Fine Art Prints

Before photography could reproduce a painting, the only way most people saw great art was through a print. A skilled engraver or lithographer would copy the painting by hand onto a plate or stone, and thousands of impressions could then be made from it.

Each method left its own mark. Engraving cut lines into a copper or steel plate with a sharp tool, and the result is crisp and precise. Etching used acid to bite the lines, which gave a looser, more sketchy line. Lithography, invented in the 1790s, let an artist draw directly on a smooth stone with a greasy crayon, and it opened the way to cheap, fast printing in large runs.

In the 19th century color printing turned prints into a mass market. Chromolithography used a separate stone for each color, sometimes a dozen or more, laid down one after another to build up a full-color image. Louis Prang in Boston became famous for chromolithographs that imitated oil paintings so closely that the word chromo became a household term, and for popularizing the Christmas card in America. Firms such as Currier & Ives in New York sold hand-colored lithographs of every kind of subject at prices almost any household could afford.

The prints in this collection cover a wide range. There are copies of European paintings, American landscapes and portraits, genre scenes of daily life, and decorative pictures meant to hang in a parlor. Some were made as works of art in their own right by artists who drew directly for the press.

Look closely at the surface of a print, ideally with a magnifier. An engraving is made of fine lines, a lithograph of soft crayon texture, and a chromolithograph of layered color that sometimes shows a slight misalignment at the edges. Those details tell you how a picture was made, and roughly when.