Mezzotint
Mezzotint is a
Mezzotint is often combined with other intaglio techniques, usually
Since the mid-nineteenth century it has been relatively little used, as lithography and other techniques produced comparable results more easily.[4] Sir Frank Short (1857–1945) was an important pioneer of the mezzotint revival in the United Kingdom along with Peter Ilsted (1864–1933) in Denmark.
Mezzotint is known for the luxurious quality of its tones: first, because an evenly, finely roughened surface holds a lot of ink, allowing deep solid colours to be printed; secondly because the process of smoothing the plate with burin, burnisher and scraper allows fine gradations in tone to be developed. The scraper is a triangular ended tool, and the burnisher has a smooth round end – not unlike many spoon handles.[5]
History
The mezzotint printmaking method was invented by the German soldier and amateur artist Ludwig von Siegen (1609–c. 1680). His earliest mezzotint print dates to 1642 and is a portrait of Countess Amalie Elisabeth of Hanau-Münzenberg, regent for her son, and von Siegen's employer. This was made by working from light to dark. The rocker seems to have been invented by Prince Rupert of the Rhine, a famous cavalry commander in the English Civil War, who was the next to use the process, and took it to England.[6]
Sir Peter Lely saw the potential for using it to publicise his portraits, and encouraged a number of Dutch printmakers to come to England. Godfrey Kneller worked closely with John Smith, who is said to have lived in his house for a period; he created about 500 mezzotints, some 300 copies of portrait paintings. In the next century over 400 mezzotints after portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds are known, by various hands.[7]
British mezzotint collecting was a great craze from about 1760 to the Great Crash of 1929, also spreading to America. The main area of collecting was British portraits; hit oil paintings from the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition were routinely, and profitably, reproduced in mezzotint throughout this period, and other mezzotinters reproduced older portraits of historical figures, or if necessary, made them up. The favourite period to collect was roughly from 1750 to 1820, the great period of the British portrait. There were two basic styles of collection: some concentrated on making a complete collection of material within a certain scope, while others aimed at perfect condition and quality (which declines in mezzotints after a relatively small number of impressions are taken from a plate), and in collecting the many "proof states" which artists and printers had obligingly provided for them from early on. Leading collectors included William Eaton, 2nd Baron Cheylesmore and the Irishman John Chaloner Smith.[8]
In the first half of the 19th century the "mixed" technique was popular in England, with other intaglio techniques, often used to start a plate off, combined with mezzotint.
Continental use of the technique was much less; in the late 17th century
During the 20th century the technique went into decline, in great part because it was so time consuming to rock the plates. Rare proponents include Yozo Hamaguchi, Leonard Marchant and Shirley Jones.[11] Wider interest in learning and using the technique revived after the publication in 1990 of the book The Mezzotint: History and Technique by artist Carol Wax. The Wax book was responsible for a substantial upsurge in the number of artists creating mezzotints in the United States and worldwide.
Light to dark method
The first mezzotints by
Dark to light method
This became the most common method. The whole surface (usually) of a metal, usually copper, plate is roughened evenly, manually with a rocker, or mechanically. If the plate were printed at this point it would show as solid black. The image is then created by selectively burnishing areas of the surface of the metal plate with metal tools; the smoothed parts will print lighter than those areas not smoothed by the burnishing tool. Areas smoothed completely flat will not hold ink at all; such areas will print "white," that is, the colour of the paper without ink. This is called working from "dark to light", or the "subtractive" method.[13] It was first used by Prince Rupert of the Rhine. The all-over roughening does not require huge skill, and was normally done by an apprentice.[14]
Two great advantages of the technique were that it was easier to learn and also much faster than engraving proper, as well as giving a rich range of tones. Mezzotints could be produced very quickly to respond to or depict events or people in the news,[15] and larger sizes of print were relatively easy to produce. This was crucial for what was known at the time as the furniture print, a mezzotint that was large enough and with sufficiently bold tonal contrasts to hold its own framed and hung on the wall of a room. Since mezzotints were far cheaper than paintings, this was a great attraction.[16]
Colour
Printing
Printing the finished plate is the same for either method, and follows
Because the pits in the plate are not deep, only a small number of top-quality impressions (copies) can be printed before the quality of the tone starts to degrade as the pressure of the press begins to smooth them out. Perhaps only one or two hundred really good impressions can be taken, although plates were often "refreshed" by further rocker work.[22] In 1832 a writer in Arnold's Library noted:[23]
...the uncertainty as to the number of impressions this kind of engraving will afford—some plates failing after fifty or even a less number are printed; from two to three hundred are the most that can be taken off, and then it is often necessary to refresh the ground and restore the lights during the progress of the printing."
However, if performed by the printer or the artist's apprentice, refreshing the plate was often done to a lower standard. Bamber Gascoigne says of an example he illustrates with before and after details "the dark tones have been clumsily renewed with the roulette; the result is brutal in close-up but will seem adequate when the whole print is viewed at a normal distance".[24]
Standard sizes used in England were known as "“royal,” 24 x 19 in., “large,” 18 x 24 in., “posture,” 14 x 10 in., and “small,” 6 x 4 in", and ready-made frames and albums could be bought to fit these.[25]
Detailed technique
Plates can be mechanically roughened; one way is to rub fine metal filings over the surface with a piece of glass; the finer the filings, the smaller the grain of the surface. Special roughening tools called 'rockers' have been in use since at least the eighteenth century. The method commonly in use today is to use a steel rocker approximately five inches wide, which has between 45 and 120 teeth per inch on the face of a blade in the shape of a shallow arc, with a wooden handle projecting upwards in a T-shape. Rocked steadily from side to side at the correct angle, the rocker will proceed forward creating burrs in the surface of the copper. The plate is then moved – either rotated by a set number of degrees or through 90 degrees according to preference – and then rocked in another pass. This is repeated until the plate is roughened evenly and will print a completely solid tone of black.[26]
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A mezzotint of mezzotint tools. Shirley Jones, A Dark Side of the Sun (1986)
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Two sizes of rocker
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Using the rocker
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Muscles of the sole of the foot, Colour mezzotint by A.E. Gautier d'Agoty (son of Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty), 1773
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Sunshine V, Peter Ilsted
Mezzotint engravers by date of birth
Part of a series on the |
History of printing |
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- Ludwig von Siegen – inventor
- Prince Rupert of the Rhine
- Wallerant Vaillant (1623–1677, the first professional mezzotinter)
- John Smith (c. 1652–c. 1742)
- Jan van der Vaart (c. 1650–1727, Dutchman working in England)
- Jacob Christoph Le Blon (1667–1741, German, developed colour printing, using different plates)
- Bernhard Vogel (1683–1737)
- George White (c. 1684–1732)
- Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty (1716–1785, French, developed a four-colour mezzotint process)
- Richard Houston (1721?–1775)
- James MacArdell (1729?–1765, Irish)
- Edward Fisher (1730?–1785?, Irish)
- Johann Jacob Ridinger (1736–1784), youngest son of Johann Elias Ridinger, who worked in mezzotint himself, too
- David Martin (1737–1797, Scottish)
- William Pether (c. 1738–1821)
- Valentine Green (1739–1813)
- John Dixon (about 1740–1811)
- Richard Earlom (1743–1822)
- William Dickinson (1746–1823)
- John Raphael Smith (1751–1812)
- John Jones (c.1755–1797)
- Joseph Grozer (1755–1799)
- John Young (1755–1825)
- William Doughty (1757–1782)
- James Walker (c. 1760–c. 1823, British, moved to Russia)
- Charles Howard Hodges (1764–1837, English, moved to Amsterdam)
- William Say (1764–1834)
- Charles Turner (1774–1857)
- John Martin (1789–1854)
- James Bromley (1800–1838)
- John Sartain (1808–1897, English pioneer of the technique in America)
- Alexander Hay Ritchie (1822–1895, Scottish, moved to US)
- Richard Josey (1840–1906), engraver of James McNeill Whistler's Whistler's Mother
- Sir Frank Short(1857–1945)
- Peter Ilsted (1861–1933, Danish)
- T.F. Simon(1877–1942)
- M. C. Escher (1898–1972)
- Lynd Ward (1905-1985)
- Yozo Hamaguchi (1909–2000)
- Mario Avati (1921–2009)
- Leonard Marchant (1929-2000)
- Robert Kipniss (b. 1931)
- Shirley Jones (b.1934)
- Toru Iwaya (b. 1936)
- Holly Downing (b. 1948)[27]
- Carol Wax (b. 1953)
Notes
- ^ Portrait of Miss Voss as St Agnes 1690s
- ^ Griffiths (1996b), 85; Barker; Mayor, 513
- ^ Mayor, 511; Barker
- ^ Griffiths (1996b), 87
- ^ Mayor, 511-513; Barker
- ^ Mayor, 511; Griffiths (1996b), 85
- ^ Griffiths (1996b), 85-87
- ^ Griffiths (1996a), 134–137 and 141–142; Barker
- ^ Griffiths (1996b), 87
- ^ Griffiths (1996b), 87; Barker
- ^ Shirley Jones (2019). Mezzotint and the Artist's Book: a forty year journey (The Red Hen Press), pp. 1-4
- ^ Griffiths (1996b), 85; Mayor, 511; Barker
- ^ Barker
- ^ Mayor, 512-513; Griffiths (1996b), 83-84; D'Oench, 7-8
- ^ D'Oench, 7-9
- ^ Barker; Mayor, 513
- ^ Le Blon, Jakob Christophe (1725). Coloritto; or the Harmony of Colouring in Painting: Reduced to Mechanical Practice under Easy Precepts, and Infallible Rules; Together with some Colour'd Figures. Retrieved 4 July 2020.
- S2CID 186212141.
- ^ Barker
- ^ D'Oench, 76
- ^ Griffiths (1996b), 31-35
- ^ Griffiths (1996b), 83; Barker
- ^ Quoted by D'Oench, 8
- ^ Gascoigne, ills. 60-62
- ^ Barker
- ^ Gascoigne, section 16a; Griffiths (1996b), 83-84, for detailed contemporary instructions see the National Portrait Gallery link below.
- ^ "Holly Downing Biography". www.annexgalleries.com. Retrieved 27 September 2023.
References
- Alexander, David (1996). "Mezzotint". In Turner, Jane (ed.). ISBN 9781884446009 – via the Internet Archive.
- Barker, Elizabeth E. . “The Printed Image in the West: Mezzotint”, 2003, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, online
- ISBN 9780300076301
- ISBN 050023454X
- ISBN 0691003262
- Robinson, Gerald Philip (1911). Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 351–353. This includes a detailed description of mezzotint history and methods. . In
- ISBN 0714126098
Further reading
- OCLC 556199574 – via Google Books.
- Jones, Shirley (2019). Mezzotint and the Artist's Book: a forty year journey (The Red Hen Press)
- National Portrait Gallery, London: The early history of mezzotint and the prints of Richard Tompson and Alexander Browne