Studio: international art (16.1899)

The Truth about Lithography

.....it will be of the utmost benefit to artists by

enabling theni to obtain facsimiles of their drawings.
From the most sincere conviction of its utility, and not
any mixture of vanity, I have thus detailed in a brief
manner the various advantages of transfer printing ;
it would, indeed, be an easy matter, by expatiating
on these advantages, to fill a whole book. I wish
from the bottom of my heart to gain frie?tds to this
manner, and to point out the various important
purposes to which it may be applied, in order that
clever artists may devote themselves to its improve-
ment."

As Senefelder realised, the paper, as late as
1818, was unsatisfactory, but it was still good
enough to be used with very creditable results.
Almost the first signed lithograph by Samuel
Prout was made in pen-and-ink upon paper and
transferred to stone, according to the statement
underneath it, and printed in the English edition
of Senefelder's book as an example of the trans-
fer manner, just as other lithographs in the same
volume illustrated the chalk, the engraved, and the
etched manners. There was also a lithograph on
paper in the German edition, drawn in chalk, how-
ever, and quite as strong and as full of colour as
anything else published ; while Jacob contributed
a drawing on paper to the French edition.

In the early French official reports upon litho-
graphy, the use of transfer paper is carefully
referred to; the Society of Arts offered prizes for
improvement in paper as far back as 1822 ; so also
did the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia. In the
prospectus of one of the first English printers,
Moser, examples are given, and from the very fact
that afterwards scarcely any special reference was
made to it, we know that it must have been in
use. It was accepted as a matter of course. Why
should it be referred to ? Bankes, the first English
writer on lithography, especially calls attention to
the great advantage of paper, and in every manual
its use is praised, and hopes are expressed for its
improvement. So far as artists go, if very little
mention is made of it, it is simply because there
was no earthly reason why they should mention it,
any more than there would be for a painter to say
whether he had painted on canvas or a panel, or
for the etcher to explain what sort of mordant he
had used. It is not until we come to Raffet, who
produced a number of specimens for his father-in-
law, Auguste Bry, the printer who had invented some
sort of paper, that I know of a special reference to
it by an artist, and then it was because Bry wanted
to advertise his paper; just as lithographs were
made by Louis Haghe and others on some special
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sort of stone and the fact stated to advertise that
stone, or as lithotints by Harding were used to
advertise HullmandePs patents. Otherwise, it no
more occurred to the artist to say that he had used
transfer paper than that he had drawn on zinc, or
that he worked with chalk or pen-and-ink. It
should be remembered, too, that most of the early
lithographs were not studies from nature, but com-
positions or copies of pictures begun and completed
in the artist's studio, when there would be no
reason for the paper to be used ; and that in weekly
and daily journals like La Caricature and Le
Charivari and all similar publications, where it was
a question of time and transfers had to be made to
several stones,the editor and printer must have pre-
ferred to have the drawing done on the stone at once.
But the inconvenience of the stone always was felt
so keenly that, from Senefelder, with his stone-
paper, to Mr. Scholtz, with his aluminium, almost
every inventor and practical printer has tried to
get rid of the stone altogether. The history of
lithography technically is one long story of revolt
against the stone.

During the last twenty or thirty years the atten-
tion of eminent printers has been more and more
turned to the paper, not alone in one country, but
all over the world, as anybody familiar with litho-
graphy knows. The consequence is that the
clever, the distinguished, artists upon whom Sene-
felder called, have, without exception, resorted to
transfer paper for original work done out of doors
or in their own studios. If the weight of the stone
was always felt to be a great drawback, it became a
fatal argument against lithography in the days when
the art had succumbed to commerce, and artists
had no other motive but their own pleasure for the
making of lithographs. One knows to what depths
lithography had sunk in the Sixties. More likely
than not, it would have disappeared altogether as
an art but for the improvement in paper so ardently
desired by Senefelder. It was the transfer paper
brought to the notice of artists like Manet and
Corot and Degas and Fantin-Latour, that induced
them to make lithographs. And it was when
artists generally began to realise that transfer paper
could be used that there followed the modern
revival of the art, that so much of the beautiful
and amusing work now to be seen at South Ken-
sington was done. The lithographs by Manet,
illustrating " The Raven," were, according to M-
Beraldi, made upon the paper, and they have been
universally praised, by those who know them, as
brilliant examples of lithography. Now that I
have, quoting M. Beraldi, stated they were on