Methods of American printmaking, 1830s to 1930s

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 1999 by Trudie Grace

The roster of American printmakers has increased tremendously since the 1940s, as has the diversity of content, styles, and techniques. Nonetheless, the earlier masters discussed here as well as many others(6) deserve to be remembered.(7)

I am grateful to Clare Romano and John Ross, artist-members of the National Academy of Design, for their helpful comments about the methods used in creating the works of art discussed in this article.

An exhibition entitled Treasures Revealed: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century American Masterworks on Paper is on view at the National Academy of Design in New York City until March 7. The curator of the exhibition is Trudie Grace, who selected the works on view from the academy's collection. The show includes the prints illustrated here as well as other prints, pastels, drawings, and watercolors.

1 During the second quarter of the nineteenth century en gravers often used steel plates. See Arthur M. Hind, A His tory of Engraving & Etching From the 15th Century to the Year 1914, 3rd. rev. ed. (1923; Dover Publications, New York, 1963), p. 3.

2 Mary Nimmo Moran was the wife of the painter Thomas Moran (1837-1926), who also produced a significant number of prints.

3 "Self Estimate," Twenty-One Years of Drawing: A Retrospective Exhibition of the Work of John Taylor Arms (Grand Central Art Galleries, New York, 1937), p. 9.

4 I would like to thank Jake M. Wien, the co-author of a forthcoming catalogue raisonne of the prints of Paul Landacre, for informing me that Landacre probably made a preliminary. sketch on site for this work.

5 Wengenroth worked with George C. Miller (1894-1965), a widely respected printer of artists' lithographs. He had no equal in controlling delicate printing for large editions.

6 Among other notable American printmakers or painter/printmakers before the 1940s were Stephen Parrish (1846-1938), Joseph Pennell (1857-1926), Charles Adams Platt (1861-1933), and Charles F. W. Mielatz (1864-1919) in the nineteenth century; and John Sloan (1871-1951), George Bellows (1882-1925), Edward Hopper (1882-1967), Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), Kerr Eby (1889-1946), Harry Wickey (1892-1968), Adolf Dehn (1895-1968), Stephen Csoka (1897-1989), and Howard Cook (1901-1980) in the twentieth.

7 Four of the best histories of American printmaking for the period discussed in this article are Una E. Johnson, American Prints and Printmakers: A Chronicle of Over 400 Artists and Their Prints from 1900 to the Present (Doubleday and Company, Garden City, New York, 1980); James Watrous, A Century, of American Printmaking 1880-1980 (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1984); Clinton Adams, American Lithographers, 1900-1960: The Artists and Their Printers (University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1983); and Rona Schneider, American Painter Etchings 1853-1908 (Grolier Club, New York, 1989). Printmaking techniques are clearly and thoroughly explained in John Ross, Clare Romano, and Timothy Ross, The Complete Printmaker: Techniques, Traditions, Innovations, rev. ed. (Free Press, New York, 1990).