page_title: William Kurtz
section_title: Halftone pioneer
hierarchical_section_title: William Kurtz / Halftone pioneer
caption_attribution_description: English: Still-life of fruit. One of the first images printed using a three-color halftone process that was widely reproduced. Caption reads: "Naturfarbendruck. Aufnahme nach der Natur und Autotypie von W. Kurtz. In drei Farben auf der Buchdruck-Schnellpress von Bartlett &amp; Co., in New York gedruckt." ("Natural-color printing. Admission from nature by W. Kurtz and autotype. Printed in three colors on the printing press of quick Bartlett &amp; Co., in New York.")
context_page_description: William Kurtz was a German-American artist, illustrator, and photographer. He was also a pioneer in the development of halftone printing of color photographs.
context_section_description: Learning of Georg Meisenbach's success with halftone printing in England, Kurtz set out to reproduce the process and in doing so, became one of the United States' first commercial practitioners of reproducing photographic plates in halftone prints. This proved very profitable for him.
  Likewise, when Hermann Wilhelm Vogel's advances in color photography became known, Kurtz arranged to purchase the American rights to the "three-color process" from Vogel and was able to devise a way to apply it to halftone printing. In doing so, he—in conjunction with Vogel's son Ernst—was able to produce superior results and drive the cost of color printing down dramatically, so much so that Vogel himself acknowledged that Kurtz's adaptations had improved on his own discoveries. Using this process, Kurtz made the first color images that were widely reproduced—a still life of fruit on a table—being published in the January 1, 1893, edition of Photographische Mittheilungen, a German photography journal published by Vogel. The same image was later published in the U.S. in the March 1893 issue of Engraver & Printer.
caption: Still life of fruit, printed using the three-color process (January 1893)
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