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The first true colour printing method of any real note, chromolithography was practiced between 1850 and 1920.
Chromolithographs at their best are bright strongly coloured prints, the colours should be rich and strong.
It is a form of lithography, where highly polished stones are used to create the design, skilled craftsmen draw the designs onto a greasy surface which is applied to the stones, the ink is applied and transferred over to the paper sheets.
The process is complicated as each colour has to be applied separately, one after another, by using a different stone, each successive colour needs to be placed precicely or else the final image appears to have shadows, similar to the ghosting effect of a slightly out of tune television picture, this is known as being out of register.
Chromolithographs are almost exclusively good quality book plates, they were expensive to produce and were used to illustrate high quality books that were relatively expensive at the time of publication.
One of the most famous publishers to use the medium was Cassell's, who produced a series of books in the 1890s dedicated to various decorative subjects, including what we are most interested in Dogs. Their Book of the Dog published around 1895 is really the definitive illustrated resource on the subject from the period, it also has indisputably the best quality illustrations and pictures of dogs that can be found. Both the pictures shown on this page are from this book.
Other publishers used chromolithographs in their books and the 1880s and 1890s was a very good period for this, except for the Cassells offering there is not another exclusive dog book, but there are several children's story books which occasionally have great dog illustrations.
These prints when in perfect register and in good condition are some of the best that can be found, they are unfortunately very rare, as they were often produced in relatively small quantities, prices can be high.
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