Nutting Scraps: Country Road
SOLD October 2009 |
Brown-toned platinum print ca. 1920s, uncolored, untrimmed "scrap" image of a winding country road by Wallace Nutting. With partial copyright notice visible in the negative "[copyri]ght 1908 [Wal]lace Nutting". Print size 3.5 x 4.25 inches (9x11 cm).
Nutting's studio normally issued his images as part of a complete hand-colored, signed and framed package. The process of hand-coloring was accomplished by a team of mainly female colorists, some of whom also served as models for Nutting's Colonial interior scenes.
This image comes from a group of uncolored and partially-colored Nutting "scraps," partial image sheets, and other discard images probably rejected by Nutting's colorists before the process of coloring, mounting, and framing was complete. While the images show penciled "cancellation" marks and other flaws that probably led to their rejection as finished images, they also offer an interesting perspective on Nutting's images, rarely found without their sometimes obscuring or distracting colored overlay.
Recommended reading: Thomas Andrew Denenberg, Wallace Nutting and the Invention of Old America (2003).
