Etching revival
The etching revival was the re-emergence and invigoration of
According to Bamber Gascoigne, the "most visible characteristic of [the movement]... was an obsession with surface tone", created by deliberately not wiping all the ink off the surface of the printing plate, so that parts of the image have a light tone from the film of ink left. This and other characteristics reflected the influence of Rembrandt, whose reputation had by this point reached its full height.[2]
Although some artists owned their own printing presses, the movement created the new figure of the star printer, who worked closely with artists to exploit all the possibilities of the etching technique, with variable inking, surface tone and retroussage, and the use of different papers. Societies and magazines were also important, publishing albums of varied original prints by different artists in fixed editions.[3]
The most common subjects were landscapes and townscapes, portraits, and genre scenes of ordinary people. The mythological and historical subjects
Historical outline
During the century after Rembrandt's death the techniques of etching and drypoint brought to their highest point by him gradually declined. By the late eighteenth century, with brilliant exceptions like Piranesi, Tiepolo and Goya most etchings were reproductive or illustrative.[5] In England the situation was slightly better, with Samuel Palmer, John Sell Cotman, John Crome and others producing fine original etchings, mostly of landscape subjects, in the early decades of the 19th century. The Etching Club, founded in 1838, continued to maintain the medium.[6]
As the century progressed, new technical developments, especially
The steel-facing of plates was a technical development patented in 1857 which "immediately revolutionized the print business".
Several people were of special importance to the French Etching Revival. The publisher Alfred Cadart, the printer Auguste Delâtre, and Maxime Lalanne, an etcher who wrote a popular textbook of etching in 1866, established the broad contours of the movement. Cadart founded the Société des Aquafortistes in 1862, reviving the awareness of the beautiful, original etching in the minds of the collecting public.[12] Charles Meryon was an early inspiration, and close collaborator with Delâtre, laying out the various possible techniques of modern etching and producing works that would be ranked with Rembrandt and Dürer.[13]
For Hamerton and others, the father of the British Etching Revival was Francis Seymour Haden, the surgeon etcher, who, with his brother-in-law, the American, James McNeill Whistler, produced a body of work starting around 1860 that still stands as one of the highpoints of etching history.[14] Haden was a collector and authority on the etchings of Rembrandt and it comes as no surprise that as Whistler, the younger man, began to show signs of veering far from the 17th-century model, Haden and he parted company. Figures from other countries included Edvard Munch in Norway,[15] Anders Zorn in Sweden, and Käthe Kollwitz in Germany.[16]
It was Whistler who convinced the artist Alphonse Legros, one of the members of the French Revival, to come to London in 1863; later he was a professor at the Slade School of Fine Art.[14] This linking of the art of the two countries, though short-lived, did much to validate etching as an art form. Very soon, French etching would show the same modernist signs that French art showed generally, while English and American etching remained true to the kind of technical proficiency and subject matter artists revered in Rembrandt. One distinct aspect of the revival, in contrast with the Old Master period, was an interest in giving unique qualities to each impression of a print.[17]
Artists who only or mainly made prints, and usually drawings, were few. Meryon, who was colourblind and so effectively prevented from painting,
Although the theorists of the movement tended to concentrate on monochrome prints in the traditional techniques of etching, drypoint, and some mezzotint, and the term "etching revival" (and so this article) is mainly concerned with works in these, many artists also used other techniques, especially outside Britain. The French, and later the Americans, were very interested in making
The fashion for
Though the styles and techniques typical of the revival fell out of fashion after about 1930, the interest in artistic printmaking has endured, and significant artists still very often produce prints, generally using the signed
Later artists
In France the 1890s saw another wave of productivity in printmaking, with a great diversity of techniques, subjects, and styles. The album-periodical L'Estampe originale (not to be confused with the similar L'Estampe Moderne of 1897–1899, which was all lithographs, leaning more to Art Nouveau) produced nine issues quarterly between 1893 and 1895, containing a total of 95 original prints by a very distinguished group of 74 artists. Of these prints, 60 were lithographs, 26 in the various intaglio techniques (with a third of these using colour), 7 woodcuts, a wood engraving and a gypsograph.[27]
The subjects have a notably large number of figures compared to earlier decades, and the artists include Whistler,
In Britain a later generation included three artists working very largely in etching who were knighted. These were the "high priests" of the English movement:
The final generation of the revival are too numerous to name here but they might include such names as
Books, critics and theory
The revival attracted some hostile criticism.
To counter such criticisms, members of the movement wrote not only to explain the refinements of the technical processes, but to exalt original (rather than merely reproductive) etchings as creative works, with their own disciplines and artistic requirements. Haden's About Etching (1866) was an important early work, promoting a particular view of etching, especially applicable to landscapes, as effectively an extension of drawing, with its possibilities for spontaneity and revealing the creative processes of the artist in a way that became lost in a highly finished and reworked oil painting.[33]
Oil painting was soon to come up with developments (notably Impressionism) to overcome these limitations, but Haden's rhetoric was effective and influential. He advocated a style of "learned omission", according to which the fewer lines there were on a plate, "the greater would be the thought and creativity residing in each line".[33] In accordance with this, Haden (like Meryon) disliked the addition of surface tone during printing, and fell out with Whistler over this and similar issues. Haden wrote: "I insist on a rapid execution, which pays little attention to detail", and thought that ideally the plate should be drawn in a single day's work, and bitten in front of the subject, or at least soon enough after seeing it to retain a good visual memory. Haden had devised his own novel technique where the etching was drawn on the plate while it was immersed in a weak acid bath, so that the earliest lines were bitten the deepest; normally the drawing and biting were performed as different stages.[34]
In France Haden's ideas reflected a debate that had been underway for some decades over the comparative merits of quickly executed works such as the oil sketch, and the much lengthier process of making a finished painting. The critic Philippe Burty, in general a supporter of both Haden and etching in general, nonetheless criticized his views on the primacy of quickly executing works, pointing to the number of states in Haden's own prints as showing that Haden did not entirely follow his own precepts. In the mid-1860s Haden argued against Ruskin's sometimes violently expressed objections to etching; what Haden saw as etching's strength, the ease of transmitting the thought of the artist, was exactly what Ruskin deplored: "in the etching needle you have an almost irresistible temptation to a wanton speed".[34]
Philip Gilbert Hamerton had become an enthusiastic promoter of etching in Britain. He had trained as a painter, but become a professional art critic and amateur etcher. His Etching and Etchers (1868) was more an art history than a technical text but it did much to popularize the art and some of its modern practitioners. His ideas had much in common with those of Haden, favouring a spare style where what was omitted was as important as what was included, an important theme of Haden.[34] The book went through many editions till the 20th century. By the 1870s Hamerton was also publishing an influential periodical, titled The Portfolio, that published etchings in editions of 1000 copies. The French A Treatise on Etching by Lalanne was translated by S.R. Koehler and published in the United States in 1880. It played a significant role in the Etching Revival in America.
Boom and bust
The etching revival relied on a well-developed
By the early 20th century, and especially in the decade after the end of the First World War, a very strong body of well-off collectors led to a huge boom in prices for contemporary prints by the most highly regarded artists, sometimes called the "super-etchers",[35] which very often exceeded those for good impressions of prints by Rembrandt and Dürer, let alone other Old Masters. The boom was somewhat cynically exploited by many artists, who produced prints in a rather excessive number of states, often described as "proof states", so encouraging collectors to buy multiple copies. Muirhead Bone is believed to hold the record, with 28 states for one print.[36] Surface tone also individualized impressions.
More usefully, the enduring habit of numbering and signing prints as
After rising to its highest in the 1920s, the market for collecting recent etchings collapsed in the
Without a large group of collectors many artists returned to painting, though in the US from 1935 the Federal Art Project, part of the New Deal, put some money into printmaking. Etchings fell hugely in value until the 1980s when a new market (albeit a small one) began to develop for what is now seen as a small but important tributary of the stream of 19th- and 20th-century art.
As well as the Great Depression, the monochrome tradition of Haden and Whistler had reached something of a dead end, "largely resistant" to "the need to find recognisably modern subject-matter and forms of expression".[40] A review in 1926 by Edward Hopper of Fine Prints of the Year, 1925 expressed this with some brutality: "We have had a long and weary familiarity with these 'true etchers' who spend their industrious lives weaving pleasing lines around old doorways, Venetian palaces, Gothic cathedrals, and English bridges on the copper ... One wanders through this desert of manual dexterity without much hope ... Of patient labour and skill there is in this book a plenty and more. Of technical experiment or strongly personal vision and contact with modern life, there is little or none".[41] Etching, of urban subjects similar to his later paintings, had been important in establishing Hopper's early reputation, but around 1924 he decided to concentrate on painting instead.[42]
Status of artists
Printmaking had traditionally had a much lower status in the art world, especially the notoriously conservative academies, than the "major" media of painting and sculpture. This had long been a bone of contention between the
In England Haden was the main activist on this front, beginning in 1879 in a series of lectures on etching at the Royal Institution, and continuing over the following years with a flow of letters, articles and lectures. His role as co-founder and first President of the Society of Painter-Etchers, now the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, was part of these efforts, also providing a new set of exhibitions. Although several artists such as Frank Short and William Strang (both elected full RA in 1906) were better known for their prints than their paintings, and helped to agitate for change from within the Academy, the distinction between "Academician Engravers" and full "Academicians" was not abolished until 1928.[33]
Notes
- ^ Carey, 222-223
- ^ Griffiths, 35; Gascoigne, 10d
- ^ Chambers, "Introduction"; Salsbury
- ^ Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Etching", technical explanation with video clips
- ^ Griffiths, 65-68; Collins, 256; Chambers, Introduction, argues against this, the conventional view
- ^ Griffiths, 66-69; Chambers, Introduction
- ^ Griffiths, 68; Salsbury; Chambers, Introduction; Collins, 256-257
- ^ Collins, 258, covered in detail 114-222
- ^ Griffiths, 154-155
- ^ Mayor, 125; Griffiths, 71, 76, 154-155
- ^ Griffiths, 154
- ISBN 0-19-860012-7.
- ^ Collins, 257 and throughout; van Breda, Jacobus. "Charles Meryon: Paper and Ink," Art in Print, Vol. 3 No. 3 (September-October 2013).
- ^ a b c d Griffiths, 69
- ^ Carey, 218, 248; Griffiths, 21, 106, 117
- ^ Carey, 218, 230
- ^ Woodbury, Sara. "Giving a Good Impression: B.J.O. Nordfeldt's Inscribed Etchings," Art in Print, Vol. 7 No. 2 (July-August 2017).
- ^ Collins, 104-105
- ^ Salsbury
- ^ Griffiths, 106-107, 120
- ^ Schaaf, Larry J., "A Photographic imitation of etching’ – Cliché-verre"; Schenck, Kimberly, "Cliché-verre: Drawing and Photography", 112-114, in Topics in Photographic Preservation, Volume 6, pp.112–118, 1995, American Institute for Conservation of Historic & Artistic Works, online
- ^ Ives, throughout, 11-17 especially
- ^ Ives, 45-53; Griffiths, 119
- ^ Ives, 17-18; Griffiths, 117
- ^ Griffiths, 20-22
- ^ Griffiths, 70-71 (70 quoted); The Vollard Suite at the National Gallery of Australia Archived 2012-05-14 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Stein, 6-9; L’Estampe originale, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, web feature with full set of images
- ^ Stein, 20-40 has a catalogue in alphabetic order
- ^ "Objects – Myra Kathleen Hughes". National Gallery of Ireland. Retrieved 27 September 2020.
- ^ Meyrick, Robert, Joseph Webb: the lights that flit across my brain, pp. 25-30, 2007, Aberystwyth University: School of Art Museum and Gallery, PDF
- ^ Chambers, start of Introduction (quoted), Chapter 1
- ^ Chambers, Introduction (quoted), Chapter 1
- ^ a b c d e Chambers, Introduction
- ^ a b c Chambers, Chapter 1
- ^ Carey, 216
- ^ Carey, 234, describing a Bone with a mere 19 states
- ^ Mayor, 703
- ^ Griffiths, 69 (quoted); Mayor, 747
- ^ Carey, 216-217
- ^ Carey, 222
- ^ Quoted, Carey, 222-223
- ^ Carey, 234
References
- Carey, Frances, "Campbell Dodgson (1867-1948)", in Antony Griffiths (ed), Landmarks in Print Collecting – Connoisseurs and Donors at the British Museum since 1753, 1996, British Museum Press, ISBN 0714126098
- Chambers, Emma, An Indolent and Blundering Art?: The Etching Revival and the Redefinition of Etching in England, 2018 (first published 1999), Routledge, ISBN 0429852827, 9780429852824, google books
- Collins, Roger, Charles Meryon: A Life, 1999, Garton & Company, ISBN 0906030358, 9780906030356
- ISBN 050023454X
- ISBN 071412608X
- Ives, Colta Feller, The Great Wave: The Influence of Japanese Woodcuts on French Prints, 1974, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ISBN 0-87099-098-5
- ISBN 0691003262
- Salsbury, Britany. “The Etching Revival in Nineteenth-Century France.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014, online
- Stein, Donna M., Karshan, Donald H., L'Estampe originale; A Catalogue Raisonné, 1970, The Museum of Graphic Art, New York
Further reading
- Elizabeth Helsinger et al., The ‘Writing’ of Modern Life: The Etching Revival in France, Britain, and the U.S., 1850-1940, Chicago, 2008.
- Twohig, Edward (2018). Print Rebels: Haden - Palmer - Whistler and the origins of the RE (Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers). London: Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. ISBN 978-1-5272-1775-1.
- Lang, Gladys Engel; Lang, Kurt (2001). Etched in memory: the building and survival of artistic reputation, 2001, University of Illinois Press, ISBN 0252070283. OCLC 614940938
External links
- Salsbury, Britany, and Conte, Lisa, "L'Estampe Originale: A Rare Print Portfolio Now Online", Metropolitan Museum of Art blog, 6 March, 2015
- Documenting the Gilded Age: New York City Exhibitions at the turn of the 20th century A New York Art Resources Consortium project. Exhibition catalogs from the Etching Revival.