Chromos

William Sharp
Complete Bloom
1854
chromolithograph
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Walther Scholtz
Graf Schuwalow Cigarette
ca. 1906
chromolithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Maurice Leloir
Le Mariage de Louis XIV et Madame de Maintenon
au Château de Versailles
1904
chromolithograph (book illustration)
Bibliothèque Nationale de France

Anonymous Maker
 The Grand Staircase, Boston Public Library
(murals by Puvis de Chavannes)
ca. 1905
chromolithograph (postcard)
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Anonymous Maker
Guardian Angel
ca. 1900
chromolithograph
Clemens Sels Museum, Neuss, Germany

Anonymous Maker
Sacred Heart
ca. 1850
chromolithograph
(decorated with tinsel and rhinestones)
Clemens Sels Museum, Neuss, Germany

Anonymous Maker after Leonard da Vinci
The Last Supper
ca. 1850-1900
chromolithograph
(decorated with tinsel and lace)
Clemens Sels Museum, Neuss, Germany

Anonymous Maker after Caspar David Friedrich
August Bridge in Dresden
ca. 1850-1900
chromolithograph
(copy of an original painting lost in a 1931 fire)
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Anonymous Maker
Call Again
ca. 1920-30
chromolithograph
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Thomas Moran
Great Falls of the Snake River, Idaho
1876
chromolithograph
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Thomas Moran
The Castle Geyser
Upper Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park
1874
chromolithograph
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Louis Prang
Lithographer
(from series, Prang's Aids for Object Teaching)
1874
chromolithograph
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Anonymous Maker
Fatherly Advice
ca. 1912
chromolithograph
Clemens Sels Museum, Neuss, Germany

Anonymous Maker
Ship in Flames
ca. 1912
chromolithograph
Clemens Sels Museum, Neuss, Germany

Anonymous Maker
Hearst Greek Theater
University of California, Berkeley
ca. 1907
chromolithograph (postcard)
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Bernhard Grueber
Interior of Walhalla Memorial, Donaustauf
1842
chromolithograph
Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin

Chorus:

The earth breeds many beings

that cause terrible, fearful suffering,

and the bosom of the deep

teems with hostile monsters; 

torches flaming on high,

between sky and earth,* do injury 

to winged and footed creatures; and one might also speak

of the windy wrath of hurricanes –

but who can describe

the audacious pride of man

and the passions of women's

daring minds, passions that will stop

at nothing and are partners in human ruin?

The homes that couples share

are evilly conquered by the reckless passion that overpowers the female,

both among beasts and among men. 

Anyone may know this, if his thoughts 

do not fly away with him, by learning

of the plan contrived with forethought

by the cruel one who destroyed her child,

the daughter of Thestius,** the woman who lit the fire,

burning up the red brand

that was coeval with her son, ever since

he had cried when he came from her womb,

and that kept measure with his life all its length

till the day decreed by fate.  

– Aeschylus, from The Libation-Bearers (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

*Presumably comets and meteors. Interest in these phenomena had been aroused a few years earlier (467 BC) when the appearance of a spectacular comet was followed by the fall of a meteorite, "big enough to make a cart-load," at Aegospotami on the Hellespont.  

**Althaea, the mother of Meleager. When her son was a week old, she was told by the Fates that he would die when the log then burning on the hearth was consumed; she seized the log and kept it in a chest. But when she heard that her brothers had been killed by Meleager in a quarrel over the Calydonian boar, she threw the log into the fire, and when it was burnt up Meleager, far away, almost instantly died.