Jacob Christoph Le Blon

Jacob Christoph Le Blon, or Jakob Christoffel Le Blon, (2 May 1667 – 16 May 1741) was a painter and engraver from Frankfurt who invented a halftone color printing system with three and four copper dyes using an RYB color model, which served as the foundation for the modern CMYK system. He used the mezzotint method to engrave three or four copper plates (one each per printing ink) to make prints of paintings and portraits with a wide range of colors.

Biography On his father's side Le Blon descended from Huguenots who fled France in 1576, settling in Frankfurt. He belonged to a family of printers and booksellers who focused on travel books. His father, Christophe Le Blon, was an engraver and bookseller in Frankfurt am Main. His grandfather, Christof Le Blon, married Susanna Barbara Merian, daughter of the artist and engraver Matthäus Merian (1593–1650). Le Blon is reported to have received training as a young man from the Swiss painter and engraver Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (1618–1689) in Zurich but there is no documentary evidence to confirm the conclusion. There, he became acquainted with the Dutch painter and engraver Bonaventura van Overbeek.

In 1707, Le Blon issued a short publication in Dutch on the forms of the human body. During his time as a miniature painter, he began experimenting with color printing. His system used three different plates, each inked with a different color and applied in sequence to a single sheet of paper. In 1710 he made his first color prints with yellow, red, and blue plates. He founded his business, named The Picture Office, and sold copies of pictures of famous people and paintings from notable artists. However, the company failed as a business venture in 1725. His company was still not very profitable, however, at the time of his death in 1741. His former student, Jacques-Fabien Gautier d'Agoty, argued that Le Blon was not a legitimate color printer, and he claimed Le Blon's privilège for himself, naming himself the inventor of color printing. Le Blon explained that this process was best achieved through adding different layers of color, starting with white, then black, then the other colors such as red, yellow, etc. With the addition of further colors, Le Blon argued that these paintings came to life. Le Blon used this process to portray flesh in his printed paintings, but his method of printing flesh tones was only used in medical printing by his students, including D'Agoty and Jan L'Admiral.