Astronomical Drawings, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
(Reproduced from the original drawings by Armstrong and Company,
Riverside Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts), 1882

E.L. Trouvelot, a French-born artist and amateur astronomer, spent 15 years observing the heavens and making original drawings from his observations. He worked with the 15-inch refrector telescope at the Harvard Observatory, the refracting telescope at the Washington Observatory, (placed at this dispocal by Admiral C.H. Davis), and the 25 inch refracting telescope at the University of Virginia, among others. "With a view to making these observations more generally useful," Trouvelot stated, "I was led...to prepare, from this collection of drawings, a series of astronomical pictures, which were intended to represent the celestial phenomenan through the great modern telescopes provided with the most delicate instrumental appliances... While my aim in this work has been to combine scrupulous fidelity and accuracy in the details, I have also endeavored to preserve the natural elegance and the delicate outlines peculiar to the objects depicted..."

To illustrate his observations of celestial objects and phenomena, Trouvelot selected fifteen of his drawings to be resproduced using chromolithography, and illustration process that was at the zenith of its development in the 1880's.

Chromolithography

Before the development of the process of chromolithography, color was necessarily added by hand to illustrations, which greatly increased the cost of producing illustrated books; only the well-to-do could afford an indulgence in color. Chromolithography was cheap and allowed for the production of color illustrated works on a large scale. Basically a planographic printing process, which relied on the antipathy of oil and water, a chromolithograph began with a colored original, the outline of which was traced onto some medium. The medium, paper or gelatin, facilitated the transfer of the outline onto stone, lithographic stone, the finest of which was obtained in Germany. Once the outline could by printed from the stone, the printer would analyze the original image and detarmine the number of colors needed to create a perfect facsimile. Each color or tint or shade necessitated a separate stone; the colors were superimposed during printing and required a high degree of expertise and experience to execute a good image. The stone was durable and allowed for the printing of hundreds, if not thousands, of plates.

Credit: Exhibition Coordinator: John Ganly, Conent Consultant: Marguerite Nealon, Captions Text contributors: Mariam Mandelbaum and Andrea Harland, Exhibition Design: Barbara Suhr

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