George Baxter

George Baxter (1804–1867) was an English artist and printer based in London. He is credited with the invention of commercially viable colour printing. Though colour printing had been developed in China centuries before, it was not commercially viable. However, in early years of the 19th century the process of colour printing had been revived by George Savage, a Yorkshireman in London. It was to be Savage's methods upon which Baxter, already an accomplished artist and engraver, was to improve. In 1828, Baxter began experimenting with colour printing by means of woodblocks. Baxter's life Baxter was born in 1804 in Lewes, Sussex, and was the second son of John Baxter, a printer. At 20, Baxter was illustrating books printed by his father; at 23, Baxter moved to London to be apprenticed to Samuel Williams, a wood engraver. In 1827, Baxter set up his own business and married Mary Harrild, daughter of Robert Harrild, a printing engineer and a friend of Baxter's father. Baxter now began to experiment with his own methods of colour printing – his first known colour print, Butterflies, was published in 1829. Baxter's experiments first bore commercial fruit in 1834, with two small vignettes published in Mudie's "British Birds". In 1835, Baxter was granted Patent No. 6916 – Improvements in Producing Coloured Steel Plate, Copper Plate and other Impressions, which outlined the combined intaglio and relief process he would continue to use for the next thirty years. Baxter's original patent ran for 14 years; after the renewal of his patent in 1849 for another five years, he began to sell licenses for the use of his printing process to other printing firms. In 1837, he published 'Pictorial Album; or, Cabinet of Paintings' containing designs, executed in oil colours from original pictures, with illustrations in verse and prose.