Life and Works of Loui Prang

This essay discusses the life and work of 19th century chromolithographer Louis Prang, hailed as the greatest of American chromolithograph publishers. In it, I shall firstly introduce Louis Prang. Then I shall describe the graphic form which became known as chromolithography, after which I will have a look at Louis Prang's setting; his competitors and associates. After this I will focus on some examples of his work and the methods he used to produce them. Lastly I will summarize his contribution to the world of art and graphic design in particular.

Louis Prang was born in Germany in Breslau (present day Poland) in 1824. He learnt the fundamentals of printing in his father's fabric printing shop. In 1850, when Prang was twenty- six years old he immigrated to America and settled in Boston. He formed a chromolithographic firm with Julius Mayer in 1856 in which, initially, Julius Mayer printed the stones produced by Prang. Prang's colourful work was very popular and the firm grew rapidly. In 1860 Prang bought Mayer's share in the company and changed its name to L. Prang and Company. Prang's company became a major lithographic firm and a benchmark of the era.

A Lithograph was produced by firstly drawing the image on a flat stone surface in an oil based medium, the stone is then moistened with water which is repelled by the oil the surface is then inked with an oil based ink which is unable to adhere to the wet surface. A Chromolithograph is a coloured picture produced by making and superimposing multiple lithographic prints, each of which adds a different colour. The process of colour lithography was first experimented with in the early 1800s by Aloys Senefelder the inventor of lithography, while Ð''chromolithography' was patented in 1837 by a French printer Godefroy Engelmann.

When Prang set up shop in Boston there were already several lithographic firms in operation one such firm which provided a source of inspiration as well as competition was Bufford and later his sons also. Bufford often used five or more colours in his work; he laid his colour prints down before printing a final layer of black which assembled his image, for an example of his work see Ð''the Swedish song quartet'. Bufford's firm's quality steadily declined after 1870, after Bufford's death, and finally folded in 1890. Bufford's firm was then only in competition with Prang's during Prang's first years of operation. Unlike Bufford, Prang opted not to use a black master plate but to rather build up an image from subtler colours in an effort to print with a closer likeness to the natural colours in the paintings he was reproducing. (See the visual explanation he gives with Prang's Prize Babies.) Currier and Ives, which operated from 1857-1907 were his biggest competitors and were based in New York City. Currier and Ives mostly reproduced scenes from battle and landscape paintings. They too, followed the style of Bufford and sons including the use of a black final print. Their work was slightly less sensitive than that of Louis Prangs but because they used fewer stones they were able to compete because of their prices.

Prang and his company produced many chromolithographs during his career including scenes from the Civil War, art reproductions, scrap-album art and cards, particularly Christmas cards.

Prang is noted for his firm grasp of colour, he put vivid colour in the lives of every citizen by publishing literally millions of art bits, Bits of art he called scrap, collecting these and arranging them along with other treasures in scrap albums became a major Victorian pastime. Many of the scrap pieces were depictions of wildflowers, children, butterflies, animals and birds, and the scrap albums became the expression of the nostalgic sweetness of the era.

By the late 1860s Prang was producing work that was suitable for framing. Prang reproduced the paintings of many of America's leading artists in his prints, including those by A.F. Tait, Eastman Johnson, Thomas Moran, F.S. Church, and Albert Bierstadt. Often the artist worked in collaboration with Prang to produce the piece and more often than not both the artist and public would regard the reproduction as a piece of art in its own right. In Prang's Ð''Chromo', a magazine he launched in the late 1860s, he advertised his prints in this way:

"Prang's American Chromos. Ð''The Democracy of Art' . . . Our Chromo Prints are absolute FACSIMILES of the originals, in color, drawing, and spirit, and their price is so low that every home may enjoy the luxury of possessing a copy of works of art, which hitherto adorned only the parlors of the rich."

Besides reproducing fine art, Prang was constantly pushing the edges of format for this new media. In 1873 Prang produced small colour trade cards which he distributed at the Vienna International Exhibition; these were sold in bulk (over twenty thousand) with room for the trader's information either on the back or in a space provided on the front. It was the suggestion of the wife of his London agent that the ribbon or scroll on the cards be filled in with a Christmas greeting and be sold as a Christmas card . These first Prang Christmas cards were sold in England and proved to be a great success. Two years later, in 1875, Prang started publishing and selling American Christmas cards. They were a great success, so much so that Prang became known as the Ð''Father of the Christmas Card' regardless of the fact that he was not the first person to invent or produce them. His Christmas cards included popular theme icons such as St. Nick, reindeer, children and Christmas trees. His Christmas cards were followed by an entire range of cards for Easter, Valentines Day, New Years and birthday cards. His cards became an aspect of society, young ladies are said to have noted in their diaries how many "Prangs" they had received that year . So successful were his cards that he could not keep up with the demand and was printing approximately five million cards each year. Cards Dominated Prang's printing presses for most of the 1880s and as his card designs became more and more popular so the competition rose; his rivals began printing similar designs with fewer stones, undercutting the cost.

Prang and company produced many scenes and images from the civil war. In fact they produced an entire series between 1886 and 1888 consisting of Eighteen elaborate chromolithographs of important battles of the war ( see below for an example.) of the eighteen prints six were of eastern battles; six were of western battles; and six were naval images. He tried to create work which would be appropriate for all tastes, and Prang chose to depict