Lithograjphy. 



History. 



There is one great exception to our last statement, i.e. the case of 

 Aloys Senefelder (Munich, Offenbach, Vienna, London, Paris ; 1771- 

 1834), the inventor of the process, who was himself not an artist, but a 

 lithographic printer. His own book on lithography, published in German 

 in 1818, and in English and French in 1819, provides us with the fullest 

 details about the early development of the process. He was an un- 

 successful actor and playwright, who made experiments in printing 

 from stone, partly for the purpose of printing his own works. In his 

 earliest experiments he etched the stone, obtaining relief prints 

 analogous to Blake's relief etchings on metal. But in 1798 his experi- 

 ments, or a happy chance, led to the discovery of the process of 

 surface-printing, in which no relief or intaglio was required. Patents 

 were obtained in the succeeding years, either in his own name or in the 

 name of his partners of the family of Andre, of Offenbach, at Munich, 

 Vienna, Berlin, London, and Paris, and in 1809 Senefelder was given an 

 official position as Inspector of the Eoyal Lithographic Establishment in 

 Munich, but he never reaped any steady success from his invention. Music 

 printing was one of the chief uses of the process, and artistic reproduc- 

 tions, such as the Prayer Booh of Maximilian I, drawn for lithography 

 by J. P. Strixner (Munich, Stuttgart; 1782-1855), and printed by 

 Senefelder in 1808, were rare in the early years of the XlXth century. 



Between 1820-50 the reproduction of pictures and drawings by 

 lithography was successfully undertaken on an ambitious scale by 

 J. P. Strixner, Ferdinand Piloty (Munich; 1786-1844), Joseph 

 liOhle (Munich; 1807-40), and Franz Hanfstaengl (Munich, Dresden; 

 1804-77), chiefly in works on the Munich and Dresden galleries. Since 

 that time the art has been largely used for reproduction, particularly in 

 colour, but our interest here is almost exclusively with the process as a 

 medium for original work. 



Both in England and in France the process was taken up keenly by 

 amateurs as an easy means of multiplying their drawings. A large ■ 

 number of these amateur works are seen in the series entitled Sj^ecimens 

 of Polyautograj)hy, first pubhshed in 1803, of which a copy is pre- 

 served in the Print Koom. A few good artists, such as Thomas 

 Stothard and William Blake, contributed examples to the series. 



In France amateurs were interested in the art by Baron Vivant- 

 Denon (Paris ; 1747-1825), and General Baron L. F. Lejeune (1776- 

 1848), and French masters in general were earlier to appreciate the artistic 

 possibilities of the process than the inventor's followers in Germany. 

 And the lithographic printers, Gottfried Engelmann of Miihlhausen, 

 who chiefly worked in Paris (1788-1839), and Charles Hullmandel in 

 London (1789-1850), who was also a landscape draughtsman of some 

 merit, both did much to encourage the art by their writings as well as 

 their commercial activity. 



Landscape and architectural draughtsmen found their best oppor- 

 tunity in Baron Taylor's Voyages Pittoresques et Bomantiques dans 

 VAncienne France, a state-aided undertaking, which was published in 

 parts during a period of over forty years after 1820. Emile Jean 

 Horace Vernet (1789-1863), Jean Baptiste Isabey (1767-1855), and 

 L. G. Eugene Isabey (1803-86), were among the earliest French artists 

 who contributed, and England was well represented in Samuel Prout 



