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.

On his father's side Le Blon descended from Huguenots who fled France in 1576, settling in Frankfurt.

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.

[2] Le Blon trained in Rome from 1696 until 1702 where he studied art and mezzotint engraving under the painter Carlo Maratta (1625–1713).

[2] Encouraged by van Overbeek, Le Blon moved to Amsterdam in 1702 where he began working as a miniature painter and engraver.

[8] While Le Blon was a part of The Picture Office, he also began experimenting with color tapestry weaving.

[6] The tapestry process involved using white, yellow, red, blue, and black fibers to create images.

[4] Although Le Blon received acclaim from esteemed people such as Cromwell Mortimer and Sir Richard Manningham, his tapestry business was even less successful than his previous endeavor, shutting down in the 1730s.

[6] Le Blon left England in 1734 and moved to Paris, where he received a privilège (patent) for his printing process from Louis XV.

In terms of color printing techniques, Le Blon's methods were largely unsuccessful and forgotten by the mid-19th Century.