French Prints from Manet to Matisse

France experienced tremendous social and political change following the collapse of the Second Empire in 1870. Working- and middle-class citizens flocked to Paris, flooding boulevards, cafés, dance halls, and racetracks. It was in this atmosphere that the Impressionists, a revolutionary generation of artists who captured the spirit of modern life, emerged. The 1880s and ’90s also saw the revival of artistic printmaking in France. The proliferation of advertising and illustrated journals, as well as the development of high-speed presses and color lithography, brought a cascade of brilliant graphic images before an increasingly cosmopolitan public. Both artists and dealers were quick to grasp the potential of print publishing as a way of making works of art available to a broad range of collectors in unprecedented ways.

Some artists—like Manet and Tissot—published prints based on their painted compositions, making their ideas available to broader audiences; the dealer Durand-Ruel organized exhibitions of prints by the painters he represented—including Degas and Cassatt—to promote printmaking as a fine-art form. Likewise, the dealer Vollard issued portfolios of color lithographs commissioned from such artists as Cézanne, printed in collaboration with master lithographers. The painters Bonnard and Toulouse-Lautrec not only created dynamic color lithographic posters as a livelihood but also carried their enthusiasm for the medium into single-sheet prints and albums. For many artists, such as Gauguin and Matisse, printmaking became an independent form of expression that captured the experimental vitality of painting and drawing, developing techniques that would have a profound effect on printmakers of the twentieth century.

Calvin Brown

Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings