Pastimes

Art Historical Context

Created in 1831 by French artist Victor Jean Adam, *Pastimes* exemplifies the early flourishing of lithography as a fine-art medium. Just a few decades after its invention, lithography offered artists an expressive way to draw directly on stone, yielding rich tonal contrasts and fluid lines that could be printed in multiple impressions. Printed in black on cream wove paper, this work captures the spontaneous, velvety quality that made the technique especially appealing to Romantic-era audiences. Measuring roughly ten by nine inches in the image area, the print invites close looking while remaining intimate enough for domestic display. Its inclusion in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Prints and Drawings underscores lithography’s historical role in broadening access to art beyond the elite circles of painting and sculpture. Through such works, viewers of the 1830s could enjoy scenes of leisure and everyday pleasure in their own homes, reflecting the period’s growing interest in modern life and personal recreation. Adam’s choice of subject and medium together highlight how printmaking helped shape new visual cultures in nineteenth-century France, turning fleeting pastimes into enduring images for generations of museum visitors.