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Mr. Audubon and Mr. Bien: An Early Phase in the History of American Chromolithography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Peter C. Marzio
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Extract

The term “chromo,” a nickname for chromolithography, has come to be synonymous with anything that is “fake” or “cheap” or “false.” The period in America when chromolithography served as a popular technology for reproducing the likenesses of oil paintings and water colors was also the time of the Gilded Age, those decades between the Civil War and the start of the twentieth century, which opened with the scandals of the Grant administration and closed with America's needless involvement in a war with Spain. Historians have written of the cultural backsliding during these years as a retreat from the hey day of the New England writers of 1830–1860 and from the first generation of Hudson River painters. According to conventional wisdom, it was a time of Victorian excess in all the arts of design. It was a time when appearance, not fact or truth, held center stage. It was the time of the “chromo civilization,” as it is called.

Type
An American Tragedy: A 50th Anniversary
Information
Prospects , Volume 1 , October 1976 , pp. 139 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

NOTES

1. For typical uses of the word “chromo” see Larkin, Oliver W., Art and Life in America (New York: Rinehart, 1949), pp. 235–257Google Scholar and Mumford, Lewis, The Brown Decades: A Study of the Arts in America 1865–1895 (1931; rpt. New York: Dover, 1955), pp. 35–36Google Scholar. The Dictionary of American Slang, compiled and edited by Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner, defines “chromo” as any “person or object that is ugly or offensive.” A New Dictionary of Americanisms by Sylvia Clapin (1968) defines “chromo civilization” as: “An invention of the late J. R. Dennett, and a term admirably suited to the gilt and tinsel, so to say the surface polish, which characterizes the civilization of the present time…. It is notorious that, in America, chromo lithographic prints are sent out in shoals, and are generally a sorry wouldbe substitute for the genuine article.”

2. For the evolution of American lithographic technology before the Civil War see Marzio, Peter C., “American Lithographic Technology before the Civil War,” in Prints in and of America, ed. Morse, John D. (Charlottesville, Va.: The Univ. Press of Virginia, 1970), pp. 215–56Google Scholar. Also numerous references in Wainwright, Nicholas, Philadelphia in the Romantic Age of Lithography (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1958)Google Scholar, Peters, Harry T., America on Stone (New York: Doubleday, Doran 1931)Google Scholar, American Encyclopedia of Printing (Philadelphia: Menamin & Ringwalt, 1871)Google Scholar, American Dictionary of Printing and Bookmaking (New York: Howard Lockwood, 1894).Google Scholar

3. Prejudice against reproductive prints has been aimed at other processes in addition to chromolithographs. See note on reproductive etching in Weitenkampf, Frank, American Graphic Art (New York: Holt, 1912), p. 32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. The Brown Decades, pp. 35–36.Google Scholar

5. See the verbal exchange between Cook, Clarence and Prang, Louis in Freeman, Larry, Louis Prang: Color Lithographer, Giant of a Man (Watkins Glen, N.Y.: Century House, 1971), pp. 85–86.Google Scholar

6. Quoted in Thomas, Isaiah, The History of Printing in America, 2nd ed. (Albany, N.Y.: Joel Munsell, 1874), I, 330.Google Scholar

7. “The Work of Julius Bien: An Exhibition of Original Maps and Engravings” (Washington D.C.: The Klutznick Exhibit Hall, B'nai B'rith Building, 1960), p. 2Google Scholar; Who's Who in America, 1908–09; Peters, , America on Stone, pp. 93–94Google Scholar; Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929)Google Scholar and National Lithographer, 01, 1910.Google Scholar

8. The basic works on John James Audubon are Herrick, Francis Hobart, Audubon The Naturalist: A History of His Life and Time (New York: Appleton, 1938)Google Scholar, The 1826 Journal of John James Audubon, ed. and introduction by Ford, Alice (Norman, Okla.: Univ. of Oklahoma Press. 1967)Google Scholar, and Fries, Waldemar H., The Double Elephant Folio: The Story of Audubon's Birds of America (Chicago: American Library Association, 1973)Google Scholar. For Havell, Jr., see Williams, George Alfred, “Robert Havell, Junior, Engraver of Audubon's The Birds of America,'” The Print-Collector's Quarterly, 10, 1916, pp. 225–57Google Scholar. Note: Havell, Jr. engraved all but the first five plates of The Birds of America. These were done by William Home Lizars of Edinburgh.

9. Fries, , pp. 355–59.Google Scholar

10. Quoted in Herrick, , pp. 389–90.Google Scholar

11. Lucy Audubon to Professor [Joseph] Henry, , 08 14, 1863Google Scholar, in the James Audubon Collection, Princeton University Library and Mrs. J. J. Audubon to Professor [Joseph] Henry, , 10 18, 1864Google Scholar, in record unit 26, Secretary, 1863–1879, Incoming Corr., Smithsonian Institution Archives.

12. See Marzio, Peter C., “The Art Crusade,” Diss. Univ. of Chicago 1969, pp. 168–97.Google Scholar

13. Audubon, John James, The Birds of America (New York: J. J. Audubon; Philadelphia: J. B. Chevalier, 1840–1842)Google Scholar, vols. I–V. Volumes VI and VII (New York: J.J. Audubon, 1843–1844).

14. Fries, , pp. 353–54Google Scholar; Fleishmann, C. L., Trade, Manufacture, and Commerce in the United States of America, (Stuttgart: Franz Kohler, 1852), pp. 186–87.Google Scholar

15. Quoted in Fries, , p. 75.Google Scholar

16. Senefelder, Alois, A Complete Course of Lithography (New York: Da Capo Press, 1968), pp. 256–64.Google Scholar

17. See, for example, McElroy's Philadelphia Directory for 1856, 19th ed. (Philadelphia: Edward C. & John Biddle, 1855), p. 9Google Scholar. This is an advertisement for the printing firm of Wagner & M'Guigan. It reads in part: “transferring from steel and copper plates, woodcuts, etc., this branch of their business is under their own immediate supervision, and having the assistance of the ablest workmen, enables them to produce work equal if not superior to any other establishment in the country.” Julius Bien may have debated the claim!

18. Fries, , p. 390.Google Scholar

19. An excellent description of the lithographic transfer process is in Garo Z. Antreasian with Clinton Adams, The Tamarind Book of Lithography: Art and Techniques (New York: Henry Abrams, 1971), pp. 227–53.Google Scholar

20. Peters, , America on Stone, pp. 93–94.Google Scholar

21. Antreasian, , Tamarind, pp. 170–76.Google Scholar

22. For the earliest substantial and authoritative essay on chromolithography in America see the article by Peter Duval in the American Encyclopedia of Printing, pp. 282–83.Google Scholar

23. See the chromolithographs with additional hand applied colors in Nash, Joseph, Views of the Interior and Exterior of Windsor Castle (London: T. M'Lean, 1848).Google Scholar

24. Antiques Magazine, 12, 1934, pp. 226–28.Google Scholar