Eastern Patriarch [King Lear]

"Specimens of Polyautography" contains the first lithographs published in Britain. The process was invented by Alois Senefelder, a Munich dramatist turned printer seeking an inexpensive means to reproduce texts and music. In 1796 he experimented with relief printing from stone blocks, then discovered in 1798 that marks made on limestone with greasy inks or crayons could be printed by purely chemical means. After the surface is treated with gum arabic and nitric acid, dusted with resin and talc, and finally moistened with water, oily printing ink will adhere to the applied marks but not the stone. Senefelder visited London in 1800 to obtain British patents for his revolutionary process, selling the latter rights in 1801 to Johann Anton André, a printer of musical scores from Offenbach am Main. Johann's brother Philipp, who lived in London, was enlisted to set up a press and develop the method's artistic potential. Interested local artists were supplied with materials and Philipp teamed with James Heath to print and publish sets of twelve "polyautographs" in 1803. The gray aquatint mount here indicates that Barry's print comes from this early group rather than the 1806 expanded reissue.