possibilities for reproducing artworks, whether drawings in graphite or ink, engravings, oil paintings, or photographs. American viewers almost certainly would have recognized internationally acclaimed French stage actor Sarah Bernhardt, pictured here.

This work combines the techniques of engraving and etching with the goal of recreating the appearance of a crayon drawing. It has long been credited to French artist Gilles Demarteau, who had three prints in this section of the exhibition.

Koehler included two prints by Swiss artist Maria Anna Angelica Kauffman in the exhibition’s section on aquatint, a type of etching process. The differences between these works (see also Woman Braiding Her Hair) highlight the great variety of effects printmakers can achieve with aquatint. Throughout his career, Koehler advocated for women artists and printmakers; in 1887, the year he was appointed curator at the MFA, he organized a groundbreaking exhibition of American women etchers.

At the time of the exhibition, methods of printing photographs that would not fade were highly sought after. Koehler included six examples of photographs printed on porcelain by Boston photographer Augustus Marshall in the section on permanent photography. Marshall created the portraits on porcelain using a process that can also be employed on enamel, glass, or paper.

This is one of the first woodburytypes ever published. Photographer Walter B. Woodbury, who invented the process—or someone working under his supervision—likely made it. Woodburytypes were the most successful reproductions of photographs in the second half of the 19th century and were prized for their subtle tonality. The complexity of the process, and especially the fragility of the surface gelatin, made it a relatively short-lived reproductive technique.

This calendar is an early example of photoengraving in the United States. In 1878, around when this calendar was published, the American Institute awarded Louis Brown and Company, the Philadelphia firm that produced it, a medal for their “autoplates.”

John Walter Osborne invented a new type of line-transfer printing in Australia in 1859. This extreme reduction—just a few inches high—is one of numerous examples of “Osborne’s Process” in the exhibition. It was among the first  specimens Osborne printed in the United States, in 1866, the year he founded the American Photolithographic Company in New York.

This rare “chromatotype” (today called a photocollograph) portrait from life by Edward Bierstadt, brother of painter Albert Bierstadt and of photographer Charles Bierstadt, is an early experiment in color photography in the United States.