Specimens of Polyautography: Landscape with an Oak Tree (1803): Art, History and Details

Specimens of Polyautography: Landscape with an Oak Tree (1803) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Thomas Hearne (British, 1744–1817).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The first portfolio of artists’ lithographs was published in 1803, just five years after Alois Senefelder invented the medium in Munich in 1798. Entitled Specimens of Polyautography, the publication included twelve lithographs by British, French, German, and Swiss artists. Figures contemplating the landscape and atmospheric tree studies were dominant subjects among these early pen lithographs.

Object facts

• Title: Specimens of Polyautography: Landscape with an Oak Tree
• Date: 1803
• Creator attribution: Thomas Hearne (British, 1744–1817)
• Culture: England, early 19th Century
• Type: Print
• Technique: lithograph
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1940.1124

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. Lewis B. Williams Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue of an exhibition of the art of lithography: commemorating the sesquicentennial of its invention, 1798-1948. [Cleveland]: The Cleveland Museum of Art, November 11, 1948-January 2, 1949. Published as: Landscape with an Oak Tree.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.