This is both a beautiful image, and an excellent example of the first practical color printing method, the photochrom. First popular in the 1890s, the photochrom used a photographic negative to create several identical lithograph stones, each of which were manipulated to enhance or obscure various areas, depending on the amount of the color associated with that lithograph that was wanted in the final print. Then four or more carefully registered lithographic prints were made on the same stiff paper or card stock, each using a different colored ink. The results could be, as you see here, very realistic. The process was invented in Switzerland, and hence the correct spelling is photochrom, but when adopted in the U.S.A. it was often changed to photochrome, with an e on the end to help people pronounce it correctly. The Detroit Publishing Company was the primary producer of photochroms in America, and used the process to make postcards.

The picture is captioned ‘53499. UN MULO DE LA HABANA’ and ‘Copyright 1900 by Detroit Photographic Co.’ Kind of fractured Spanish to Mexican ears, perhaps that is correct in Cuba — in English it would be ‘A Mule From Havana’ — but, at least in Mexican Spanish, mule is always referred to by the feminine mula. The Detroit Photographic Company was established in the 1890s by William A. Livingstone Jr., and Edwin H. Husher, and was joined in 1897 by the famous Western photographer William Henry Jackson (1843-1942). The name of the company was changed in 1905 to Detroit Publishing Company. This image is attributed to William Henry Jackson, and bears his wonderful sense of composition. Much has been written about Jackson’s talent, and there is no sense our repeating it all here, this image serves as direct evidence.