Portrait of Alois Senefelder 1805 - 1873

This is a portrait of Alois Senefelder by Franz Xaver Winterhalter. It's rendered in pencil, a humble material that here commemorates a technical innovator. Senefelder was the inventor of lithography, a printing process that uses a flat stone or metal plate treated to repel ink in non-image areas. The drawing is made using graphite, an allotrope of carbon, whose greasy texture allows for the sensitive gradations of tone. The artist has used the pencil in the traditional way, as a drawing implement. The invention of lithography was hugely important to the history of capitalism. It mechanized the reproduction of imagery and text. In this, it resembles the pencil itself. Before the mid-19th century, pencils were made from chunks of graphite, wrapped in string. Only later was the graphite pulverized and combined with clay, allowing for mass production. Looking at this portrait, we can see a fascinating intersection of materials, technologies, labor, and social impact.