Sunset, from The Enchanted Hours

Printmaking has been described as a democratic art because multiple originals of a given image can be produced at relatively low cost. Historically, this meant that ordinary people, not just the elite, could own art. During the 1800s, however, some artists and publishers limited print production to create artificial rarity—and higher prices. Finding this practice pretentious, Henri Rivière used lithography, which could produce high-quality prints in large numbers. This sunset view near the Brittany coast comes from the sixteen-print series “The Enchanted Hours.” Each image shared this wide format and was published in an edition of 500. That equals 8, 000 impressions from just this one series. Large and colorful, they were intended to be put on walls as decoration, not locked away in collectors’ portfolios.