Chromolithography

On May 13, 1836, the most influential poster designer of the later nineteenth century, Jules Chéret was born. Chéret was born to a family of artisans in Paris, France. His father was a typographer and his brother Joseph was a sculptor. By the age of thirteen, Jules ended his formal education and began a three-year apprenticeship to a lithographer. During his apprenticeship he lettered flyers, brochures, posters and funeral announcements. When he was eighteen he worked for multiple lithographers which included Bouasse-Lebel, and later took a course at the Ecole Nationale de Dessin with Lecoq de Boisbaudran. Chéret is credited for enhancing the recognition of chromolithography. By 1866 he established his own firm and continued to pursue lithographic…

The art of lithography and chromolithography is one that has particularly strong roots in America. Originally used to illustrate news articles and books, the lithograph eventually covered and grew to symbolize many areas of growing American consumerism: from business and commercial prints and trade cards to domestic art portraying the nineteenth-century American domestic ideal; as well as popular romantic images of the time. Lithographs were present in nineteenth-century America in many forms,…

plate before acid and gum arabic was placed on the stone to become moist before oily ink was placed on the stone to be repelled in the water and the ink to be put onto blank piece of paper and create a printed page. Lithography is still used for text and artwork and now has a modernized technique of using an image coated with polymer to print the image from the plate or put on a different sheet of paper used for printing and publication purposes. Chromolithography is a technique that was…

thinking. This remains true when looking through forms of art and looking at Christian Schussele’s Men of Progress in 1862, and Edward Sorel’s People of Progress crafted in 1999. From a very basic visual perspective, there is a stark contrast between the two works of art. Both forms are done with oil on canvas, but are visually different. Edward Sorel’s work is done in a cartoon and caricature form, while Chrisitan Schussele’s is more of an accurate, photographic painting. This is because of…