Bromoil Print

Bromoil

The Bromoil Process was an early photographic process that was very popular with the Pictorialists during the first half of the twentieth century. The soft, paint-like qualities of the prints are very typical for this genre. The process was based on the oil print, from the mid-nineteenth century. A drawback of oil prints was that the gelatin used was too slow to permit an enlarger to be used, so that negatives had to be the same dimensions as the positives. After G.E.H. Rawlins published an article in 1904 on the oil print process, E.J. Wall described theoretically in 1907 how it should be possible to use a smaller negative in an enlarger to produce a silver bromide positive. The image would then be bleached and hardened, to be inked afterwards in the oil process. The process was executed, and the bromoil process was created.