CHAPTER XIV
LITHOGRAPHY
Its technique—Senefelder its inventor, 1798—Lithography on the Continent—Early English lithographers—Its peculiar artistic qualities—Artist-lithographers—Its popularity in France—The revival of lithography in the late nineteenth century.
The Technique.—Lithography is the art of drawing on a specially prepared stone, which is capable of producing impressions on paper called lithographs. Alois Senefelder, the son of a performer at the Theatre Royal, Munich, finding himself too poor to publish some of his works as an author, was engaged in experimenting with copper plates and mastering the difficult art of writing in reverse in the manner that the name is engraved on a plate for a visiting-card. His poverty again was his mascot. Necessity being the mother of invention, not being able to afford to spoil copper plates by practising upon them, he procured some pieces of soft stone. But dirty linen must be washed in poor households; but poor as were the Senefelders, it seems from the story
