Cecilia Beaux, Lessons from Lithography

Lithograph of fossilized bones
by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "My uncle took me, one fine spring morning, to a lithographing establishment in order that I might see the process of printing. There were floors full of printing presses in action. The great stones lay in them, sliding back and forth to receive contact with the ink rollers. Many of the the stones were five inches thick, two feet by one and a half in horizontal dimensions. In the surface I now saw the beautiful quality of line I had always wondered at, fully accounted for. 

Mr. S., the manager, asked if I would like to draw a head on the stone and sent one to our house, on which I drew the head of a young actress from a photograph. It was printed and used as an advertisement. 

I received another consignment from him which was a group of small fossils, palaeontological specimens. If successful, the plates were to be included in the Report of a Geological Survey of many volumes. I was expected to define and develop the fossils, making the forms more clear and accenting special parts. I sat by a window where there was a steady north light, and under this tiny cavities and prominences became what might have been craters and mountains in the moon. 

My grandmother understood perfectly the high degree of concentration the stone required, and took part in the struggle. She devoted all her mornings to giving me the greatest assistance possible. In her clear, quiet voice, she read aloud untiringly, and never allowed interruption except when I got up to take breath.

As my rendering of minor fossils gave satisfaction to the watchful palaeontologist behind the scenes, who was in fact no less a personage than the famous Edward D. Cope, I was next given the opportunity to draw the portrait of his first-born among fossils, and the heir to all his hopes. It was a complete specimen, the head of an extinct ass that had roamed the plains of the Far West. Next came the skull of a small camel, white and clean, nearly cleared of the rock, and as it took the light boldly, it was not very difficult.

What was to be learned in dealing with obscure and reluctant form, in almost shapeless fossils, and above all the revelation of form in natural daylight, the revealer of truth without emphasis or exaggeration, came home with a force and tenacity that only the truth can apply, and being living truth and led by Nature, hand in hand, it never grew stale and was never exhausted. Having naught to do with fashion, this approach to truth can never go out of fashion, though it may be abused and vulgarized, when it ceases to be truth.

It was not possible to realize at the time what an immense educational opportunity the stone, to a beginner in art, and the fossils, had offered, and which luckily I had the sense, or rather the intuition, to take advantage of."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Background with Figures" by Cecilia Beaux.)