Lithography prints from a flat stone using the resistance between oil and water. From Senefelder to Daumier to Toulouse-Lautrec, learn how it transformed printmaking.
Alois Senefelder was a failed playwright. Born in Prague in 1771, he wanted to publish his plays but could not afford the cost of copperplate engraving, which was the standard method for reproducing text and images in the late 18th century. He tried etching his scripts onto copper plates, but the process was too expensive and too slow. Then he discovered that a greasy crayon drawn on a flat slab of Bavarian limestone would attract oil-based ink, while the rest of the stone, if dampened with water, would repel it. He called the process "stone writing," from the Greek "lithos" (stone) and "graphein" (to write). He patented it in 1798, and within thirty years lithography had transformed the printing industry.
Lithography is a planographic printmaking technique, meaning the image and the non-image areas are on the same flat surface. There is no carving, no cutting, no acid. The artist draws on a smooth limestone slab or a grained metal plate with a greasy substance, typically a lithographic crayon or an oily ink called tusche. The stone is then treated with a solution of gum arabic and a small amount of nitric acid, which fixes the greasy image to the stone and desensitizes the non-image areas to ink. When the stone is moistened with water and rolled with oil-based ink, the ink adheres only to the greasy drawing. Paper is placed on the stone, and both are run through a press under pressure, transferring the image.
This entry covers how lithography works, where it came from, which artists defined it, and how to identify a lithograph when you see one. If you want to understand why lithography became the dominant printmaking technique of the 19th century and remains a living medium today, the answer is in the relationship between oil, water, and a flat stone.
The entire process depends on one physical principle: oil and water do not mix. The artist draws on the stone with a greasy medium. The stone is porous limestone, typically from the Solnhofen quarries in Bavaria, which absorbs the grease into its surface. After the drawing is complete, the stone is etched with a solution of gum arabic and nitric acid. The acid opens the pores of the stone, allowing the gum and grease to penetrate. The gum arabic forms a thin film around the greasy areas, creating a water-repellent reservoir that will accept ink. On the non-image areas, the gum arabic bonds to the stone surface and makes it water-loving and ink-repellent.
To print, the stone is wetted with water. The water adheres to the non-image areas and is repelled by the greasy image areas. Oil-based ink is rolled across the stone. The ink sticks to the greasy drawing and is repelled by the wet non-image areas. A sheet of paper is laid on the stone, and both are passed through a scraper press that applies even pressure across the surface, transferring the ink to the paper.
Because the image sits on a flat surface rather than in carved grooves or on raised blocks, lithography captures the exact quality of the artist's mark. A lithographic crayon stroke on stone prints with the same texture, variation, and softness as a crayon stroke on paper. A wash of tusche prints like a brush wash. This directness is what made lithography so attractive to artists. As the Yale University Art Gallery's Printed Picture project explains, lithography "allowed artists to apply linear designs to a copper plate themselves, with the same ease with which they might draw on paper." Read more at Yale University Art Gallery.
Senefelder invented lithography in Munich between 1796 and 1798. His initial motivation was purely practical: he needed a cheap way to reproduce his plays. He discovered that limestone from the Solnhofen quarries in Bavaria was ideal for the process because of its fine, even grain and high porosity. He patented the technique in 1798 and published a full technical manual in 1818.
Lithography spread rapidly across Europe in the first decades of the 19th century. It was cheaper than engraving or etching, required no specialized metalworking skills, and could reproduce the exact quality of an artist's drawing. By the 1820s, lithographic presses were operating in Paris, London, Vienna, and Berlin. The technique was used for everything from sheet music to maps to political caricature. Senefelder himself noted that zinc plates could be used as an alternative to stone as early as 1818, and aluminium plates were introduced to the printing trade in 1891, though stone remained the preferred surface for fine art lithography.
The 19th century was the golden age of lithography. It became the primary medium for mass-produced images, from Daumier's political caricatures in La Caricature and Le Charivari to Toulouse-Lautrec's posters for Parisian cabarets. In the 20th century, the development of offset lithography, which transfers the image from the plate to a rubber blanket and then to paper, made the process even faster and cheaper, and offset lithography became the basis of modern commercial printing. Fine art lithography continued on stone and metal plates, practiced by artists from Picasso to Jasper Johns.
Daumier was the first great artist of lithography. He produced over 4,000 lithographs for Parisian newspapers between 1830 and 1872, satirizing politicians, lawyers, judges, and the bourgeoisie. His Rue Transnonain (1834) depicts the aftermath of a government massacre of civilians in a Paris apartment building. The lithograph was printed in La Caricature and caused such outrage that the government seized and destroyed the stone. Daumier's lithographs have the directness of drawing combined with the reproducibility of print, which is exactly what made lithography so powerful as a medium of political critique.
Daumier's contemporary Philipon, publisher of La Caricature, recognized that lithography could produce images fast enough to respond to current events. The lithographic press turned printmaking into a journalistic medium. A drawing made in the morning could be on the streets by afternoon. This speed was unprecedented. Etching and engraving took days or weeks. Lithography took hours.
Toulouse-Lautrec transformed the lithographic poster into a fine art form. His posters for the Moulin Rouge and other Parisian venues, including Moulin Rouge: La Goulue (1891) and Divan Japonais (1893), used flat areas of color, bold outlines, and cropped compositions influenced by Japanese woodblock prints. Toulouse-Lautrec's lithographs were printed in large editions and pasted on walls across Paris, blurring the line between commercial advertising and fine art. His work demonstrated that lithography could produce images of extraordinary sophistication and beauty at industrial scale.
Kollwitz used lithography for some of her most powerful social commentary. Her lithographic series, including The Weavers' Revolt (1893-1897) and War (1922-1923), used the directness of the lithographic crayon to convey grief, poverty, and political outrage. The rough, expressive quality of her crayon marks, preserved exactly by the lithographic process, gives her prints an immediacy that engraving could not achieve.
Picasso made over 800 lithographs, primarily at the Mourlot Studios in Paris. His Bull series (1945-1946) shows the lithographic process at its most reductive: eleven states of a bull, each one simpler than the last, until only a few lines remain. The series demonstrates how the lithographic stone can be reworked between states, with the artist scraping away areas and redrawing, building and reducing the image over multiple printings.
Johns has used lithography extensively since the 1960s, often combining it with other printmaking techniques. His Flags series and Numbers series explore the relationship between image and surface, using lithography to reproduce familiar symbols with subtle variations in color and texture. Johns's lithographs demonstrate that the medium is not just a reproduction tool but a site for artistic investigation.
Lithographs do not have a platemark. Because the image is printed from a flat surface, there is no indentation on the paper as there is with intaglio prints. The ink sits flat on the surface, deposited in a thin film from the stone or plate to the paper.
Look for the quality of the mark. Lithographic crayon marks have a specific texture: slightly grainy, with the characteristic dot pattern of the stone's surface. Brush washes of tusche produce soft, atmospheric tones that look like watercolor. Unlike the sharp, incised lines of an etching or the clean, carved lines of an engraving, lithographic marks look exactly like the drawing tools that made them.
Color lithographs require a separate stone or plate for each color. Look for slight misregistration between color layers, which is visible as offset edges. In well-printed commercial lithographs, registration is precise. In artist's proofs and experimental prints, misregistration may be visible and sometimes intentional.
Lithography is a planographic process, distinct from the other major printmaking families. Intaglio prints from recessed lines (etching, engraving, drypoint, aquatint, mezzotint). Relief printing prints from raised surfaces (woodcut, linocut). Screen printing pushes ink through mesh. Lithography alone prints from a flat surface, using chemistry rather than physical relief to separate image from non-image.
For more on how printmaking techniques compare, read our entries on etching and screen printing, or explore our post on how to read a painting to learn more about identifying printmaking techniques in museums.
The Musee Toulouse-Lautrec in Albi, France, holds the largest collection of Toulouse-Lautrec's lithographs, including his posters and preparatory drawings. The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Modern in London hold significant collections of 20th-century lithographs by Picasso, Johns, and others. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has an extensive collection of 19th-century lithographic posters and prints.
If you want to trace the history of lithography, start with Daumier at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, move to Toulouse-Lautrec at the Musee Toulouse-Lautrec in Albi, and end with Picasso and Johns at MoMA or the Tate. You will see a technique that began as a cheap method for reproducing plays and became the most versatile printmaking medium ever invented. For more on the broader context of printmaking, read our entries on etching and intaglio, or explore our guide to chiaroscuro and dramatic contrast to see how lithographers like Daumier used tonal effects in their prints.
Discover other art terms you might be interested in
Aquatint is an etching technique that produces tonal areas using powdered resin and acid. From Goya's Caprichos to modern printmakers, learn how it works.
An artist's proof is a print pulled outside the numbered edition, traditionally reserved for the artist. From Picasso and Mourlot to today's 10 percent rule, learn how APs work.
Drypoint is an intaglio print made by scratching a metal plate with a needle. The burr creates a rich, velvety line that wears out fast. Learn how Rembrandt used it.
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