The picture-painting business seems to have been begun in 1777, and was carried on for some years under the direction of Mr. Eginton, who afterwards achieved considerable reputation at Birmingham as a manufacturer of painted glass. A degree of interest has been recently raised on the subject of the Soho pictures, in consequence of the statements hazarded as to the method by which they are supposed to have been produced. It has been surmised that they were taken by some process resembling photography. We have, however, been unable to find anything in the correspondence of the firm calculated to support this view. On the contrary, they are invariably spoken of as “mechanical paintings,” “pictures,” or “prints,” produced by means of “paints” or “colours.” Though the precise process by which they were produced is not now known, there seems reason to believe that they were impressions from plates prepared in a peculiar manner. The impressions were taken “mechanically” on paper; and both oil and water colours[187] were made use of. Some of the pictures were of large size--40 by 50 inches--the subjects being chiefly classical. This branch of the business being found unproductive, was brought to a close in 1780, when the partnership with Eginton was at the same time dissolved. [187] Some of the specimens in water colour are to be seen at the Museum of Patents, South Kensington. When the paper is moistened with the finger, the colour easily rubs off. The whole subject of these pictures has recently been thoroughly sifted by M. P. W. Boulton, Esq., in his ‘Remarks on some Evidence recently communicated to the Photographic Society’ (Bradbury and Evans, 1864), apropos of the Papers of Mr. W. P. Smith on the same subject, in which it was surmised that they were the result of some photographic process. Mr. Boulton clearly shows, from the original correspondence, that the process was mechanical colour-printing. He also adds,--“From the brief statements which I remember to have heard from my father concerning the polygraphic process, my impression of it was that it copied colour mechanically, not merely chiaro-scuro. And I agree with the opinion which has been expressed to other persons, that in the coloured specimens in the Museum, there are indications that the colour was laid on _mechanically_,--not by hand or brush.” As the process of “dead-colouring” the pictures is occasionally referred to, it is probable that the pictures passed through more stages than one, as in the case of modern colour-printing. In one of Eginton’s letters, three plates were spoken of as necessary for taking impressions of one of the pictures.