Enlargement of a Verascope negative

Pho­to­graph­ic enlarge­ments were an estab­lished part of the way Jules Richard pro­mot­ed the capa­bil­i­ties of the Véras­cope. In May 1899, La Revue artis­tique, lit­téraire et indus­trielle described Richard’s Paris premis­es as being dec­o­rat­ed with “mer­veilleux agran­disse­ments” made from Véras­cope neg­a­tives. The arti­cle refers to the entire instal­la­tion as one Jules Richard had specif­i­cal­ly arranged for his Vérascopes.
Richard con­tin­ued to use enlarge­ments in pub­lic demon­stra­tions of the sys­tem. The offi­cial report of the French sec­tion at the 1906 Inter­na­tion­al Exhi­bi­tion in Milan lists Jules Richard as exhibit­ing “Agran­disse­ments et vues obtenues avec le Véras­cope” and specif­i­cal­ly notes enlarge­ments of views obtained with the Véras­cope Richard. Enlarged pho­tographs there­fore formed a rec­og­niz­able part of the com­mer­cial and exhi­bi­tion cul­ture sur­round­ing the Vérascope.
The pre­cise ori­gin of this par­tic­u­lar enlarge­ment is less cer­tain. Its passep­a­rtout bears a blind-embossed Véras­cope Richard mark, link­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion direct­ly with Richard’s sys­tem. How­ev­er, a trade label pre­served on the reverse iden­ti­fies E. Lecomte Fils, a spe­cial­ist in gild­ing and fram­ing, show­ing that at least the final fram­ing was car­ried out inde­pen­dent­ly rather than in Richard’s own establishment.
It is there­fore not pos­si­ble to deter­mine whether the pho­to­graph­ic enlarge­ment itself was pro­duced by Richard, sup­plied by him for pre­sen­ta­tion else­where, or made by anoth­er pho­to­graph­ic estab­lish­ment from a Véras­cope image. The use of the same blind-embossed Véras­cope Richard mount on sev­er­al sur­viv­ing exam­ples nev­er­the­less sug­gests a stan­dard­ized com­mer­cial pre­sen­ta­tion asso­ci­at­ed with the Véras­cope. These pho­tographs are best under­stood as Richard-brand­ed Véras­cope enlarge­ments intend­ed to demon­strate the qual­i­ty obtain­able from the cam­er­a’s remark­ably small neg­a­tives, with­out attribut­ing every stage of their pro­duc­tion and pre­sen­ta­tion direct­ly to Jules Richard.