Landscape

Discussion

FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

Henry Richard Greville was not a professional printmaker, but rather one of many aristocrats who pursued lithography as a hobby. Lithography depends upon the antipathy of grease and water, so a lithographer draws on a smooth block of limestone in a greasy medium—crayon or a liquid wash called tusche. When printing ink is applied to the wet stone, it only sticks to the drawn lines. The first collection of lithographs, or polyautographs, Specimens of Polyautography , was published in London in 1801 with pen lithographs by several well-known English artists. After this early start, lithography failed to catch on in England, however, leaving French artists to explore the full range of possibilities of the medium.

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