Albert Newsam, Lithography. P. S. Duval 7 Bank Alley, Philadelphia (Philadelphia: P. S. Duval, ca. 1840). Crayon lithograph, hand-colored. Courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

 

Peter S. Duval (1804/5-1886) can deservedly be called the father of Philadelphia lithography. Duval left his native France to work in C. G. Childs’s firm in 1831, beginning a Philadelphia lithographic career that would extend over thirty-five years. During his career, he produced lithographs of every genre from book and periodical illustrations to maps to parlor prints while cultivating many of the city’s premier lithographers, including Albert Newsam, Frederick Bourquin (1808-1897), and James F. Queen (1820/21-1886 ). He also pioneered American chromolithography, introduced steam printing presses to the country, and served as the city’s emissary to the trade through public demonstrations, such as the one performed for the Japanese Embassy in 1860. By his retirement in 1869, when his son Stephen assumed control of a firm that contained over forty presses and fifty employees, his establishment had received almost twenty first prize medals and awards for excellence and improvements to the trade.

 

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