Portret van Joseph Forlenze 1785 - 1825

This is Jean-Baptiste Gautier’s “Portret van Joseph Forlenze,” a print made sometime in the late 18th or early 19th century. It's a lithograph, a printmaking technique which relies on the resistance between grease and water. Think about how this process would have influenced the final appearance of the artwork. The artist would have drawn the image on a flat stone surface with a greasy crayon, then treated the stone so that ink only adhered to the drawn areas. This allowed for the creation of relatively detailed images, with subtle tonal variations. This kind of printmaking was perfectly suited to the industrial age. It allowed for relatively quick and easy reproduction, contributing to a growing visual culture. Prints like this made images more accessible to a wider audience, reflecting the democratizing tendencies of the time. It's important to remember that the meaning of an artwork is always tied to its materials, its making, and its context.