American Civil War Union General Philip Henry Sheridan (1831-1888) is shown later in life in a crayon portrait by New York artist Otto Venino. Venino worked from an original photograph of Sheridan taken by Washington, D.C. photographer Charles Milton Bell. This photo-realistic portrait is described in the plate as “From the original drawing by Otto Venino“, with no credit given to Bell.

Otto Venino Sr.: 1859-1929

“Otto Venino, Artist, No. 744 Broadway, corner Astor Place.—A name as widely known as it is honored in art circles is that of Venino. The late Mr. Venino, whose regrettable decease occurred in 1880, (Franz Venino-1820-1880-editor) was an artist of genius and wide fame, among whose celebrated works are those beautiful pictures “The Fall of Carthage,” “King Lear and Cordelia in Prison,” “Too Late.” and many other chef d’oeuvres. He built up an unsurpassed reputation for conscientious and talented work, and included among his patrons our best people and most prominent art connoisseurs. Mr. Otto Venino, his son, early displayed a leaning toward the profession, and has manifested great gifts as an artist. He was formerly with Mr. Kurtz, the well known photo artist of Madison Square, and did some of the fine work in that gentleman’s studio. Upon the decease of his father, Mr. Venino started out for himself, and has one of the most centrally located and attractive studios in New York. It is elegantly fitted up, and contains a splendid array of specimens of Mr. Venino’s genius. He makes a specialty of portraits, doing them in all styles, crayon, india-ink, water-color, pastel, etc. He has acquired a distinguished reputation in our best circles, and a sufficient proof of the superiority and popularity of his work is that he completed one hundred and sixty-three first-class portraits last year. His fidelity to detail, brilllancy of touch, and ability to preserve every feature of the most speaking likenesses, go to prove that he is an artist of true genius, and animated with but the one aim, to excel in his chosen profession. He has testimonials from the best men in New York, according him the highest of compliments for his wonderful success, and which has within a comparatively brief period placed him at the head of his profession in the metropolis, and which ensures for him an international reputation as one of America’s artists.”—from: New York’s Great Industries. Exchange and Commercial Review, Embracing also Historical and Descriptive Sketch of the City, Its Leading Merchants and Manufacturers, Historical Publishing Company, New York and Chicago, 1884, p. 128

Charles Milton Bell (1848 – May 12, 1893) was an American photographer who was noted for his portraits of Native Americans and other figures of the United States in the late 1800s. He was called “one of Washington’s leading portrait photographers during the last quarter of the nineteenth century” by the Library of Congress.—Wikipedia (2026)

Crayon Portraits

The following excerpt description courtesy Library of Congress, Conservation Division Senior Photograph Conservator Alisha Chipman & Senior Paper Conservator Gwenanne Edwards:

“Crayon enlargements, also called crayon portraits, are photographic prints with hand-applied media such as pastel, chalk, watercolor, and conté crayon. The photographs are usually silver-based images projection-printed onto lightweight paper. Typically, the prints are mounted onto a secondary support either of paperboard or of canvas that is stretched across a wood strainer. Convex crayon portraits are also common and consist of rectangular or oval secondary paperboard mounts that have been molded to a convex shape. Crayon enlargements were popular in the United States from the 1860s through the 1920s – many of you may have inherited one that depicts one of your ancestors!” —Treatment of Crayon Enlargements from the Nelson W. Jordan Family Papers, February 13, 2023

Philip Henry Sheridan (March 6, 1831– August 5, 1888) was a career United States Army officer and a Union general in the American Civil War. His career was noted for his rapid rise to major general and his close association with General-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant, who transferred Sheridan from command of an infantry division in the Western Theater to lead the Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac in the East. In 1864, he defeated Confederate forces under General Jubal Early in the Shenandoah Valley and his destruction of the economic infrastructure of the Valley, called “The Burning” by residents, was one of the first uses of scorched-earth tactics in the war. In 1865, his cavalry pursued Gen. Robert E. Lee and was instrumental in forcing his surrender at Appomattox Courthouse.—Wikipedia (2026)

Sun & Shade: An Artistic Periodical

“Within the covers of Sun and Shade…We shall especially endeavor to encourage the artistic side of direct photography in all its phases,”—Ernest Edwards, president & publisher, 1889

In July, 1888, the first issue of Sun & Shade: A Photographic Record of Events, was published in New York City by The Photo-Gravure Company. Essentially a high-class art periodical, each issue featured eight or more beautiful hand-pulled photogravures as well as plates printed in photogelatine, (collotype) and halftone. These were collected within a stapled, folio-sized magazine issued monthly.  The subject matter included the work of leading amateur and professional photographers, as well as works of art—many from the galleries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. The December issue—Christmas themed—featured a specially designed cover printed in green ink.  Success was swift. The first issue sold 1000 copies “in a fortnight”. (1.) Within the first year, Sun & Shade quickly increased circulation to 4000 copies a month. With a public demand for reprinting earlier issues, this success lead to a rebranding, after which, beginning with the September, 1889 issue, the magazine was renamed Sun & Shade: An Artistic Periodical. The final issue was March, 1896, when financial issues to the parent company, spurred by the eventual May, 1896 bankruptcy of the N.Y. Photo-Gravure Company, forced its closure.

Sun & Shade would become the ultimate statement of the many skills and inquisitive mind of Englishman Ernest Edwards. (1836-1903) Essentially his own printed passion project, the magazine was fueled by his ongoing love of photography in the field (issues featured many plates by him over the years) and a deeply scientific mind which pushed the advancement of the state of photo-mechanical reproduction and fine printing.

The son of a clergyman from Bloomsbury in London, he initially made a name for himself taking photographic portraits of eminent people in his Baker Street gallery. (Charles Darwin sat for him several times) His love of the outdoors also bore fruit and he became an accomplished alpine photographer. But his real interest centered around photo-mechanical reproduction. In 1869, he took out a patent in England for his own rudimentary collotype process called heliotype. In the Fall of 1872, he moved across the pond along with his wife Charlotte, and became superintendent of Boston’s Heliotype Printing Company after selling the American rights to American publisher James Ripley Osgood. (1836–1892) Edwards ran the Heliotype Printing Co. there until the end of 1884. The following year the James R. Osgood & Co. went bankrupt, although not a result of the heliotype division.

Growing restless in Boston, he then moved to New York City, where he established a new firm in March, 1885: The Photo-Gravure Company, (subsequently renamed The New York Photo-Gravure Company) with offices in Manhattan and a leased printing factory in Brooklyn. In 1887, his company received perhaps the one commission it’s best known for today: the printing of  781 collotypes, which Edwards called photogelatine plates, making up the monumental publication:

Animal Locomotion. An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements, 1872-1885, with the landmark sequenced motion study photographs taken by British photographer Eadweard Muybridge. 

Restructured in 1891 as the New York Photogravure Co., Ernest Edwards continued to advance the state of photo-mechanical printing during his final decade, with Sun & Shade publishing some of the earliest examples of his own invention by 1894: plates printed in a three-color process called chrome-gelatine, a variation of his heliotype process.

Quality Rather than Quantity

Even though it survived less than eight years in print, describing Sun & Shade in Ernest Edward’s own words is perhaps the best posterity for this important photographic periodical with an artistic heart. One year after its’ debut, he wrote the following, published in The Photographic Times for August 2, 1889:

“A year ago we commenced the publication of our novel venture in journalism Sun and Shade, a Picture Periodical without letterpress, almost as an experiment, with a modest list of less than fifty subscribers. To-day we are printing an edition of 4,000 copies monthly. A sufficiently convincing proof of the wisdom of our hope that there was room for us.

“In our rapid growth the wish has been indicated unmistakably for the higher grade of pictures, and of the higher class–always for quality rather than quantity. Following rather than leading such a wish, we feel that we make no mistake in marking the future career of the magazine to be rather that of an artistic periodical than a photographic record of events.

*Our efforts shall be directed in the future to make Sun and Shade an artistic periodical which shall be not only pleasing but educational in its broadest sense, Some of our plans may be briefly referred to.

“We shall reproduce the leading pictures in the great collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Within the covers of Sun and Shade will be found from time to time, reproductions of the works of American artists. We shall especially endeavor to encourage the artistic side of direct photography in all its phases, And we shall supplement these special features with examples of sculpture, architecture, and industrial art. If in the future we receive as hearty a response to our efforts as we have received in the past, our task will be indeed pleasant and our road to success a royal one.” (p. 394)

1. Notice: Sun & Shade: October, 1888. The August and September issues did not appear.