Description
The success of romanticism in France gives thanks to the arrival of lithography. This technique, developed by Aloys Senefelder * between 1796 and 1799, took off during the first half of the 19th century – in Paris in particular, where workshops were opened and new publications were created. Easier to handle than etching or copperplate engraving – just draw with a lithographic pencil on a stone – this new process allows the production of new images and their reproduction in large numbers.
Quick and inexpensive to execute, lithography is the ideal medium for caricature: it fixes the moment, events, customs, miscellaneous facts and anecdotes. In France, Daumier and Gavarni, two famous 19th century caricaturists, use lithography as a weapon in the service of their republican ideas.
*
“Villa des Arts, near the avenue
De Clichy, painted Monsieur Renoir
Who in front of a bare shoulder
Crumble something other than black. “
– MALLARME, The Leisure of the Post Office, 1894.
*
Auguste RENOIR, Autoportrait, 1875.
Auguste RENOIR is today one of the public’s favorite painters. However, it was not very successful. Born into a poor family, he began his apprenticeship at the age of thirteen with a porcelain decorator. He then decorated blinds before entering the studio of Charles Gleyre (1806-1874) – a Swiss painter established in Paris – where he met Monet, Bazille and Sisley. Their master’s academic style does not teach them anything, but it inspires them to paint outdoors. At the end of the 1860s, Renoir and Monet adopted this practice and often painted side by side. Impressionists at heart, their subjects and styles are so closely related that it is sometimes difficult to tell them apart. Despite the success of some of his paintings, RENOIR struggles to survive. At the end of the 1870s, he acquired financial ease thanks to loyal sponsors and the support of merchants. RENOIR gradually abandons the sensory perception of his impressionist landscapes for the fluidity of pencil lines which place more emphasis on the representation of the human being. He places gaiety at the heart of his drawings by a joyful staging – intimate or popular – which earned him the nickname “painter of happiness”.
Sometimes his models are young women he meets in the street, whom he thanks by offering them the portrait, flowers or fashionable hats …
* Aloys Senefelder was born in Prague in 1771 and died in Munich in 1834. German actor and playwright, he invented the technique of lithography in 1796, in order to print his own work as an author.
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