Landscape

Henry Richard Greville was not a professional printmaker, but rather one of many aristocrats who pursued lithography as a hobby. Lithography depends upon the antipathy of grease and water, so a lithographer draws on a smooth block of limestone in a greasy medium—crayon or a liquid wash called tusche. When printing ink is applied to the wet stone, it only sticks to the drawn lines. The first collection of lithographs, or polyautographs, Specimens of Polyautography, was published in London in 1801 with pen lithographs by several well-known English artists. After this early start, lithography failed to catch on in England, however, leaving French artists to explore the full range of possibilities of the medium.