Portret van de kunstenaar Louis Royer 1868

Edouard Taurel made this portrait of the artist Louis Royer, and he did so using a technique called lithography. Think of lithography as a kind of sophisticated printing, like making many near-identical original artworks. The image emerges from a stone, or sometimes a metal plate, through a chemical process. The artist draws on the surface with a greasy crayon, and then the stone is treated so that ink sticks only to those drawn areas. Pressing the stone onto paper transfers the image. The real skill here is in the control of tone and line; you can see how Taurel achieves a photographic realism in Royer’s face and clothing. Lithography was a commercially important medium in the 19th century. It allowed images to be widely reproduced, impacting the development of visual culture. But artists like Taurel also elevated it to a high art form, showing how mechanical processes can be infused with artistic sensibility. So, this image speaks to the industrialization of art, and the labor involved in both its making and distribution.