Rotslandschap met beek en waterval 1884

Rodolphe Bresdin created this landscape, with its rocks, stream, and waterfall, using lithography. Look closely, and you’ll see how the granular texture of the lithographic stone has profoundly influenced the image. The artist drew on the stone with a greasy crayon, allowing him to create a wide range of tonal effects, from the deepest shadows to the subtlest highlights. The result is a highly detailed, almost obsessive rendering of the natural world, an approach we might associate more readily with the laborious techniques of engraving. Bresdin was working at a time when printmaking was becoming increasingly industrialized, so there is a question of how this highly detailed work was made, and how it might have been situated within the wider print market. Paying attention to materials and processes allows us to understand the labor that went into creating artworks like this. It reminds us that art doesn't just appear out of nowhere, but is the product of skilled work, and we get a better understanding of how prints operated within broader economies of artistic production.