This interior view of the once impressive sub-tropical Winter Gardens in Nice is part of a series of 32 mechanically coloured photographs of European cities, monuments and buildings, pasted into an album kept by members of the Rouse family as a souvenir of European travels. From 1867 onwards, successive generations of the Rouse family toured the great cultural sites of Europe, collecting souvenirs and mementos of their travels.
The colouring process, indicated by the letters P Z on the print, was called Photochrom Zurich. It was developed by the Swiss printing company Orell Fussli in the 1880s. Faster than traditional hand colouring, this technique allowed mass production mechanical colouring of black and white photographic prints by lithography. Each colour was applied separately with a dedicated printing stone and the prints were varnished to saturate colours and protect the surface. The resulting vibrantly coloured images contrast dramatically with the sepia photographs available to earlier generations of traveller.
