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1 1 Introduction: Taking a Fresh Look at Nineteenth-Century Lithography nancy finlay  “This is a modern art. . . . [and] this establishment is one of the pioneers of this art on this side of the Atlantic.”1 Thus an 1849 article in the Hartford Daily Courant described the process of lithography and the bustling print shop on Main Street, Hartford, Connecticut, where the Kellogg brothers produced their lithographic prints. Lithography, literally, the art of drawing on stone, had been invented in Germany in the 1790s and introduced in the United States only in the 1820s.2 The ease with which an artist could draw on a lithographic stone and the vast number of impressions that could be produced by inking and printing the stone transformed American printmaking, as well as the publishing and distribution of prints. As the Courant article went on to say, “Prints are now produced from drawings on stone, which possess nearly all the beauty and delicacy of steel and copperplate engravings, and at a price which brings them within the easy reach of all classes. Scarcely a cottage or hamlet can be found, however obscure or isolated, but what displays upon its walls . . . specimens of this art, pleasing the eye, enlivening the solitude, informing the mind, and cultivating . . . that taste for the fine arts which everywhere tends to refine and ennoble humanity.” This account is significant because it was written by someone who had visited the Kellogg shop and presumably interviewed the Kelloggs and their employees. It tells us how the Kelloggs themselves regarded their prints, as new, innovative, exciting—and, very definitely, as art. It also suggests that these prints were widely distributed, and that they were intended for and in fact did reach a broad popular audience. Lithographs were “modern art” not only because the process was a recent invention; they were also strikingly modern in their depiction of contemporary life. Before the nineteenth century, the portrayal of scenes and incidents from daily life was extremely rare in paintings, and even more unusual in prints.3 Such subjects form a major part of the output of the Kelloggs and other contemporary lithographers, beginning in the 1830s. These subjects are of special interest to us today as primary source material for the study of Victorian customs , costumes, and taste. Other popular subjects included local landscapes and businesses and reproductions of old master and contemporary paintings. When the Kelloggs began donating prints to the Connecticut Historical Society in the 1840s, their first gifts were a large contemporary view of Sag Harbor, New York (fig. 1; cat. no. 809), and a finely colored print of the Connecticut State Prison in Wethersfield (cat. no. 178). These views tell us what those sites were actually like at a specific moment in time and suggest that the Kelloggs not only viewed their lithographs as art; they also recognized their historical significance and realized that contemporary views would have historical value for future generations. 2  n a n c y f i n l a y Daniel W. Kellogg opened his shop on Main Street, Hartford, in about 1830, at a time when lithographic firms were proliferating throughout the eastern United States.4 America’s first lithography shop, established in Boston by brothers William and John Pendleton in 1824, provided a training ground for both artists and printmakers. Nathaniel Currier opened his business in New York in 1835, after serving an apprenticeship in the Pendleton shop in Boston and working briefly for M. E. D. Brown in Philadelphia. George Endicott began working in Baltimore about 1828, before moving to New York and establishing a partnership with Moses Swett, another former Pendleton apprentice. By the time Daniel’s brothers Edmund and Elijah took over the Kellogg business in 1840, competition between lithographers was becoming even more intense. John Bufford, still another former Pendleton apprentice, moved to New York to work for both Currier and Endicott, opening his own business there in 1835. William Sharp, an early practitioner of color lithography, set up business in Boston in 1839. Other lithographers were active in such cities as Albany, Buffalo, Louisville, and Cincinnati. This expansion continued in the 1840s, with the establishment of major firms by J. H. Bufford in Boston in 1845 and Napoleon Sarony and Henry B. Major in New York in 1846. Lithography reached California immediately in the wake of the Gold Rush.5 The relationships between these various lithographic firms were fascinating and complex. Artists and printers moved freely and frequently from...

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