Overall good condition. Gutta-percha binding shot with a few pages working loose. Minor spotting. Wrappers neatly backed (some wear) and laid down. Minor evidence of creasing.
Limited to 200 copies. Extremely rare. With 25 magnificent plates
Lithography was invented in the 1790s by Alois Senefelder in Germany but, over the next century, became the domain of commercial and scientific printers. This French treatise of 1893 encouraged artists to return to the medium and the author, Edouard Duchâtel, listed eleven artist-contributors on the cover. Léonce Bénédicte, director of the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, wrote the introduction, and the illustrated text describes how to work directly on the stone and use various transfer papers. Two years later, a major Paris exhibition of 1895, mounted to celebrate the centennial of the technique’s invention, devoted a major section to prints by contemporary artists.
One section is reserved entirely for colour lithography, describing the process in detail and illustrating it step by step with colour proofs. There was a second extensively revised edition of 500 copies published in 1907; this was illustrated by an entirely different group of artists. Several good notes on Duchatel are given in P. D. Cate and S. Hitchings, the colour revolution, colour lithography in France 1890--1900, (Rutgers, N. J., 1978), in passim.
