From Daumier to Degas

The works of French nineteenth-century printmakers strike us with their extraordinary variety. From the Romantics to the post-Impressionists, many artists embraced printmaking techniques with great enthusiasm for experimentation. Not unlike the drawing, these processes enabled them to create authentic expressions of their artistic individuality. Lithography, which had been invented just before 1800, played a central role. Especially impressive are Delacroix’s night-pieces and Daumier’s caricatures as well as Manet’s haunting scenes and Toulouse-Lautrec’s posters. Bresdin, Corot, Pissarro, and Degas took the etching, a technique for the creation of original prints that already looked back on a long tradition rooted in the work of Rembrandt, to new heights.