European printmaking in the 19th century describes the contours of printmaking in Europe during the 1800s. Printmaking evolved greatly over that century, and a variety of novel techniques and artistic movements impacted the field.
Historical context; artistic styles
Between the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the foundations of contemporary society were laid, marked in the political field by the end of absolutism and the establishment of democratic governments—an impulse that began with the French Revolution—and, in the economic field, by the Industrial Revolution and the consolidation of capitalism, which would have a response in Marxism and the class struggle. In the field of art, an evolutionary dynamic of styles began to follow one another chronologically with increasing speed, culminating in the 20th century with an atomization of styles and currents that coexist and oppose, influence and confront each other. The century began with the survival of Neoclassicism, a movement succeeded by Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, Modernism and Symbolism.
Techniques
In this century, the frequent use of etching continued, employed by painters such as Daubigny, Millet, Whistler, Manet, Degas, Pissarro, etc. However, the use of lithography, initiated in the previous century, predominated, with two trends: one that sought to compete with photography by emphasizing the accuracy and sensitivity of its compositions, led by Claude Ferdinand Gaillard; and another more artistic and relaxed tone, represented by Léopold Flameng. During this period, printmaking became highly industrialized and reached high production levels, with large print runs aimed at an increasingly larger public. At the end of the century, and especially linked to the post-impressionist generation, lithography had a privileged means of expression in the poster, to which great artists such as Jules Chéret, Alphonse Mucha, Pierre Bonnard and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec devoted themselves.
During this period, new techniques emerged—or some of those introduced in the previous century were consolidated—such as woodcut, steel engraving or stereotype. On the other hand, the invention of photography revolutionized the graphic arts and influenced new techniques: in 1827, Nicéphore Niépce introduced heliography, made on a zinc plate sensitized to light and hollow engraved with acid; in 1852, Joseph Lemercier invented photolithography, a photonegative on glass projected on lithographic stone sensitized to light; in the same year, the cliché verre appeared, a glass cliché printed on photosensitive paper; and in the 1860s, photoengraving appeared, using a plate covered with a varnish or photosensitive resin attacked by acid, without the intervention of the artist. Another new technique, unrelated in this case to photography, was gillotage—also called zincography—invented by Firmin Gillot in 1850, which consisted of transferring a drawing to a zinc plate attacked with acid and stamped with a typographic press. The progressive industrialization of printmaking increasingly led to a differentiation between the artisan printmaker and the artist engraver—or painter-engraver—who demanded greater recognition for his creative work.
Romanticism and realism
Romanticism was a style born at the beginning of the century, although it had already been forged at the end of the previous one in a so-called pre-romanticism. It was a movement of profound renewal in all artistic genres, which paid special attention to the field of spirituality, fantasy, feeling, love of nature, along with a darker element of irrationality, attraction to the occult, madness, dreams. Popular culture, the exotic, the return to underrated artistic forms of the past—especially medieval ones—were especially valued, and the landscape gained notoriety, which became a protagonist in its own right. The Romantics had the idea of an art that arose spontaneously from the individual, which is why they emphasized the figure of "genius": art is the expression of the artist's emotions.
Romanticism was succeeded by realism, a trend that emphasized reality, the description of the surrounding world, especially of workers and peasants in the new framework of the industrial era, with a certain component of social denunciation, linked to political movements such as utopian socialism. These artists moved away from the usual historical, religious or mythological themes to deal with more mundane themes of modern life.
France
In France, the turn of the century saw the transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. Two of the best French Romantic painters, Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix, practiced lithography. Géricault produced between 1817 and 1820 seven lithographic stones dedicated to the Napoleonic army, as well as other single works including Horses Fighting in a Stable and Boxing Match; during a stay in Great Britain between 1820 and 1821, he produced a number of prints of scenes from everyday life. Delacroix made prints generally of literary inspiration, such as his series of seventeen lithographs of Goethe's Faust (1826), which was praised by the writer himself; or his series of Shakespeare's Hamlet (1843).
Among the French printmakers of this period are: Louis Pierre Henriquel-Dupont was noted for his prints reproducing artists of the past and of his time; Claude Ferdinand Gaillard was a skilled draughtsman and virtuoso engraver, author of reproductions such as Rembrandt's Supper at Emmaus, Botticelli's Madonna and Child, and Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa; Léopold Flameng reproduced Van Eyck, Van der Goes, Rembrandt and Ingres, and published numerous plates in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts; Jean Gigoux was an exponent of the troubadour style, illustrator of books such as Gil Blas and Abelard and Heloise; Ernest Meissonier illustrated various books, including the works of Balzac; Charles Meryon was a talented engraver, author of etchings of views of Paris that are notable for their chromatic distribution and luminous intensity. Also noteworthy was the rise of caricature, practiced by artists such as Henry Monnier, J. J. Grandville, Paul Gavarni and Charles Philipon, and published in magazines and newspapers such as Le Miroir, La Pandore, La Caricature and Le Charivari.
In the times of realism, Honoré Daumier should be mentioned first. He worked for a while in a lithography workshop, until he was hired by Philipon for La Caricature thanks to his skills as a draughtsman. In 1831, his caricature of Louis Philippe I as Gargantua earned him six months in prison, but also brought him enormous fame. From then on he carried out an intense lithographic work (about four thousand works), especially in Le Charivari, either in series (Robert Macaire, 1836-1838; Babists, 1839; Gods of Olympus, 1841; People of Justice, 1845-1848; Tenants and Landlords, 1848) or single pieces, which he later grouped in albums such as Actualities or All That is Wanted. In general, his work was satirical, in which he mocked the bourgeoisie and the circles of power, with a style of curved lines and modulated figures with a sculptural appearance.
Linked to realism was the Barbizon landscape school (Camille Corot, Théodore Rousseau, Charles-François Daubigny, Narcisse Virgilio Díaz de la Peña), marked by a pantheistic feeling for nature, with a concern for the effects of light in the landscape, such as the light that filters through the branches of the trees. Almost all of its members practiced printmaking—especially etching—with the work of Corot, who began late in graphic art but mastered it with mastery. He produced about fifteen etchings and another fifteen lithographs, as well as about seventy cliché verres, generally landscapes. Jean-François Millet, a notable painter especially dedicated to peasant themes, as in his famous The Angelus, was related to this school. In his graphic work he showed the influence of Rembrandt, especially in his luminous effects, with a concise and decisive stroke, as in The Wool Carder (1855).
A special place should be given to Gustave Doré, one of the best engravers of his time. Gifted in drawing, at the age of twenty-two he illustrated Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais (1854) and, the following year, Balzac's Amusing Tales (1855). Since then his production was intense, generally in woodcut, with an anachronistic style far from stylistic novelties, although his work shows the influence of Dürer, Rembrandt and the English romantics, especially Blake and Turner: Dante's Divine Comedy (1857-1867), Shakespeare's The Tempest (1860), Perrault's Tales (1862), Cervantes' Don Quixote (1863), Shakespeare's Macbeth (1863), Chateaubriand's Atala (1865), the Bible (1866), Milton's Paradise Lost (1866), La Fontaine's Fables (1867), Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1870), Alfred Tennyson's Idylls of the King (1875), Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1877), Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven (1884).
During this century, a type of woodcut ("à la langue de chat") was practiced in France, especially for book illustration. It was promoted mainly by the Englishman Charles Thompson, who founded a woodcut school in Paris in 1817. Practiced by artists such as Daumier, Doré and Meissonier, some of its best exponents were Célestin Nanteuil and Tony Johannot. Lithography was also very popular: in 1816 Charles Philibert de Lasteyrie and Godefroy Engelmann opened their workshops in Paris, and in 1820 it was the technique chosen by Isidore Taylor to illustrate his Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l'ancienne France, in collaboration with a wide range of artists. It was used by artists such as Delacroix and Daumier, and caricaturists such as Grandville and Gavarni.
In the years 1830-1840 the use of etching began to resurface among artists: in 1835 Rodolphe Bresdin made several etchings, in 1844 Théodore Chassériau produced fifteen etchings for an edition of Othello, and Camille Corot practiced this technique in the mid-1840s. Félix Bracquemond exhibited four etchings at the Exposition Universelle of 1855. In 1861 the Société des aquafortistes was founded in Paris, with the aim of bringing art for art's sake to printmaking. Its promoter was the entrepreneur Alfred Cadart, who had the collaboration of artists such as Charles-François Daubigny and Charles Jacque. Its members included Bracquemond, Corot, Daubigny, Millet, Meryon, Daumier and Delacroix, as well as Gustave Courbet, Henri Fantin-Latour, Carlos de Haes, Johan Barthold Jongkind, Maxime Lalanne, Alphonse Legros, Édouard Manet, Théodule Ribot, etc. His main organ was the publication Eaux-Fortes modernes. Publication artistique d'œuvres originales par la Société des aquafortistes, with a monthly circulation; between 1863 and 1867 five albums were published with compilations of the magazine, in the first of which, prefaced by Théophile Gautier, the term "aquafortist" emerged as a synonym for original engraver. One of its members, Lalanne, published in 1866 the Treatise on Etching, in which he described new ways of practicing this technique, such as "a la pluma", done with pen on copper; or retroussage, the cleaning with a muslin on the inked sheet, with which glazes, tones and half tints are obtained.
Germany and Austria