Lithography

Sources

Scientific Process. The technology involved in lithography was developed by a Bavarian named Alois Senefelder in 1795. It spread to France in 1816 and by 1822 was being used in London. In the United States, Bass Otis, a student of the great portrait painter Gilbert Stuart, began to experiment with the new techniques sometime around 1819. Lithography was a delicate technique that required a particular kind of stone, imported from Bavaria, on which the artist drew using special crayons. When the design was finished, the stone would be bathed in gum and acids which would harden the crayon

design and cause it to stand out in relief, turning the stone into a plate that, when wet and inked, could be pressed onto paper to make a print.

Publishing. Before lithography was introduced, pictures in books and magazines were reproduced from copperplate engravings or from woodcuts, which were slow and difficult processes. Lithography made book and magazine illustration easier and less expensive. More and more, authors were able to add illustrations to their books, a step that subtly altered how literature was received. Magazine editors were able to vary the visual appeal of their products so that Godey’s Lady’s Book, for example, could draw on lithographic technology to print fashion plates and other illustrated material for its readers. Sheet-music publishers also capitalized on the new technology, packaging songs with illustrations that suggested their contents.

Currier and Ives. Nathaniel Currier got his start in 1828 as apprentice to William and John Pendleton of Boston, the first American company to make lithography a commercial success. Eventually Currier settled in New York and established his own business at 1 Wall Street in 1835. Currier’s company, later known as Currier and Ives after James M. Ives, a skilled business manager and self-educated artist, joined the firm in 1852, billed itself as offering “Colored Engravings for the People.” Over the years Currier and Ives offered a wide range of prints; today the collection of known Currier and Ives prints totals over seven thousand illustrations. Prints included views of city and country locations; political cartoons and banners; portraits of American and European celebrities and political figures; illustrations of historical events; blank certificates for birth, marriage, church membership, or death; country and pioneer home scenes; sheet music; nature scenes; and pictures of trains, horses (a Currier and Ives specialty), and sporting events. To produce this enormous range of illustrations, produced at a rate of three per week, Currier and Ives relied on various artists. The company regularly bought drawings as they were offered, hired artists as full-time staff members, and, on occasion, hired independent lithographers.

Art for the Masses. Lithographic prints produced by Currier and Ives and other lithographers were an important way of disseminating art to the American public. The many Americans unable to afford original art could own reproductions produced and distributed by lithographers, a development that some criticized as a devaluation of art itself. The drawing involved in lithography also provided jobs for would-be artists to supplement the portrait painting or teaching that artists typically did in order to support their more-idealistic endeavors. Ironically, while the mass production of art threatened to outdo or overshadow the ideal of individual artistic production, at the same time it provided artists with the means they needed to earn a living while they worked on more-ambitious individual projects.

Sources

Harry T. Peters, Currier & Ives: Printmakers to the People (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1942);

John W. Reps, Views and Viewmakers of Urban America: Lithographs of Towns and Cities in the United States and Canada, Notes on the Artists and Publishers, and a Union Catalog of Their Work, 1825–1925 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984).