Chromolithography is a method for making multi-color prints. This type of color printing stemmed from the process of lithography, and it includes all types of lithography that are printed in color. It replaced coloring prints by hand, and eventually served as a replica of a real painting.

Lithographers sought to find a way to print on flat surfaces with the use of chemicals instead of relief or intaglio printing. Depending on the number of colors present, a chromolithograph could take months to produce. To make what was once referred to as a “chromo”, a lithographer – with a finished painting in front of him – gradually built and corrected the print to look as much as possible like the painting in front of him, sometimes using dozens of layers. The process can be very time-consuming and cumbersome, contingent upon the skill of the lithographer.

Tecnologies
The process of chromolithography is chemical, because an image is applied to a stone or zinc plate with a grease-based crayon. (Limestone and zinc are two commonly-used materials in the production of chromolithographs). After the image is drawn onto stone, the stone is gummed with gum arabic solution and weak nitric acid, and then inked with oil-based paints and passed through a printing press along with a sheet of paper to transfer the image to the paper.

Colors may be added to the print by drawing the area to receive the color on a different stone, and printing the new color onto the paper. Each color in the image must be separately drawn onto a new stone or plate and applied to the paper one at a time. It was not unusual for twenty to twenty-five stones to be used on a single image. Each sheet of paper will therefore pass through the printing press as many times as there are colors in the final print. In order that each color is placed in the right position in each print, each stone or plate must be precisely ‘registered,’ or lined up, on the paper using a system of register marks.

History
The technique for using color in printing was invented in 1796 in Germany. Considering the fact that it stemmed from lithography, there have been debates over whether chromolithography was created by Alois Senefelder, the same person who came up with printing by way of lithography. Senefelder introduced colored lithography in his 1818 Vollstaendiges Lehrbuch der Steindruckerey (A Complete Course of Lithography), in which he told of his plans to print using color and also explained the colors he wished to be able to print someday.

Although Senefelder recorded ideas on chromolithography, it turns out that other countries besides Germany, such as France and England, were also heavily involved in trying to find a new way to print in color. Godefroy Engelmann of Mulhouse proved to be one of the few searching for ways to produce colored printed images when he was awarded his patent on chromolithography in July 1837. Even after Engelmann received his award, disputes over whether chromolithography was already being used continued to rise. Some sources point to the idea that chromolithography was already being used in areas of printing such as the production of playing cards.

The first American chromolithograph—a portrait of Reverend F. W. P. Greenwood—was created by William Sharp in 1840. Many of the chromolithographs were created and purchased in urban areas. The paintings were initially used as decoration in American parlors as well as for decoration within middle-class homes. They were prominent after the Civil War because of their low production costs and ability to be mass produced, and because the methods allowed pictures to look more like hand-painted oil paintings. Production costs were only low if the chromolithographs were cheaply produced, but top-quality chromos were costly to produce because of the necessary months of work and the thousands of dollars worth of equipment that had to be used.

Although chromos could be mass produced, it took about three months to draw colors onto the stones and another five months to print a thousand copies. Chromolithographs became so popular in American culture that the era has been labeled as “chromo civilization”. Over time, during the Victorian era, chromolithographs populated children's and fine arts publications, as well as advertising art, in trade cards, labels, and posters. They were also once used for advertisements, popular prints, and medical or scientific books.

Oppositions to chromolithography
Even though chromolithographs served many uses within society at the time, many were opposed to the idea of them because of their lack of authenticity. The new forms of art were sometimes tagged as “bad art” because of their deceptive qualities. Some also felt that it could not serve as a form of art at all since it was too mechanical, and that the true spirit of a painter could never be captured in a printed version of a work. Over time, chromos were made so cheaply that they could no longer be confused with original paintings. Since production costs were low, the fabrication of chromolithographs became more a business than the creation of art.