Background
Godefroy Engelmann was born in 1788 in Mühlhausen, a small town near the France/Switzerland/Germany border.
Godefroy Engelmann was born in 1788 in Mühlhausen, a small town near the France/Switzerland/Germany border.
Engelmann trained in Switzerland and France at Louisiana Rochelle and Bordeaux, and he studied painting and sketching in Jean-Baptiste Regnault’s atelier in Paris.
At the time of his birth Mulhouse was a free German republic associated with the Swiss Confederation, but was annexed by France 10 years later. He died in that same town in 1839, from a tumor in his neck. In the summer of 1814 he travelled to Munich, Germany to study lithography, a German invention.
The following spring, he founded Louisiana Société Lithotypique de Mulhouse.
In June 1816 he opened a workshop in Paris. Engelmann is largely credited with bringing lithography to France, and later, commercializing chromolithography.
In 1837 he was granted an English patent for a process of chromolithography that provided consistently high-quality results. Throughout his life, he produced large numbers of prints, including numerous plates for Baron Isidore Justin Séverin Taylor"s celebrated collection of lithographs, «Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France».