The French Popular Lithographic Imagery, 1815-1870 series reproduces
in twelve volumes approximately 5000 nineteenth-century lithographs from
the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale. Beatrice Farwell's
multivolume text-fiche catalog is an essential resource to art
historians and will appeal to all those interested in nineteenth-century
France. In the final volume, Lithography in Art and Commerce, Farwell
discusses how lithography, the revolutionary printing technology of the
nineteenth century, came to be devoted more to commerce than to art.
Farwell studies the many commercial applications of the versatile
lithographic medium, showing how lithography was transformed from
artisanal craft to industrial mass production. In exploring the
connection between art and commerce, Farwell enriches our understanding
of the relations between so-called "high" and "low" art in
nineteenth-century France. The fiche accompanying the text features art
reproductions, courses of instruction in drawing, examples of different
lithographic techniques, and an important section on the development of
color lithography.