Engelmann (Born in 1788) was a Franco-German lithographer of the 19th-century. He was also a chromolithographer. He was born in a small town near the Germany/Switzerland/France border called Mühlhausen. Mulhouse was a free German republic at the time of his birth; and it was associated with the Swiss Confederation, but 10 years later, it was annexed by France. Engelmann died in 1839in that same town – he died from a tumor in his neck. The artist trained in Bordeaux, France and Switzerland at La Rochelle and he studied sketching and painting in Regnault Jean-Baptiste’s atelier in Paris. In 1814, during the summer season, he travelled to Munich, Germany where he studied lithography, which was a German invention. Come the spring, Engelmann founded The Lithotypical Society of Mulhouse. He opened a workshop in Paris in June 1816.
The artist is largely credited with taking lithography to France - and later, he commercialized chromolithography. Throughout his life, the artist produced quite a number of prints, including many plates for Justin Baron Isidore Séverin Taylor's esteemed collection of lithographs. In 1837, Engelmann was granted a patent for chromolithography, a process of that provided consistently high-quality results. His Paris printing company called Engelmann and Graf "Engelmann et Graf" produced the high quality pieces of art and it was passed on to his son, Godefroy who carried on his father's work with the same enthusiasm and high artistic quality until he also died in 1897. Today, his art is fund in many institutions and galleries all over the world.
