Sunday, November 20, 2016

Early 19th-century Lithographs at the British Museum

Antoine Maurin after Frans Porbus
Marie de Medicis
ca. 1820-60
lithograph
British Museum

Anonymous print-maker after Alfred Corbould
The Diver Samuel G Scott
1840-41
lithograph
British Museum

Most of the lithographs in this selection are forthrightly documentary and perhaps not primarily artistic in intention. In their day, the basic presentation of each image must have seemed value-neutral and inevitable, but with the passage of a couple of centuries each image speaks primarily of its time, and only after that fact has been registered can it be allowed to speak of its specific, time-bound subject.

John Christian Zeitter
Signor Paulo
1820s
lithograph
British Museum

Villain
The actress Marie Dorval
1829
lithograph
British Museum

John Brandard
Miss Fairbrother as Eglantine
1845
lithograph
British Museum

Eduard Clemens Fechner
Emma Albertazzi as Rosina in The Barber of Seville
1836-45
lithograph
British Museum

Jean-Baptiste Regnault
Young woman in profile
ca. 1780-1829
lithograph
British Museum

Jean-Baptiste Regnault
Young woman in profile
ca. 1780-1829
lithograph
British Museum

Anonymous print-maker
King George III
ca. 1760-1820
lithograph
British Museum

Anonymous print-maker
Monument called the Montagne du Lion, Waterloo
1842
lithograph
British Museum

Anonymous print-maker
The York Pillar, London
ca. 1834-50
lithograph
British Museum

Francis Oliver Finch after Alfred Baker
Ruins of Kenilworth Castle
1822
lithograph
British Museum

Carle Vernet
Rearing horse
ca. 1816-36
lithograph
British Museum

Anonymous print-maker for Alfred Essex
Temple of the East
early 19th century
lithograph
British Museum

I am grateful to the British Museum for making these images available.