have been allowed to fall into desuetude and would well repay some experimentally disposed person to revive.
Lithography may be divided into two main branches—that which is drawn with a greasy crayon (rather illogically called “chalk”) on a grained stone, and that which is drawn in “ink” on a polished stone. Whatever may be thought in regard to the original work of the artists of various countries who have used lithography as a means of expression, there can be little doubt that in the former method the English professed lithographer has always held the pre-eminence, while French, German and American artists have surpassed them in the latter.
Chalk lithography subdivides itself into work in which the black predominates, although it may be supported by 5 or 6 shades of modified colour—this branch is known as “black and tint” work—and that in which the black is only used locally like any other colour. Frequently this latter class of work will require a dozen or more colours, while some of the finest examples have had some twenty to thirty stones employed in them. Work of this description is known as chromo-lithography. Each colour requires a separate stone, and work of the highest quality may want two or three blues with yellows, reds, greys and browns in proportion, if it is desired to secure a result that is an approximate rendering of the original painting or drawing. The question may perhaps be asked: “If the well-known three-colour process” (see Process) “can give the full result of the artist’s palette, why should it take so many more colours in lithography to secure the same result?” The answer is that the stone practically gives but three gradations—the solid, the half tint and the quarter tint, so that the combination of three very carefully prepared stones will give a very limited number of combinations, while a moderate estimate of the shades on a toned block would be six; so that a very simple mathematical problem will show the far greater number of combinations that the three blocks will give. Beyond this, the chromo-lithographer has to exercise very great powers of colour analysis; but the human mind is quite unable to settle offhand the exact proportion of red, blue and yellow necessary to produce some particular class say of grey, and this the camera with the aid of colour filters does with almost perfect precision.
Notwithstanding these disadvantages, lithography has these strong points: (1) its utility for small editions on account of its, at present, smaller prime cost; (2) its suitability for subjects of large size; (3) its superiority for subjects with outlines, for in such cases the outline can be done in one colour, whereas to secure this effect by the admixture of the three colours requires marvellously good registration, the absence of which would produce a very large proportion of “waste” or faulty copies; (4) capacity for printing on almost any paper, whereas, at the time of writing, the tri-colour process is almost entirely limited to printing on coated papers that are very heavy and not very enduring.
With regard to the two branches of chalk lithography, the firms that maintained the English supremacy for black and tint work in the early days were Hulemandel, Day and Haghe and Maclure, while the best chromo-lithographic work in the same period was done by Vincent Brooks, the brothers Hanhart, Thomas Kell and F. Kell. In reference to the personal work of professed lithographers during the same period, the names of Louis Haghe, J. D. Harding, J. Needham, C. Baugniet, L. Ghemar, William Simpson, R. J. Lane, J. H. Lynch, A. Maclure and Rimanozcy stand for black and tint work; while in chromo-lithography J. M. Carrick, C. Risdon, William Bunney, W. Long, Samuel Hodson, Edwin Buckman and J. Lewis have been conspicuous among those who have maintained the standard of their craft. In the foregoing list will be recognized the names of several who have had admirable works on the walls of the Royal Academy and other exhibitions; Mr Lane, who exhibited lithographs from 1824 to 1872, was for many years the doyen of lithographers, and the only one of their number to attain academic rank, but Lynch and John Cardwell Bacon were his pupils, and Bacon’s son, the painter John H. F. Bacon, was elected to the Royal Academy in 1903. In the first decade of the 20th century the number of firms doing high-class work, and the artists who aided them in doing it, were more numerous than ever, and scarcely less able, but it would be outside the present purpose to differentiate between them.
The raison d’être of “stipple” work is its capacity for retransferring without serious loss of quality, for it can scarcely be contended that it is as artistic as the methods just described. Retransferring is the process of pulling impressions from the original stones with a view to making up a large sheet of one or more small subjects, or where it is desired to print a very large number without deterioration of the original or matrix stone. The higher class work in this direction has been done in France, Germany and the United States, where for many years superiority has been shown in regard to the excellence and rapidity of retransferring. To this cause may be attributed the fact that the box tops and Christmas cards on the English market were so largely done abroad until quite recent times. The work of producing even a small face in the finest hand stipple is a lengthy and tedious affair, and the English craftsman has seldom shown the patience necessary for this work; but since the American invention known as Ben Day’s shading medium was introduced into England the trade has largely taken it up, and thereby much of the tedium has been avoided, so that it has been found possible by its means to introduce a freedom into stipple work that had not before been found possible, and a very much better class of work has since been produced in this department.
About the year 1868 grained paper was invented by Maclure, Macdonald & Co. This method consists in impressing on ordinary Scotch transfer or other suitable paper a grain closely allied to that of the lithographic stone. It appears to have been rather an improvement than a new invention, for drawing paper and even canvas had been coated previously with a material that adhered to a stone and left on the stone the greasy drawing that had been placed thereon; but still from this to the beautifully prepared paper that was placed on the market by the firm of which the late Andrew Maclure was the head was a great advance, and although the first use was by the ordinary craftsman it was not long before artists of eminence saw that a new and convenient mode of expression was opened up to them.
On the first introduction of lithography the artists of every nation hastened to avail themselves of it, but soon the cumbrous character of the stone, and the fact that their subjects had to be drawn backwards in order that they might appear correctly on the paper, wore down their newly-born zeal, and it was only when the grained paper system was perfected, by which they could make their drawings in the comfort of their studios without reversing, that any serious revival took place. Although excellent work on grained paper had been done by Andrew Maclure, Rimanozcy, John Cardwell Bacon, Rudofsky and other craftsmen, the credit for its furtherance among artists must be given to Thomas Way and his son T. R. Way, who did much valuable pioneer work in this direction. The adhesion of such artists of eminence as Whistler, Legros, Frank Short, Charles Shannon, Fantin Latour, William Strang, Will Rothenstein, Herbert Railton and Joseph Pennell, did not a little to aid lithography in resisting the encroachments of other methods into what may still be considered its sphere. As a means of reproducing effects which an artist would otherwise get by pencil or crayon, it remains entirely unequalled, and it is of obvious advantage to art that twenty-five or fifty copies of an original work should exist, which, without the aid of lithography, might have only been represented by a single sketch, perhaps stowed away among the possessions of one private collector.
In regard to grained paper work, undue stress has often been placed upon the rapid deterioration of the stone, some contending that only a few dozen first-class proofs can be taken; this has led to the feeling that it is unsuited to book illustration, and damage has been done to the trade of lithography thereby. It may be mentioned that quite recently about 100 auto-lithographs in black and three colours, the combined work of Mr and
