Methods of American printmaking, 1830s to 1930s

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 1999 by Trudie Grace

In August Seventh (Pl. XII) the eminent wood engraver Paul Landacre created a perfect distillation of nature's forms. He also demonstrated that wood engraving can produce light with extraordinary radiance, which here probably represents the heat of a southern California day when he most likely drew a preparatory sketch.(4) The illumination of the tree trunks and the obliteration of part of the planted field beyond are handled with an assurance that leaves no doubt as to the intensity of the late afternoon sun. The cream-colored paper subtly enhances the quality of the light.

Like wood engraving, lithography achieved greater artistic significance after the turn of the century, particularly in the 1920s and 1930s. Previously it had been used primarily by commercial lithography firms. Generally, the lithographer, with or without a preliminary drawing as a guide, uses lithographic crayons to draw directly on the smoothed stone that has a light, medium, or heavy grain. The crayons range from soft to hard and are composed of a greasy material with a black coloring agent. Sometimes a greasy liquid called tusche is used to produce dense black areas. A solution of gum arabic and nitric acid fixes the image. The stone is then moistened with water and then with ink, which adheres only to the greasy drawing.

Like wood engravers, many lithographers made the modern city their subject. One of the most adept was Louis Lozowick, whose Hanover square (Pl. XI) shows how well lithography can capture light and dark contrasts and how successfully it can simplify mass - a stylistic approach of the precisionist painters with whom Lozowick is sometimes linked. He most probably used tusche in the foreground and middle ground to create the solid, hard-edged black of the steel piers and girders supporting the elevated train track in lower Manhattan. By contrast, the shadows and patterns of light, the distant train in motion, and the cars vary in tone and have slightly fuzzy contours. These effects were probably achieved with a soft lithographic crayon. The sky reveals the delicate use of the crayon and suggests that Lozowick worked on a stone that had a finely ground surface. He may have used a fine brush dipped in tusche or a sharp lithographic pencil for the dark windows of the distant buildings.

Grant T. Reynard's Wind and Rain (Pl. XIII) demonstrates how useful the lithographic crayon can be for free drawing. With what appears to be rapid and confident draftsmanship Reynard has energized the trees, haystacks, and fields to an extent that the weather alone could not account for. Although he left most of the white areas untouched, he scraped some of his drawn lines with a sharp tool to produce sharp-edged white lines. These indicate the light reflected on haystacks, fence rails, and trees, from the lightning visible at the far right behind the trees. He also used the scraping method for some of the grasses.

The lithographs of Stow Wengenroth, a master of gentle luminosities, often depict the coast of New England. Moonlight (Pl. II), set in Rockport, Massachusetts, shows how the subtle gradations of light and dark bring out the larger, simplified forms as well as smaller details, while bathing the scene in a muted light that lends it a timeless quality. The subtlety of the artist's effects is the equal of the delicate nuances achieved by charcoal drawing and required an acute sensitivity to the grain of the lithographic stone. He probably used a relatively hard crayon for the sky and a softer one for the dark boat in the foreground. Control of the ink and other technical aspects of printing were of the utmost importance, and for this Wengenroth, like many artists who made lithographs, was indebted to his printer.(5)