Nutting Scraps: Idyllic Lakes
SOLD October 2009 |
Three small brown-toned platinum prints ca. 1920s, unmounted, hand-colored "scrap" images of country lakes by Wallace Nutting. One image with copyright notice in the negative "© W. N. 1918". Image sizes approx. 3.25 x 4 inches (8x10 cm), 2.75 x 5 inches (7x13 cm) and 2 x 3.25 inches (5x9 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.
These images come 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).
