Between the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the foundations of contemporary society were laid, marked in the political field by the end of absolutism and the establishment of democratic governments—an impulse that began with the French Revolution—and, in the economic field, by the Industrial Revolution and the consolidation of capitalism, which would have a response in Marxism and the class struggle. In the field of art, an evolutionary dynamic of styles began to follow one another chronologically with increasing speed, culminating in the 20th century with an atomization of styles and currents that coexist and oppose, influence and confront each other. The century began with the survival of Neoclassicism, a movement succeeded by Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, Modernism and Symbolism.
France
In this century, the frequent use of etching continued, employed by painters such as Daubigny, Millet, Whistler, Manet, Degas, Pissarro, etc. However, the use of lithography, initiated in the previous century, predominated, with two trends: one that sought to compete with photography by emphasizing the accuracy and sensitivity of its compositions, led by Claude Ferdinand Gaillard; and another more artistic and relaxed tone, represented by Léopold Flameng. During this period, printmaking became highly industrialized and reached high production levels, with large print runs aimed at an increasingly larger public. At the end of the century, and especially linked to the post-impressionist generation, lithography had a privileged means of expression in the poster, to which great artists such as Jules Chéret, Alphonse Mucha, Pierre Bonnard and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec devoted themselves.
During this period, new techniques emerged—or some of those introduced in the previous century were consolidated—such as woodcut, steel engraving or stereotype. On the other hand, the invention of photography revolutionized the graphic arts and influenced new techniques: in 1827, Nicéphore Niépce introduced heliography, made on a zinc plate sensitized to light and hollow engraved with acid; in 1852, Joseph Lemercier invented photolithography, a photonegative on glass projected on lithographic stone sensitized to light; in the same year, the cliché verre appeared, a glass cliché printed on photosensitive paper; and in the 1860s, photoengraving appeared, using a plate covered with a varnish or photosensitive resin attacked by acid, without the intervention of the artist. Another new technique, unrelated in this case to photography, was gillotage—also called zincography—invented by Firmin Gillot in 1850, which consisted of transferring a drawing to a zinc plate attacked with acid and stamped with a typographic press. The progressive industrialization of printmaking increasingly led to a differentiation between the artisan printmaker and the artist engraver—or painter-engraver—who demanded greater recognition for his creative work.
Romanticism and realism
Romanticism was a style born at the beginning of the century, although it had already been forged at the end of the previous one in a so-called pre-romanticism. It was a movement of profound renewal in all artistic genres, which paid special attention to the field of spirituality, fantasy, feeling, love of nature, along with a darker element of irrationality, attraction to the occult, madness, dreams. Popular culture, the exotic, the return to underrated artistic forms of the past—especially medieval ones—were especially valued, and the landscape gained notoriety, which became a protagonist in its own right. The Romantics had the idea of an art that arose spontaneously from the individual, which is why they emphasized the figure of "genius": art is the expression of the artist's emotions.