Above: Helen Frankenthaler. Savage Breeze (1974) woodcut
1901-1980
Images printed in multiples by a variety of processes were circulated in newspapers, journals, magazines, and books that proliferated at an astounding rate. Where eighteenth-century publications had been illustrated usually with copperplate etchings and engravings, in the nineteenth century a broad array of new techniques was introduced that included wood engraving, lithography, and a range of photomechanical means of reproduction that steadily took over the field as the century advanced. But as publishers became more and more adept at reproducing images rapidly and in large numbers for the mass media, many artists, seemingly looking backwards, reexamined the special qualities of prints made by hand, particularly those in the etching process, and adopted the technique in order to make fine prints available to a new and growing audience of art collectors.
The invention of lithography around 1800 made it possible to produce an extraordinarily large edition of prints from a single drawing executed on a block of limestone. The novelty of lithography, its easy production, and its dramatic, fluid effects attracted young Romantic artists like Eugène Delacroix (67.630.7), and its commercial possibilities were quickly recognized by the popular press. In journals such as the Parisian Charivari, which promised its re aders “a new drawing every day,” the great caricaturist Honoré Daumier (20.60.5) presented the comedies and tragedies of contemporary life to as many as 2,000 subscribers. At the end of the century, technological advances that allowed lithographs to be printed in very large sizes and in multiple colors jump-started the industry of advertising and the production of eye-catching posters by such artists as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (32.88.12).
Images printed in multiples by a variety of processes were circulated in newspapers, journals, magazines, and books that proliferated at an astounding rate. Where eighteenth-century publications had been illustrated usually with copperplate etchings and engravings, in the nineteenth century a broad array of new techniques was introduced that included wood engraving, lithography, and a range of photomechanical means of reproduction that steadily took over the field as the century advanced. But as publishers became more and more adept at reproducing images rapidly and in large numbers for the mass media, many artists, seemingly looking backwards, reexamined the special qualities of prints made by hand, particularly those in the etching process, and adopted the technique in order to make fine prints available to a new and growing audience of art collectors.
The invention of lithography around 1800 made it possible to produce an extraordinarily large edition of prints from a single drawing executed on a block of limestone. The novelty of lithography, its easy production, and its dramatic, fluid effects attracted young Romantic artists like Eugène Delacroix (67.630.7), and its commercial possibilities were quickly recognized by the popular press. In journals such as the Parisian Charivari, which promised its re aders “a new drawing every day,” the great caricaturist Honoré Daumier (20.60.5) presented the comedies and tragedies of contemporary life to as many as 2,000 subscribers. At the end of the century, technological advances that allowed lithographs to be printed in very large sizes and in multiple colors jump-started the industry of advertising and the production of eye-catching posters by such artists as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (32.88.12).