The discovery of lithography was due to the experiments of Aloys Senefelder, a native of Prague, who was born late in the eighteenth century. He accidentally found that some writing he had put on one of the stones he used for sharpening his tools upon came off easily on to paper or linen. Then he tried what effect acid would have, and found that it would eat away the stone wherever the ink did not prevent it, so he got a block in low relief. The protective ink is made essentially of wax, tallow, soap, shellac, and lamp black, and the acid renders this insoluble, so that when acid is applied to the stone the parts drawn upon remain unaffected. The drawing ink is now removed, and when printing ink is applied by means of a roller, it sticks only where the drawn lines are, and from this inked stone a print can be obtained.
The surface of a lithograph is quite smooth, and the process will not help an artist in the least—as the drawing is so will the lithograph from it be; the only difference is in the power of reproduction.
Senefelder was unfortunate; he introduced an art to the world which has been very largely followed, but his own efforts were failures from a business point of view. He came to London early in the nineteenth century, and his methods soon found votaries, but he shortly returned to Munich, where his brother had assisted him in setting up a lithographic establishment, and this practically failing, it was taken over by the Bavarian Government and put under the management of H. J. Mitterer, a professor of drawing.
But it was in France that lithography made most rapid progress. The clever French draughtsmen that happened to exist about that time very quickly mastered the process, and between them they established a school of lithography that is unequalled. Many of the greatest French artists worked in it, and some of them specialised in it.
Lasteyrie introduced it, and it was quickly taken up by Horace Vernet, Pierre Guerin, Charlet, and many others for small book illustrations, and about 1830 there are large numbers of caricatures done in this quick and easy way. Then Gericault, Henri Monnier, Eugène Delacroix, and J. B. Isabey swelled the list of French lithographers, most of the book illustrations being of small size; and a little later there is notable work done by Honoré Daumier, Achille Deveria, Raffet, Jean Gigoux and Gavarni, several of them specialising in military subjects. Towards the end of the century we find a new set of artists, many of whom use colour as well as monotint, Fantin-Latour, Chéret, O. Redon, Gandara and Willett.
The social side of French life is perhaps the most illustrated in lithography.
In England lithography received its first impetus from Senefelder himself, who came and worked in London, where in 1819 his Complete Course of Lithography was published.
C. J. Hullmandel and J. D. Harding were friends and co-workers in the new art, and they were both adepts at it; Hullmandel drew several of the beautiful plates of birds for John Gould, and they were afterwards coloured by hand. From the beginning colour has been much liked by English lithographers, either added by hand or produced by means of “chromo-lithography,” that is, several plates inked in different colours and then printed over each other on one piece of paper.
Roberts’ Holy Land is magnificently illustrated with lithographic plates by Louis Haghe, a left-handed Belgian, who worked here, and these plates were afterwards coloured by hand. Clarkson Stanfield and Cattermole both worked in lithography, and Nash’s Mansions of England in the Olden Time, 1839-49, are familiar to most of us. Nash coloured several copies by hand.