From The University of Iowa Museum of Art
T HE P OWER OF L INE Prints of The European and American Etching Revival
Peter Moran, Harvest in San Juan, New Mexico, 1883, 2006.226
THE ETCHING PROCESS Etching and engraving are known as intaglio processes. Both carry ink in grooves in metal plates, unlike woodcuts and lithographs, which print from the surfaces of wood and stone. Engravings and etchings both rely on line for their visual effects, rather than smooth gradations of light and dark. Artists have made etchings since the sixteenth century. Engravers cut their lines by hand, but etchers use chemicals to form grooves in the plate. Working on a sheet of copper or zinc that is coated with a protective resin or “ground,” the artist draws the image with a tool called a stylus, scratching through the ground. Acid is used to etch the lines into the metal and then the plate is cleaned, covered with ink, and wiped, leaving ink only in the etched grooves. To make a print the plate is pressed against paper with such pressure that the ink is transferred out of the grooves onto the paper’s surface. The relative ease of making marks in an etching plate encourages experimentation. Artists often print an “edition,” rework the plate, and then print another edition. These different versions of the same basic image are known as “states.” Alterations to plates in these varying states can include “burnishing out” (removing) lines or adding new lines through additional etching or direct scratching on the plate, a process referred to as drypoint. Different papers also result in different effects, as many of the prints in this exhibition demonstrate. Student curators for The Power of Line included art history students Kristin Beisler, Melinda Brocka, Elizabeth Crispin, Katy Doherty, Katelin Fallert, Meredith Johnson, Katherine Jones, Lynn Koos, Ranelle Lueth, Meagan McCollum, Emily Miller, Katherine Nash, Brittany Piehl, David Riep, Brittany Savolainen, Leslie Smith, Jenahlee Vittetoe, and Megan Wright.
Joseph Pennell, Below Chestnut Street Bridge, 1884, 2006.261
THE LEE COLLECTION In 2006 Debra Gabrielson Lee and her late husband J. Thomas Lee gave to the University of Iowa Museum of Art a remarkable collection of over three hundred late nineteenth-century etchings from the movement known as the Etching Revival. Focused especially on prints by the New York Etching Club, the collection also includes several rare bound volumes of etchings published by the Club and an array of prints by notable European etchers.
Stephen Parrish, En Port, 1881, 2006.263
THE ETCHING REVIVAL MOVEMENT Etching was an important artistic process in the seventeenth century, especially in the work of Rembrandt, but subsequently languished as an original art form, regarded more as a tool to reproduce images than to create them. Interest in etching as an original medium rebounded, however, in the second half of the nineteenth century, as artists and audiences on both sides of the Atlantic recognized and embraced its expressive potential. The first stirrings of the Etching Revival were in England and France in the 1840s and 1850s. In London Seymour Haden became a tireless advocate of the process, writing monographs on Rembrandt’s prints, making his own prints, and encouraging others to take up etching, most notably his brotherin-law, James McNeill Whistler, whose etchings ultimately became among the most emulated and admired of the era. In France the Société des AquaFortistes was founded in 1862, providing a model for later etching clubs in both England and America, and artists such as Edouard Manet, Charles Meryon, and others used the process to great effect in their art.
Frederick Dielman, The Mora Players, 1883, 2006.222
Americans became equally enthusiastic about etching, due in part to the efforts of Boston’s Sylvester Koehler who translated Maxime Lalanne’s Treatise on Etching (1866) and published an influential journal, The American Art Review, which regularly included essays on etching and original prints within its pages. The establishment of the New York Etching Club in 1877 was also significant, especially since many of its members were already well-known painters, and their enthusiasm for the process helped prompt an etching “craze” in the 1880s. Etching appealed to artists largely because, unlike the more rigid effects of engraving, it had an organic quality similar to drawing, plus the advantage of multiple prints. Many painters regarded etchings as an important complement to their work in oils and watercolors and called themselves “painter-etchers” to emphasize that their prints were original works of art rather than mere reproductions. Although the fervor for etching lessened after 1900, the achievements of the Etching Revival ensured that the process would remain the respected art form that it is today.
Mary Nimmo Moran, Haunt of the Muskrat, East Hampton, 1884, 2006.295
Julian Alden Weir, Study of a Woman’s Head, 1888, 2006.317