The Earliest Colour Films Were Hand-Painted by Female Artists

Frame scan from nitrate film print of Voyage sur Jupiter, 1909, from Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema, 2015. Published by Eye / Amsterdam University Press

An estimated 80 percent of early films were made in colour - tinted, toned, and painted with bright dyes that produced a surreal effect. The films were made by Edward Raymond Turner from London who patented his colour process in 1899. They were laboriously hand-coloured by women who spent their long days peering into powerful magnifying glasses as they applied dye with brushes as fine as a single camel hair. Colouring each print of Méliès’s work, Trip to the Moon (1902), required painting a grand total of 13,375 film frames. The Serpentine Dance by the Lumière brothers is a fine example of this cinematic art.

Read more about these female artists: Artsy