I've just discovered excellent color photographs that were taken 100 years ago in Britain, in 1913 Christina in Red, an article by Amanda Uren in Retronaut on mashable.com at this link. Click on images to enlarge them.
Christina, photographed in 1913 by her father, Mervyn O'Gorman, at Lulworth Cove, Dorset, England. Christina's excellent choice of red is a color which the Autochrome process reproduced well.
Ms. Uren writes, "Mervyn O'Gorman was 42 when he took these pictures of his daughter, Christina O'Gorman at Lulworth Cove, in the English county of Dorset. He photographed Christina wearing a red swimming costume and red cloak, a colour particularly suited to the early color Autochrome process.
Autochrome was one of the first colour photo technologies, which used glass plates coated in potato starches to filter pictures with dye."
I lightened the color here by 50%, something a photoengraver would have done before publication.
This was the image with the sharpest resolution, quite remarkable for its time. It would have suffered from the evolving print technology available in 1913.
More, from Retronaut and Amanda Uren.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s National Geographic sent photographer Clifton R. Adams to England to record its farms, towns and cities, and its people at work and play. Adams recorded it all in color using the Autochrome process.
Clifton R. Adams was 38 years old when he took these pictures. He photographed many other European countries, as well as Central and North America, working for National Geographic from 1920 until his death in 1934, aged just 44.
The following photos are by Clifton R. Adams/National Geographic Creative/Corbis
Two bus drivers stand in front of a tour bus in Ulverston, Cumbria.
Actors dress for a pageant as Britannia and her knights.
Britannia, her colonies and dependencies, in Southampton, Hampshire.
A war veteran selling matches on the street, in Canterbury, Kent.
A policeman directing buses in Trafalgar Square, London.
The Cunard liner "Mauretania" at dock, in Southampton.
A London double-decker bus of the period.
A police constable passing the time of day with farmers gathering hay, in Lancashire.
Two women resting for lunch in a Lancashire hayfield.
An English woman points pridefully to her farm cart, in Cambridgeshire, England.
An informal portrait of a farmer and his cart, in Crowland, Lincolnshire.
Two women buy ice cream from a vendor out of his converted car, in Cornwall.