Methods of American printmaking, 1830s to 1930s

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 1999 by Trudie Grace

The four major methods of making prints in the century under consideration are engraving or etching metal plates, engraving wood blocks, and making lithographs on stone. From the early years of the nineteenth century until the 1870s, metal engraving was the predominant method of making fine art prints in the United States. It was used extensively to reproduce famous paintings, often those celebrating American leaders, military successes, and way of life.

One of the masters of the medium was Alfred Jones, whose skill is apparent in his engraving of the genre painting Sparking by Francis William Edmonds (Pl. III). Jones has rendered the effect of firelight in the main room and candlelight in the distant kitchen with great subtlety. The delicacy of the effects is the more remarkable when one considers that the engraver must push a sharp, V-shaped steel tool known as a burin along the surface of a metal plate - usually copper.(1) The more pressure on the burin, the thicker the resulting line. Tones are created by parallel lines or crosshatching, areas of fine dots (stippling), and lozenges in which there is a central dot. Jones used all these techniques, with lozenge and dot for the man's face and trousers and the woman's shawl.

Asher B. Durand also achieved an impressive range of tonalities in his engraving of the painting Ariadne by John Vanderlyn (Pl. V). Although best known for his landscape paintings, Durand's first career was as an engraver. In this print minute lozenge and dot passages define the contours of Ariadne's body, imbuing her with a gentle radiance. The rich shadows of the trees in the middle ground and some of the pronounced curving lines of the tree bark may have been etched rather than engraved. Engravers sometimes used etched lines to vary dark tonalities.

In the 1870s and 1880s interest in prints as original works of art in the United States burgeoned, with etching the favorite medium, particularly for landscapists who could take their plates and work directly from nature. In etching the artist uses needles of various sizes to scratch lines through an acid-proofed surface to expose a metal plate, usually copper. When the plate is immersed in an acid bath, the acid bites into the exposed metal. Tonal variations are sometimes achieved by a series of acid baths biting the incised lines to different depths.

The etching needle, which moves more easily over the surface of the plate than a pen over a sheet of paper, makes it possible to achieve both fluency of line and a tight delineation of detail. In Winter Evening (Pl. IV), Henry Farrer, one of the most respected etchers of the late nineteenth century, brings out the tracery of tree branches against the sky incisively and with a sense of spontaneity. Relatively freely drawn lines of many kinds indicate wisps of clouds, patches of grass, and the contours of the land, including ruts in the dirt road. In etching, some lines seem to take on a meandering life of their own, and that effect enlivens Farrer's composition. The warm shade of black ink he uses enhances his subject, and by partly wiping the plate after inking it, he added tonality to many areas.

Mary Nimmo Moran's Shanty-Town (Pl. I) is one of many city views by American etchers.(2) Her fine draftsmanship and deeply bitten lines give substance and immediacy to the wood shacks of a Manhattan farm, the farmer and his wagon, and the rows of vegetables. This treatment contrasts with the sharp, thin, lightly bitten lines used to outline the main features of the many row houses that recede into the distance at the left and right. Their repetition suggests that the future has arrived. Moran makes it seem almost visionary.

Weather was a theme of special interest to American etchers, particularly in depicting harbors. A striking example is Rainy Night (Pl. IX) in which Otto Henry Bacher used repeated vertical lines to indicate pounding rain in Venice, while horizontal lines evoke the agitation and flow of the water. The rich darkness of the image is the result of the deeply bitten lines. Areas of blurring that convey the atmosphere of the wet night result from the partial wiping of the plate. Bacher used chine colle, which consists of a thin paper lightly brushed with paste, which adheres to a heavier backing paper under pressure at the time of printing. Chine colle was also popular with Bacher's friend James McNeill Whistler, who used it for many of his engravings and lithographs to better capture the subtle effects of light. Here the warm tone of the paper enhances the glow of the lamplight along the water's edge.

American etchers occasionally turned to floral motifs, with some of the best work done by James David Smillie. His Poppies: A Study (frontispiece) is typical of his exquisite mastery of detail and the delicacy of his flowers. His skill at creating a range of tones, from velvety blacks to near white, enabled him to evoke the smallest changes in hue. The slightly blurred parts and soft edges were created with drypoint, the technique of scratching the plate without benefit of acid to create a metal burr that holds the ink and produces a fuzzy line.