Coloring History

Howard Michaels’ hand-tinted photos bring back the romance of turn-of-the-century life.

By: Susan Van Dongen

   This is an artist’s space. As soon as you enter Howard Michaels’ home in Hamilton you’re hit with a variety of items that reveal his individual artistic style, tastes and travels.
   Wire-hanger sculptures of dogs and robots, hand-tinted photos from Japan, large silk fans and Oriental paper umbrellas dot the walls. An oversized painting of a blue orangutan hangs along the stairwell, next to a giant slice of papier-maché pizza. A mixed-media Statue of Liberty hosts a collage of folks in the news since the ’60s. He added Osama Bin Laden last year.

"Friends, Cape May, N.J.," ca. 1905.

   "It’s a work in progress," Mr. Michaels says. "I could work on this for the rest of my life."
   Down the hall, there’s a shadow box of aboriginal bark paintings and a boomerang, souvenirs of his years spent teaching in New South Wales, Australia. And then there is the postcard of Ayers Rock with a dingo in the foreground, which appears to be swallowing a baby. You get a feel for Mr. Michaels’ sense of humor, which he shares with his art students at Lawrence Intermediate School, as well as his summer art classes at Bordentown’s Firehouse Gallery.
   There’s something a little counter culture about him. It might be his ponytail or the Woody Allen-esque jokes that pepper his conversation. He’s not the kind of guy you’d associate with the all-American, squeaky clean image of Disney.
   But the Mouse People are fans of his work, too, and have recently purchased two in a series of his hand-tinted vintage photographs of Cape May. The signed works will reside in the executive offices at the Beach Club, one of Disney’s deluxe resorts in Orlando, Fla.
   "I never in a million years thought of connecting myself with Disney," he says. "I had no clue. It was just a coincidence that one of their art consultants saw and liked my work."
   His Cape May series began in the early ’90s, when Mr. Michaels was working on Victorian Holidays (Lady Raspberry Press), a guidebook to the resort co-authored by Marsha Cudworth, another New Jersey-based artist and teacher.

"Lifesaver and Mascot, Long Beach Island, N.J.," ca. 1900.

   "I realized the pictures and the time period meshed perfectly," he says. "People have an affinity for images from that era and color makes them enigmatic. The color is modern, but the image is old."
   Mr. Michaels contacted book and antique stores, other artists, history buffs, elderly persons — anyone who might have black-and-white photos from the turn of the 19th century. Some of the shots he collected were family heirlooms.
   He then made black-and-white copies of the snapshots and printed them on fiber-based photographic paper. He coated the prints with a special emulsion, which accepts the oil paints he applies to the existing black-and-white images.
   Mr. Michaels uses delicate brushes and pencils for extremely fine work, such as the floral pattern on a lady’s dress. For larger areas, like skies or the sea, the paint is applied with surgical cotton wrapped around a skewer.
   Working with a magnifying glass, he often discovers details within larger shots that he blows up into new images. For example, "The Conversation, circa 1900," shows a lifeguard speaking with two women.
   "That was originally a larger crowd shot," Mr. Michaels says. "When I looked at it under a magnifying glass, I zoomed in on this trio and thought it would make an interesting image."
   Some of the photos required quite a bit of research to ensure the accuracy of the colors. For example, Mr. Michaels traveled to the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento to ensure that the burgundy and loden hues were correct for the train in "Railroad at Barnegat Light, circa 1910."
   The piece that took the most work — 60 to 75 hours to hand-tint — is "Beach Scene, Cape May, circa 1905." With the long-gone Iron Pier in the background, the picture shows hundreds of people scattered in the surf, at the water’s edge and on the sand — many resting beneath Cape May’s traditional striped tents. Mr. Michaels hand-painted every beach costume, as well as the tunics, stockings, skirts, bathing shoes and hats the women wear.

"Engleside Beach, Beach Haven, N.J.," ca. 1936.

   "That one was really a labor of love," he says.
   "Beach Scene" is one of the works chosen to grace the executive offices of Disney’s Beach Club resort. Sally Faulkner, an art consultant for EDL and Associates in Atlanta, Ga., first spotted Mr. Michaels’ work when she was helping to coordinate the art for the new Lafayette Yard Marriott Hotel in Trenton.
   "We had put out a call for area artists to submit their works for consideration at the Trenton Marriott, and I saw Howard’s works on one of local Web sites," says Ms. Faulkner. "I was also working on the Beach Club, which has a set theme of ‘Cape May, New Jersey, at the turn of the century.’ So Howard’s work fit in perfectly."
   Mr. Michaels has exhibited his hand-tinted works numerous times in Cape May, in one-man shows at the Virginia and Carroll Villa Hotels, and in group shows with the Cape May Art League. Most recently, his work was on view at the Noyes Museum of Art in Oceanville and at the Firehouse Gallery’s miniatures show last winter.
   Mr. Michaels did the Dec. 1991 cover for Princeton University’s Alumni Weekly, which commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. In addition, Mr. Michaels’ work has appeared in Scholastic Magazine, New Jersey Outdoors and Victorian Homes. In 1995, Mr. Michaels’ techniques were included in the 1995 textbook, The Official Marshall’s Handcoloring Guide and Gallery, by Grace and George Schaub.

"The Fishermen, Beach Haven, N.J.," ca. 1928.

   Born in Paterson in 1951, Mr. Michaels received a bachelor’s in fine arts from William Paterson College. In 1976, he traveled to New South Wales, Australia, to teach fine art and photography to junior and senior high school students. He taught art in the Ocean County school system in the ’80s and ’90s, produced the Cape May book and did commercial photography. He has also worked as a chef, notably with Soufflé café at Grounds for Sculpture. He was hired by Lawrence Intermediate School in Sept. 2001, a position that constantly challenges his creativity and energy.
   Aside from getting the word out about his hand-tinted work — the items he sells now are high-quality reproductions of the original prints — he does a lot of multi-media projects to instruct his students, such as the papier-maché pizza, which came to life after a particularly frustrating week in the classroom.
   "Right now I’m gravitating more toward non-detailed mixed-media and more painterly kinds of things, although I still have a passion for the hand-tinting, the way the color can enliven these old black-and-white pictures and give them a burst of life," Mr. Michaels says. "I especially like to bring people from that era to life again."
   Although Mr. Michaels enjoys bringing his long-gone subjects into contemporary times, he wouldn’t want to travel back to those days himself, and he has some specific reasons.
   "Certainly the lifestyle in the early part of the century intrigues me, but I don’t think it was as romantic as people make it out to be. For example, I don’t think I would have necessarily enjoyed the plumbing."
Howard Michaels’ works are available through Studio 1895 in Hamilton. For information, call (609) 689-1895 or e-mail [email protected]