Mower County transcript., 1869-12-23
Chrome Picture Making rs Seen by
Mark Twain.

From the Buffalo Express.
Mark Twain has been to Boston, and
here is what he says Of Prang's picture
& 4 mt AI e.
Ihave been looking at Mr.. sPrang's great
chrome establishment. 1t ought to be
called the Temple Of Patience. No Ameri>
can need ever hope to become q successful
chrome artist. Only German patience and
Of temperament can endure such
tediousness. One month OF it
would turn an Americans hair gray, two
months would make him bald, three would
strike him blind, four would drive him
crazy, and five would kill him. Would you
like to try?
You have often seen Prang's chrome of IL
little boy asleep in chair, and a cat sur
helping herself to pudding
in his lap~a pleasant little. picture that
grows on you and holds you with its nat
uralness. Il is all simplicity-there is moth.
ing gaudy about it-and yet each Of those
small pictures goes through a lithogtaphic
printing press nineteen separate and dis
tinct times! First, . sheet of fine, Transparent
isingglass 10 laid on the original painting,
and on this the artist sketches in delicate
outline the prominent features of the pic
ture, as children copy engravings by help of
the window glass. The etching is in litho-
graphic ink, and is easily transferred to the
smooth surface of block of lithographic
stone by heavy pressure. Proofs are
printed from it for the use of The chrome
artist On one stone he draws the ground
work, surrounding the boy and the cat, and
this is printed in faint pinkish tint. On
another stone he draws the boys legs,
arms, and part OF the cat. These are
printed in sort of mild leaden color. On
another stone he draws again all that was
drawn before, and adds string hanging
from the wall, which is to support broom.
This is printed in brown, for instance. He
draws portions of the boy on three or four
more stones, and odds the broom, the pot
and the ball, leaving blank spots for the
pudding, for the gloss on the hair, and the
sheen where the light falls on the child's
knee. When all these stones are printed
on sheet, one on top Of another and all
Of different eelors, you begin to discern q
vague, shadoxJ resemblance to q sleeping
boy-ghostly, spiritual, dreamy, uncertain.
Some printed proofs show nothing but two
or three splotches of red scattered SEEM
ingly at random on the broad white sur
face. In subsequent proofs they appear in
their proper places, and become red divi.
sion Of the boys ball, the cats tongue, and
so on. Thus, patch upon patch, and smirch
upon smireh of color, the boy and lis cat
are drawn and redrawn, printed and re.
printed for nineteen times, on sheet of
paper, till at last the chaos of arms and
legs, tails and paws, tints and splotches,
are harmoniously blended together, and the
finished picture Is before you. And then
ct distance Of six feet it is nice Judge
that can tell it from the original oil paint
ing.
Chromcs are printed from sixteen to
twenty-si1 times, usually, according to the
elaboration that may be necessary. The
finest, aHd certainly the most elaborate
chrome yet issued in this country is Mr..
Prang's latest the ''Pompeiian Mother
. picture of an elegantly dressed lady o.
that damaged city, sitting in her chamber
with hel child standing by her side. 1t re-
quired .torty-taoo separate printings to com
plete this dainty picture, andof course the
artist hsd to draw it on forty-two differen
stones. He remarked that he was mucl
interested in it till he had drawn it abou
twentyseven times, but towards the las
he began to get tired of it-.he began tt
hanke! after something fresh. He says h<
can blindfold himself, now, and get drunl
on nineteen different kinds of liquor, ant
20 deaf and dumb and crazy, and stand o,
bis head, with one arm in a sling and tn
other tied behind him, and draw that pic
ture straight through and never miss
line. I do not believe it. The circum
stances would be against him.
After the picture had been printed il
colors forty two times, the same artist hat
to draw it entire, once more, on stone, an.
engrave it, and then cut lines across it an.
up and down, and every way, to represen
the threads of the coarse canvass of a,
oil painting and the places where the col
ors in an oil painting stand out from tn
surface. The finished picture is lai
on this stone and run through q stean
press that comes down it with the weigh
of q couple of continents, and there is you
picture with surface as rough and rasp
as any oil picture in the kingdom. Th
artists four tedious months of shaving owe
the same old tilesome picture is ut an en-
for q coat of varnish is all that is needle
now to make the Pompeiian Mother read
for the picture stores. Four months cease
less work repeating the same picture-al
l not right in saying that no American nee
ever hope to succeed as shromo artist
Solomon could not have sale wiser thing
I do not care how much he drained himself