Literature

After 1850 engraving had to reckon with two serious 'competitors': photography and industrial reproduction techniques. A reaction to photography came after 1850 in the form of a true passion for etching: this art of the black and white was intended to deal a blow to photography. During those years engraving was to develop away from its status as a means of reproducing art to become a means of creating art, of creating original engravings. Toulouse-Lautrec found an answer to these ever more refined reproduction techniques around 1890 in the form of colour lithography. In the temple of pleasure that was the cabaret Moulin Rouge which opened in 1889, and in similar establishments around Montmartre, he found not only his home but also all those people addicted to pleasure who danced straight though the belle époque. And here Toulouse-Lautrec was also to find commissions. Were it posters, sheet music, or other pieces, he could create them. With his colour posters, such as the large-format one created in 1891 for the Moulin Rouge, he opened the door to colour lithography, a door which was, after 1900, to be flung wide open. But he was also to find in Montmartre his figures and his motifs. One such example was Mademoiselle Marcelle Lender, a celebrated bolero dancer, whom he was to portray brilliantly. In an eight-colour lithography, he recorded her receiving the public’s applause. The print was included in the third number of the first year of the German journal Pan in 1895 and thus gained international diffusion.

The lithography Le chapeau vert by Félix Vallotton (1896) is, in comparison with Toulouse-Lautrec’s works, more restrained, employing much more discreet colours. It is one of the earliest examples of prints signed and numbered by hand to be found in the Graphische Sammlung ETH. The practice of numbering, limiting and signing by hand was first to become common shortly before 1900 and was quickly to be considered an external sign allowing for the recognition of an original print. Vallotton, a Swiss artist, was known especially for his woodcuts. He and the French artist Paul Gauguin were to be models for the young Ernst Ludwig Kirchner when this artist made his first attempts in the technique of the woodcut.

A completely different artist who was also to prove to be a path beater for modern lithography was the Norwegian Edvard Munch. Like no other he was to try to visualize states of mind - not to say hallucinations - as, for example, in the colour lithography Angstgefühl of 1896. His Belgian contemporary James Ensor emulated him in this path of creative activity. Henri Rousseau’s lithography La Guerre dates to 1894/95. It is virtually a premonition of the war which was to break out in 1914 and to prepare the end of the belle époque.