Until May 12, our visitors have the opportunity to get acquainted with a temporary exhibition of graphics. As part of the “Graphic Techniques” series of exhibitions, the Smolensk Museum-Reserve continues to display previously unexhibited works from its extensive collection. Visitors to the Art Gallery in 2022 have already been treated to a selection of mezzotint prints, this time with lithography in focus. The museum’s holdings include several hundred first-class lithographs by artists of various schools. For the exhibition, 42 of the brightest sheets created by European masters of the 19th century were selected.
The term “lithography” comes from two Greek words: lithos – “stone”, and grapho – “I write”, “I draw”. This is a special way of printing images in which ink is transferred from stone to paper under pressure. This printing method was invented in the 1790s by the German writer and typographer Johann Alois Senefelder. According to legend, one day he accidentally wrote down a laundry bill on a limestone stone and then placed it on a damp cloth. After a while, Senefelder noticed that the inscription was imprinted on the material. Then he decided to apply this method in his printing house. For lithography, even and smooth limestone stones were chosen, which were additionally polished. Next, the printers transferred the image onto them from special paper – cornpaper. It was dense, grainy and coated with a special adhesive composition. A stone with a finished design was used when printing reproductions.
Lithography instantly became one of the most popular and widespread types of printed graphics in Europe and Russia, as it was cheaper than wood and metal engravings and made it possible to create many copies of one image. This is how posters, playbills and advertisements were made, and lithographs were printed in newspapers and magazines. But at the same time, this technique was used to create true masterpieces of easel art: exquisite landscapes and portraits, entertaining genre scenes and detailed views of cities.
As a rule, a lithograph has several authors – the artist who created the original image, and the lithographer who transferred it to stone. Often existing lithographic prints are transferred back onto stone by other artists. Printers and lithographic workshops play a significant role. Therefore, two, three, even four artists can be full authors of a particular lithograph.
In the 1820s, during the era of romanticism, autolithographs appeared. They were made by artists themselves. They drew on the stone with special, very greasy lithographic inks and pencils that were made from soap, wax, soot and resin. Then the image was treated with a solution of hydrochloric and sulfuric acids so that small depressions appeared on the stone and were washed away. After this, the stone was covered with printing ink. Due to the special processing, the drawing appeared only where it was originally drawn by the artist with lithographic pencils. The stone with the finished image was given to printers, and they then replicated the work. Autolithography was carried out by Eugene Delacroix and Francisco Goya. They used this printing method when they released albums with their works. Lithography was also popular in Russia – Alexey Venetsianov and Karl Bryullov were fond of it.
The purpose of this exhibition is to introduce visitors to the Art Gallery to lithography as an extremely diverse technique: it can represent any genre, be one tone or colored, can resemble a light pencil drawing or imitate painting. This technique allows you to print everything from a cheese label to a complex cityscape.
The largest section at the exhibition is 12 works from the “Architectural Monuments of France” series. The author of the drawings for almost all of these lithographs was Nicolas-Marie-Joseph Chapuis. His works very accurately, in all details, convey the appearance of the famous cathedrals, castles, bridges of Chartres, Amiens, Lyon, Rouen – all significant landmarks of France. In each work, the image is supplemented with figures of people and animals, everyday scenes from simple city life. Landscapes allow you to literally immerse yourself in the world of small French towns, where all everyday affairs unfold against the backdrop of the greatest works of medieval architecture. The series “Architectural Monuments of France” became the most important project of Chapuis. In many cases, the lithographer is the brilliant master of this technique, Adolphe Jean-Baptiste Bayot.
The work of the French painter and lithographer Louis-Jules Arnoux is represented at the exhibition by four views of Paris using the technique of color lithography, painted with watercolors. Five landscapes of Vienna belong to Franz Sandmann. The main streets and squares of the Austrian capital appear in small color lithographs.
The Franco-German landscape painter and lithographer Karl Lindemann-Frommel is represented by two views of Rome – “View of Rome with Monte Mario” and “Pontic Marshes”. From 1844 to 1849 Lindemann traveled through Italy, which soon became his home. In Rome, he became one of the founders of the Association of German Artists, and was also appointed professor at the Academy of St. Luke. A large number of drawings, lithographs, and paintings by Lindemann-Frommel with images of Rome and its environs have been preserved, which perfectly convey the atmosphere of the hot south and the spirit of the history of these ancient lands.
The Italian draftsman and lithographer Gaetano Dura worked a lot for ethnographic albums, where he depicted in detail the national costumes and attributes of the inhabitants of different regions. The museum’s collection contains images of the inhabitants of Naples and Venice, as well as two sheets from its famous series dedicated to Vesuvius as a tourist site in the mid-19th century.
Among all the landscapes, three works by the Swiss painter, draftsman, etcher and lithographer Alexander Kalam stand out for their romantic spirit. The main theme of this master is the mountain landscape of Switzerland; he was fascinated by the consistent depiction of the changing seasons or days. The ledges of rocks, gloomy fir trees, illuminated by the moon, stormy waterfalls depicted in the landscapes of Kalam are imbued with the mysticism so characteristic of the era of romanticism.
The exhibition features a portrait of Abbot Felicité Robert de Lamennais by the Leipzig artist Cecilia Brandt, who was one of the most popular portrait painters of her time. Her portrait was lithographed by an equally famous master, August Kneisel. He also worked in Leipzig and owned a lithographic printing workshop. The fruits of the successful union of the draftsman Cecilia Brandt and the lithographer August Kneisel were dozens of brilliant portraits.
Another portrait painter, Joseph Kriehuber, is represented by two female images from 1853 – Maria Taglioni and Antonietta Kurz. Both of these ladies became famous as dancers. Kriehuber was known as one of the best Austrian engravers, at one time he was the most popular and highly paid portrait painter in Vienna, he owned about 3,000 lithographic portraits, including Emperor Franz I, Joseph Radetzky, Franz Schubert, Franz Liszt, Niccolò Paganini and many other celebrities . Kriehuber acted simultaneously as the author of the drawing and as a lithographer.
Lithography in the manner of pencil drawing is represented by the works of two French artists – Henri Humoens and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. Translucent strokes barely appear on the paper, forming the finest, fragile and elegant image.
Two lithographs made by French artists are associated with Smolensk. The recognizable landscape of our city, its fortress walls were drawn from life in the late 1830s by Barthelemy Lauvergne, his work was subsequently lithographed by Leon-Jean-Baptiste Sabatier and printed in the Lemercier workshop – the best lithographic enterprise in France in the second quarter of the 19th century. This sheet was included in the collection “Travel to Scandinavia, Lapland, Finland, Spitsbergen in 1838, 1839, 1840.” Smolensk is depicted from the inside of the walls, a church is visible in the distance, and a sleigh with two horses is racing. With the help of complex tonal development, the snow-covered expanse is wonderfully conveyed.
Bavarian battle painter and engraver Albrecht Adam served in the troops of the Viceroy of Italy Eugene Beauharnais and took part in Napoleon’s campaign in Russia, during which he sketched everything that passed before his eyes, from the fire of Moscow to the flight of the army. Military sketches helped him publish an album of lithographs “Voyage pittoresque et militaire”, which brought him great fame as a battle painter. The lithographs depict the battles for Vitebsk, Smolensk, the capture of Vyazma, Mozhaisk, the battle of Borodino and much more. At the exhibition, viewers can see Adam’s dramatic genre work “Before Smolensk on August 18, 1812,” in which he is the author of the drawing and lithographer.
Most of all the lithographs came to the museum after the revolution from noble estate collections. In the 19th century, many of these sheets were purchased during travels around Europe and were brought to the Smolensk province as a reminder of the sights visited.
At this exhibition, viewers can get acquainted with the complex and interesting technique of lithography, appreciate its diverse capabilities and see examples of works of high artistic level from the collection of the Smolensk State Museum-Reserve.
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Tags: GRAPHICS TECHNIQUES LITHOGRAPHY exhibition Art Gallery ends
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