Drawn from the holdings of Lauinger Library’s
Special Collections Research Center, this exhibition
focuses on the uncommon and technically demanding art
form of mezzotint print making, first introduced in Holland
in 1640. Mezzotint’s unique tonal qualities (the
word derives from the Italian mezzotinto, or half tint),
ideally suited to capture painterly effects, enabled
the reproduction and distribution of popular paintings
and portraits in the centuries prior to photography.
Mezzotints are characterized by a rich, velvety surface
with blended tones of light and dark, without the delineating
lines found in etching and other intaglio techniques.
Before the artist can create an image, the entire surface
of a metal plate is covered with a multitude
of pin-sized pits using a hand-held tool
called a rocker. The rocker’s
curved and serrated cutting edge, composed
of anywhere from 30 to as many as 100
teeth per inch, is evenly rocked back and forth over the plate for several
hours in a methodical pattern by holding the tool almost perpendicular to the
plate and exerting pressure. As the tool rocks its way over the plate, its
small teeth indent the copper surface and throw up a tiny burr of metal that
enables the plate to hold ink. If the print were pulled at this point the result
would be a rich, velvety black throughout. Several mezzotint tools are displayed
in the exhibition including roulette wheels, which were used to prepare the
surface of the plate in the earliest mezzotints before the invention of the
rocker in 1657.
To create the image, a tool called a burnisher is rubbed
over the plate to smooth desired areas of the pitted
surface, where light will be revealed when the print
is pulled. In this method the artist works from dark
to light, and the deeper he cuts into the plate, sometimes
using a pointed scraper, the lighter that area will be
when printed. Color mezzotints, introduced in the 18th
century, require a separate plate for each color and
a final key plate to print the black ground.
Ironically, the wide success of mezzotint as a reproductive
medium ultimately led to its demise, as
aquatint and other painterly etching techniques
became more popular
for the creation of tone in printmaking.
With the development of photography and
mass reproductive techniques in the
19th century, the laborious and time-consuming
mezzotint process fell out of favor. In
the last century, however,
it enjoyed a resurgence of interest among
the more venturesome and talented fine
print makers, who successfully took
the process on to newer heights in the
production of original works of art. This
exhibition highlights several
contemporary masters,
including Frederick Mershimer, whom we
celebrate here with his newly published
catalogue raisonné. Georgetown is honored to have the largest
institutional collection of Mr. Mershimer’s work,
with 27 outstanding impressions.
David
Lucas (1802 – 1881)
Noon (after John Constable)
1830
135 x 208 mm
The close working relationship of British landscape
painter John Constable and his younger colleague
David Lucas is documented through their surviving
correspondence, hundreds of annotated working
proofs, and the many mezzotint impressions of
Constable’s views made by Lucas, first published
in five parts between 1830 and 1832. Lucas had
recently completed his apprenticeship with the
engraver S.W. Reynolds, and had begun issuing
his own mezzotints in London when he came to the
attention of Constable, who was seeking assistance
with a proposed publication of his pastoral landscapes.
These were no doubt inspired by the success of
J.M.W. Turner’s ambitious mezzotinted landscape
publication known as the Liber Studiorum (1807 – 1819).
Born and raised on a farm in Northamptonshire,
Lucas was also a talented landscape draftsman.
With his combined skills in landscapes and engraving,
he was ideally suited to carry out Constable’s
plan. Together they produced a bound volume of
the Various Subjects of Landscape, Characteristic
of English Scenery in 1833, but the project was
a financial loss, and a planned appendix with
additional plates was never realized by the time
of Constable’s death in 1837. Lucas continued
working on the plates intended for the appendix,
as well as executing plates of several Constable
sketches and compositions never previously reproduced.
Subsequent editions, produced after Constable’s
death when his artistic reputation had risen,
did prove lucrative for its publishers. As described
in the volume displayed here, published in 1855
by Henry G. Bohn, 22 of the 40 plates were from
Constable’s original publication; an additional
5 were for the planned appendix, and the remaining
33 were engraved by Lucas after the artist’s
death, “and are now for the first time offered
to the lovers of Art.”
William
Ward (1762 – 1826)
Patrick Brydone (after Andrew Geddes)
1818
258 x 191 mm
Rackham Collection
Pictured here is Patrick Brydone (1736 – 1818),
Scottish traveler, author, and member of the Royal
Society. Brydone wrote a highly popular travelogue
entitled A Tour Through Sicily and Malta (1773)
which was published in at least nine editions
during his lifetime, and was also translated into
French and German.
Benjamin Franklin inspired in the young Brydone
a lifelong interest in electricity, and his writings
on the subject earned his election to the Royal
Society in 1772-73. Brydone’s observations
in his Tour about the depth of soil and lava on
Mount Etna generated scientific controversy, as
his findings suggested a far greater age to the
earth than was then commonly accepted. In doing
so Brydone was one of the first people to begin
questioning the 1664 assertion of James Ussher
precisely dating the age of the earth from the
moment of creation, which he had set at 4004 B.C.
This mezzotint has been trimmed from the full-length
print shown here in reproduction, after the oil
painting by Andrew Geddes (now presumed lost).
Published just days before Brydone’s death,
the original print shows its subject reclining
on a couch set in front of his electrical experiment
apparatus and a map of his travels. William Ward,
the engraver who produced this portrait print,
was appointed engraver to the duke of York, the
Prince of Wales, and associate engraver to the
Royal Academy.
Charles
Campbell (1855 – 1887)
Ophelia
1885
399 x 209 mm
This highly detailed mezzotint, a
technical tour de force from the
British Pre-Raphaelite era, depicts
a frightened-looking Ophelia. Around
her wrist are the
herbs she
was picking by the water’s edge prior
to the plunge that ended her life.
Her ermine-trimmed gown, suggestive
of rich silk brocade, indicates
her elevated status as a Danish
noblewoman. The character of Ophelia—her
victimization by Hamlet and her
subsequent decline into
madness—was a popular theme of Pre-Raphaelite
artists, whose subjects were frequently
drawn from the Bible, the plays
of Shakespeare or British Romantic poetry.
The author of this image, Charles Campbell,
lived only to the age of 32, perhaps accounting
for the notable dearth of published information
about him. He worked in the studio of his father,
a London architect, and studied at the Ruskin
School of Fine Art and Drawing in Oxford. Campbell
evidently was encouraged by the preeminent
painter Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833 – 1898),
and made mezzotint copies of some of his paintings.
It is not known whether Campbell made an initial
painting of Ophelia from which this mezzotint
was derived, or whether it is an independently
conceived work.
Kalman
Kubinyi (1906 – 1973)
Saraband
1932
50/225
295 x 205 mm
Kalman
Kubinyi was born and raised in Cleveland’s
Hungarian community. He took art classes as
a child and graduated from the Cleveland School
of Art in 1926. Following studies in Munich,
Germany, where he made his first etchings and
engravings, Kubinyi started exhibiting throughout
the United States in the 1930s and taught at
both the Cleveland School of Art and the Cleveland
Museum of Art. He also founded the Cleveland
Printmakers in 1930 and supervised the graphic
arts division of the Works Progress Administration
from 1935 – 1939.
The title Saraband is derived from an upbeat
dance which originated in colonized Latin America
in the early 1500s and spread to Spain. It
was eventually banned in Spain because of its “obscenity” (it
was an upbeat and intimate couples’ dance),
but gradually spread to Italy and France where
it evolved into a slower, courtly dance and
also became a movement in classical Baroque
music. One can see that Kubinyi managed to
create harmony between the banned and courtly
versions of the dance: the colors and curves
within the print tame the provocative positioning
of the bodies and the jarring white lines in
the background.
Lynd
Ward (1905 – 1985)
Pettifoggers
1943
194 x 122 mm
Lynd
Ward (1905 – 1985)
Judges
1943
194 x 122 mm
These mezzotints lampooning the litigious
world of lawyers and judges by award-winning
illustrator Lynd Ward were published
along with eight other images satirizing other
professions
in a special edition of Erasmus’s Moriae
Encomium, or, The Praise of Folly in
1943. During his youth Ward’s moral outlook was shaped
by his father, a Methodist minister sympathetic
to social causes. Ward received his Master of
Fine Arts degree from Columbia University’s
Teacher’s College in 1926 and married
his future collaborator and fellow
graduate May McNeer the same year. While honeymooning
in Europe they settled in Leipzig
where Ward
enrolled in the National Academy
of Graphic Arts, studying the techniques of
printmaking
and book design.
Ward’s reputation became established with
his series of wordless novels, the earliest form
of the graphic novel published in the United States.
The first to appear on the scene in 1929 was his
wood engraved Gods’ Man, succeeded
by five others in the genre the decade following.
During
this time Ward founded Equinox Press
and was named director of the graphic arts division
of the Federal
Writers Project in New York City from
1937-39. The publication of a multi-volume
edition of Les Misérables in 1938 inaugurated
a series of classics Ward produced for George
Macy’s Limited Editions Club, including
Erasmus’s Praise of Folly. All ten mezzotint
plates for The Praise of Folly, as well as their
accompanying proofs, are in the Library’s
Special Collections Research Center.
Reynold
Weidenaar (1915 – 1985)
Demolition in the Plaza del Toro
1950
Ed. 121
330 x 227 mm
Gift of M. Lee Stone
A native of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Reynold Weidenaar
created over 200 prints throughout his career.
His sensitivity and skill in rendering smoky,
atmospheric effects through the technique of mezzotint
contributed to the revival of interest in the
medium in America. Important awards in the 1940s
from the Guggenheim and the Louis Comfort Tiffany
foundations enabled Weidenaar to travel. He spent
considerable time in Mexico, where he created
some of his most important works.
The striking and richly atmospheric Demolition
in the Plaza del Toro, from that period, shows
the aftermath of a volcanic eruption in the village
of San Juan Parangaricutiro. In 1943, a new volcano
suddenly began growing out of a fissure in a nearby
cornfield. The volcano, which eventually reached
a height of 424 meters, erupted on and off for
the next eight years before dying. Lava and ash
from the eruptions eventually completely covered
the village; today, the top of the cathedral can
still be seen emerging through the cooled lava
flows.
Frederic
Dawtrey Drewitt (1848 – 1942)
The Sun's Corona
1907
250 x 202 mm
In August 1905, the British Astronomical Association
mounted an expedition to observe and
study a total solar eclipse. Some
traveled to Labrador and joined
a Canadian Prime Minister’s expedition for
the same purpose; most went to Burgos, Spain;
some—Frederic Dawtrey Drewitt among them—chose
to board a ship and see the eclipse
from the Mediterranean Sea, off the
coast of Spain near Torreblanca.
Those on board the S.S. Arcadia were ideally
situated, since they were on the eclipse’s “central
line” and would be able to observe the
totality for the longest time span possible.
Being on a ship, however, isn’t the best
way to make accurate scientific observations
and measurements, and another member of the
party commented, “The dilettante astronomer
would find the experience most enjoyable. From
a scientific point of view I am afraid I must
regard the trip as a wasted opportunity.”
Given the state of photographic technology
in 1905, it is no surprise that artistic representations
of the eclipse are far more detailed than records
made by cameras. Drewitt drew the corona and
its rays in accordance with several other artists’ published
depictions, including those in the official
reports of the British Astronomical Association.
Unique to this image, though, is Drewitt’s
exquisite and subtle rendering of the cloudy
sky, which grudgingly and briefly cleared for
the Arcadia’s passengers as the moon
fully covered the sun.
The artist dedicated this print to his colleague
and fellow printmaker J. R.G. Exley. Other
copies of Sun’s Corona are in the archives
of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Joseph
Pennell (1857 – 1926)
Shot Tower and the Bridge
c. 1918
126 x 146 mm
Joseph Pennell was born and raised in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania by Quaker parents who encouraged
his artistic leanings from a young age. In 1876
he briefly clerked for the Philadelphia and Reading
Coal Company while attending evening classes at
the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art, two
experiences that influenced his lifelong interest
in industrial subjects. In 1880 he produced his
first etching, and a year later received his first
magazine commissions from Harper’s and Scribner’s. In 1885 he moved with his young bride Elizabeth
Robbins to Europe, where he remained for the next
32 years. At the beginning of World War I, Pennell
traveled in Europe with the intention of illustrating
the industrial nature of the war. However, the
emotional strain was too great and he returned
with his wife to the United States, settling permanently
in Brooklyn, New York in 1917.
Through the many volumes he published on printmaking,
Pennell played a prominent role in the revival
of interest in the graphic arts in America. A
prolific and experimental printmaker, Pennell
produced over 900 intaglio prints and over 600
lithographs during his lifetime. In his book Etchers
and Etchings (1919), Pennell called mezzotint “the
most fascinating and maddening method of making
a print that ever was invented.” His Shot
Tower and the Bridge, a wartime view of London,
was included in the volume as an example of “drawn
mezzotint.” In this preferred, simplified
method, the image was “drawn” on the
plate with the dots of a roulette wheel, instead
of the traditional and laborious method of rocking
the plate prior to burnishing the image out with
a scraper.
Frank
Short (1857 – 1945)
The Lifting Cloud
1901
152 x 228 mm
Rackham Collection
On the encouragement of art critic John Ruskin,
Sir Frank Short made many mezzotints after the
paintings of Turner and other painters. It is
his original compositions however, often featuring
scenes of water, which count among the high points
of British printmaking. Lifting Cloud was made
after a watercolor sketched by the artist on the
solid bedrock beach of Whitby Scaur in Yorkshire.
Short was a president of Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers
from 1910 – 1938.
S.
Arlent Edwards (1862 – 1938)
Good Night (After Henry Mosler)
1896
375 x 300 mm
Gift of Sam Edwards
This sentimental image of a young
girl illuminated by the glow of her candle was
copied from a painting (now unlocated) by the
award-winning history and genre painter Henry
Mosler (1841 – 1920). The German-born
artist grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, was employed
as a Civil War sketch artist for Harper’s
Weekly, and later studied art in Düsseldorf
and Paris, where he resided from 1877 – 1894.
Georgetown owns three large paintings by Mosler,
on view in the Old North Building: The Birth
of the Flag, Washington Crossing
the Delaware, and The
Victory of the Bonhomme Richard, all
published in the Mentor magazine in 1913.
A generation younger than Mosler, mezzotint master
Samuel Arlent Edwards established a successful
practice of selling copies of popular Old Master
paintings via subscription through his publishers
in New York and London. Edwards claimed to have
revived the 18th century method of printing in
color from one mezzotint plate. This involved
inking the plate by hand for each printing, which
created slightly different results with each impression.
Edwards was justifiably proud of his meticulous
workmanship and routinely penciled in the following
statement just above his signature: “Engraved
and printed in color at one printing without retouching.”
Scip
Barnhart (contemporary)
Ryan (print)
c. 1985
197 x 169 mm
On loan from the artist
Scip
Barnhart (contemporary)
Ryan (plate)
c. 1985
199 x 172 mm
On loan from the artist
Scip Barnhart is a master printmaker
residing in Washington, D.C. who has taught
traditional print techniques at the Corcoran
College of Art and Design, George Washington
University, and is now on the faculty at Georgetown.
For over twenty years, Barnhart produced editioned
prints for established artists such as Bill
Christenberry, David Chung, Georgia Deal, P.
Buckley Moss and Kevin MacDonald at the District
workshop he maintained known as the Union Printmakers
Atelier.
For this exhibition, Barnhart graciously loaned
his mezzotint tools and this portrait of his son,
Ryan, his only endeavor in the medium of mezzotint
from the mid-1980s. The genesis of the print is
described in Barnhart’s statement below:
I was teaching intaglio [printmaking] to beginning
students. I wanted them to experience
etching, aquatint, drypoint, soft ground, lift
ground,
engraving and mezzotint. I had examples
of my own work of each of these techniques—except
mezzotint. We would get to mezzotint and I would
give the lecture and demo my teachers had given
me. I would explain how difficult it would be
to execute the rocking and burnishing [of the
mezzotint plate]. It felt awkward giving that
advice, since I hadn’t actually made a mezzotint.
I decided I would. I really didn’t think
it would be as difficult for me
since I supposedly knew what I was doing as
far as printmaking was
concerned. But it was difficult,
and the rocking and burnishing gave me a new
and greater appreciation
for mezzotint. I loved the process
and the range of tonalities achieved, but this
image, until
this year 2008, is my only mezzotint.
Jack
Levine (1915 – )
Self Portrait with Muse
1966
89/100
249 x 320 mm
James W. Elder Collection
Painter and printmaker Jack Levine grew up on
the South side of Boston and began his training
at the Boston Museum of Fine Art. He has had a
successful and prolific career painting contemporary-themed
subjects often in satirical or humorous overtones,
with titles evoking the works of Old Master painters.
In his twenties Levine worked as an artist for
the Federal Works Progress Administration, and
his first major success came with the Museum of
Modern Art’s acquisition of his 1937 painting
The Feast of Pure Reason. After serving in the
Second World War, Levine traveled to Europe on
a Guggenheim fellowship. His politically charged
paintings of the 1950s were exhibited in New York
at the Whitney and the Modern, and it wasn’t
until the early 1960s that Levine became involved
with printmaking, perhaps through his friendship
with print publisher Abe Lublin of the New York
Graphic Society.
His Self-Portrait with Muse mezzotint, based
on a 1960 painting, is an irreverent approach
to a traditional subject—the artist’s
self-portrait within his studio. It portrays the
classical muse of inspiration hovering incongruously
over the artist’s disproportionately large
head. The arduous rocking of the zinc plate for
this print was accomplished by Emiliano Sorini,
a talented Italian printmaker who had a nearby
studio, and whom Levine credits with teaching
and guiding him through the process of intaglio
printmaking.
Tomoe
Yokoi (1943 – )
Rose
c. 1975
26/75
273 x 332 mm
Each example of a color mezzotint will be slightly
different from others in the edition, because
the colors are applied by hand to a single plate
each time a print is run. Tomoe Yokoi is highly
regarded internationally for her expert use of
this difficult medium.
Yokoi combines traditional Japanese attention
to the beauty of natural form with the advanced
expertise of Parisian technique: her early art
training at Tokyo’s Biunka-Gakuin College
of Art was followed by study in Paris at S. W.
Hayter’s famous Atelier 17, the most prestigious
school of intaglio printmaking.
Michael
Lasuchin (1923 – 2006)
Confluence
1973
1/15
183 x 95 mm
Rackham Collection
In Confluence, tactile immediacy meets an eternal
essence: crisp edges define and balance softer
forms in a composition that evokes warmth and
volume, while distilling shapes to their most
elemental forms.
Placed within the modern tradition of Geometric
Abstraction and incorporating a wide range of
individual approaches, Michael Lasuchin’s
work expresses a distinct universal poetry, or
what the artist refers to as an “encoded
visual diary,” that evolves out of the depth
of his life experiences and communicates with
those on spiritual journeys. Rather than defining
his work within a single artistic tradition, however,
Lasuchin claims he is “searching for the
elusive solutions to a given problem. ”
Konstantin
Chmutin (1953 – )
Special Arrangement
1999
255/300
105 x 74 mm
Konstantin Chmutin’s dramatic chiaroscuro
technique recalls the lighting effects used by
Rembrandt—a particular influence on the
artist—and makes the most of mezzotint’s
unique ability to portray light and dark with
strength, richness and depth. The thoughtfulness
with which the everyday objects are rendered transforms
this still life from the mundane to the meditative.
Kazuo
Yamaguchi (1949 – )
Apples, Oranges and Bottles
1986
8/30
353 x 263 mm
Kazuo Yamaguchi explores the idea that the artist’s
innermost self is revealed in the everyday objects
surrounding him. He writes that his greatest sense
of accomplishment comes from giving “peace
of mind and pleasure” to the viewer (from
http://www.millionart.com).
Sharon
Augusta Mitchell (1960 – )
Year of the Locust
1998
111/160
337 x 213 mm
Sharon Augusta Mitchell regularly moves between
natural studies and the pursuit of
narrative images that convey a sense
of theater and emphasize the drama
and enigma inherent in natural forms.
In recent years she has worked largely
in print media using
traditional techniques such as mezzotint,
etching and stone lithography, and
occasionally combining
them in conjunction with elements
of other mixed media approaches. She writes:
Having come to relish the patterns that occur
so abundantly in the wild, as well
as those which are unique to the creations of
mankind, the temptation
to juxtapose them in a composition
is irresistible. Within the proportional confines
of a sheet of
paper, the fractal shapes and structures
of nature can be set like jewels into the Euclidian
geometry
of architecture or the swirling
decorative motifs of an art nouveau backdrop.
Even while embracing
a tendency towards dark humor, I
strive in this way to make the work viewable.
That some of the
pieces are humorous and others decorative
is purposeful in so far as it offers me a change
of mood—without
which I would certainly stagnate
or take up bowling.
Herman
Zaage (1927 – 2008)
Puuhonua
1999
121/160
198 x 256 mm
Herman Zaage’s lifelong artistic career
covered the full spectrum of printmaking. His
professional work began just post-World War II
in the Army, silk-screening informational materials;
he then spent 39 years as a photo engraver and
dot etcher with a printing firm in Manhattan.
After his retirement in 1983, Zaage began to learn
the techniques of fine art printmaking and took
up etching, woodcut, and mezzotint.
The Print Club of Albany commissioned an edition
of 160 prints of Puuhonua as its 1999 annual presentation
print. Zaage, a longtime supporter of environmental
preservation groups in his home area, wrote in
the prospectus for the print: “Puuhonua,
Hawaiian for ‘Place of Refuge,’ is
a site on the Big Island that my wife and I visited
during a short vacation stay in the Hawaiian Islands.
Much of my work employs the imagery of sub-tropical
flora and at this site the grouping of these tangled
Mangrove like stems caught my eye as a potential
mezzotint.”
Craig
McPherson (1948 – )
Tulips
1978
Ed. 175
428 x 350
mm
Gift of Steve Macfarlane
Craig McPherson is known for his murals, paintings
and mezzotints, many reflecting his 30-year residence
in New York City. His work has been exhibited
in solo gallery shows in New York, where he is
represented by Forum Gallery, and in group shows
throughout the world. His body of work includes
a number of corporate and museum commissions,
including a set of large murals depicting world
harbor cities for the American Express Building.
This floral still life represents a departure
for McPherson from his larger body of work, both
in tone and subject matter. The colorful tulips
are presented in a bright clear light, drawing
attention away from the artist’s self-portrait
reflected in the convex form of the vase.
Craig
McPherson (1948 – )
Fort Tryon Park, Manhattan
1978
Ed. 75
285 x 348 mm
Gift of Steve Macfarlane
Craig McPherson works in the urban-realist tradition,
producing finely detailed, beautifully atmospheric
renderings of urban and industrial environments.
His preference for urban subject matter and unpopulated
shadowy night scenes is reminiscent of both the
Ashcan School of the early twentieth century and
the cinematography of mid-twentieth-century film
noir.
The artist here gives Fort Tryon Park in New
York City a far lighter touch. The delicate coloring
calls to mind nineteenth-century hand-tinted photographs
rather than the stark graphic quality of black-and-white
movies. Dappled light and shade impart a dreamy
quality, with a definite flavor of nostalgia that
fully excludes the bleak or the industrial.
Frederick
Mershimer (1958 – )
Manhattan Bridge
1988
13/90
252 x 351 mm
Frederick
Mershimer (1958 – )
Frederick Mershimer: Mezzotints 1984 – 2006
New Orleans, LA: Stone + Press, 2008
Frederick
Mershimer (1958 – )
Into the Night
2008
58/100
172 x 119 mm
Frederick
Mershimer (1959 – )
5th Avenue Night
1987
40/90
298 x 226 mm
A modern master of the technically demanding
art of mezzotint engraving, Frederick Mershimer
received his undergraduate degree in Fine Arts
from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University
in 1980, with a major in painting. He moved to
New York in 1982 and studied at Parsons School
of Design, the Pratt Graphics Center, and the
Manhattan Graphics Center, further developing
his talents in fine printmaking. As a participant
in a program at Pratt Graphics, Mershimer was
able to spend six weeks in an intensive printmaking
workshop at the Studio Camitzer in Valdottava,
Italy.
Always interested in the problems of rendering
light, naturalism and illusion, Mershimer has
chosen New York architecture as the dominant theme
for many of his prints. Inspired by the city’s
landmarks and its other structures of historic
significance, his images are characterized by
the qualities of light and space.
Georgetown is honored to have the largest institutional
collection of Mershimer’s works, with a
total of 26 prints. Displayed here is the artist’s
recently released catalogue raisonné that
records 95 superbly crafted mezzotint engravings
from the years 1984 to 2006. Published by Stone
+ Press Gallery of New Orleans, this deluxe edition
of the catalogue, of which there are 100, includes
the small print Into the Night. The quintessential
view of a New York subway entrance is located
at 23rd Street and Broadway near the Flatiron
Building.
Art
Werger (1955 – )
The World Below
1999
33/100
497 x 300 mm
Art
Werger (1955 – )
Separate Destinations
1991
41/75
251 x 337 mm
The city scenes of Art Werger adopt the visual
vocabulary of cinema to create scenes fraught
with tension and isolation. Film noir techniques
of perspective and point of view place the viewer
as an omniscient voyeur, in the middle of the
action yet not a participant.
The aerial orientation in The World Below presents
the urban environment almost as abstraction. The
grand scale precludes any participation of the
viewer in whatever events might be occurring;
perspective comes at the price of belonging.
A different kind of detachment is portrayed in
Separate Destinations. The busy street seems desolate;
each car and figure is solitary in the rain. The
viewer is part of the scene but alone in the crowd
as the cars’ blank headlights echo the disconnection
of the passers-by.
Peter
Jogo (1948 – )
Night Courts
1985
Ed. 25
299 x 322 mm
New York artist Peter Jogo captures
the silence and stillness often
found in urban landscapes. With
masterful use of the subtlety
only possible with mezzotint, played
against strong silhouettes and deep
shadows, the artist
develops evocative nocturnal settings.
The soft, ethereal quality of black
and white provides
a foundation on which the artist
builds his multi-plate color mezzotints,
allowing for a
particular richness, depth and texture,
and creating inviting spaces for pause
and reflection.
As explained in Carol Wax’s seminal work
The Mezzotint: History and Technique (1990), this color mezzotint was printed from
two separate
plates: first, the color matrix, a
zinc plate on which some of the image elements
were engraved
with a burin and etched with aquatint,
was printed twice, each time with a different
color scheme.
Next, the copper key plate containing
the mezzotinted image—burnished and scraped
through a ground prepared with a 100-gauge rocker—was
printed with blue-black ink on Arches Cover white
paper.
Robert
Kipniss (1931 – )
Nocturne
Date unknown; artist's proof
122 x 197 mm
Gift of Betty MacDonald
Robert Kipniss was born into a family that valued
the visual arts: his father was a painter and
layout director who designed the pages of the
Sears, Roebuck Catalogue, and his mother was a
fashion artist. He began his career as a painter
with a Master of Fine Arts degree from Iowa University
in 1954, and in 1967 he switched to printmaking.
Disenchanted after 23 years of almost exclusively
working in lithography, Kipniss decided to try
making a mezzotint engraving and was enthralled
with the results. “In mezzotint you draw
with light. You start with velvety black and gradually
introduce degrees of illumination and, as your
focus sharpens, you slowly evolve shapes and space
from the darkness. I found the possibilities so
felicitous, so beckoning, as to make this old
artist youthfully eager about printmaking again….”
Charles
Ritchie (1954 – )
House VI
1999 – 2000
17/40
60 x 72 mm
Washington Print Club Collection
Charles Ritchie came to Washington, D.C.
after completing his Master of Fine Arts degree
at Carnegie Mellon University in 1980, and now
works as Associate Curator of Modern Prints
and Drawings at the National Gallery of Art.
For over a decade, Ritchie has been exploring
the sites in and around his suburban Virginia
home. He is dedicated to the landscape, “both
visible and metaphorical.” The rich effects
of the mezzotint technique create shadowy depths
from which an eerie glow emerges in this view
of the artist’s house. The image was featured
on the cover of the Summer 2002 issue of The
Washington Print Club Quarterly. As Terry Parmelee
wrote of it at the time, “Simplification
of form, exaggeration of light or shadow, and
subtle adjustment of shape contribute to a unique
style that defies the description of ‘realism.’”
)
Denis
Diderot (1713 – 1784) et al.)
Charles
Spooner (d. 1767))
John
Martin (1789 – 1854))
John
Martin (1789 – 1854))
David
Lucas (1802 – 1881))
David
Lucas (1802 – 1881))
William
Ward (1762 – 1826))
Charles
Campbell (1855 – 1887))
Kalman
Kubinyi (1906 – 1973))
Lynd
Ward (1905 – 1985))
)
Reynold
Weidenaar (1915 – 1985))
Frederic
Dawtrey Drewitt (1848 – 1942))
Joseph
Pennell (1857 – 1926))
Frank
Short (1857 – 1945))
S.
Arlent Edwards (1862 – 1938))
Scip
Barnhart (contemporary))
Scip
Barnhart (contemporary))
Jack
Levine (1915 – ))
Tomoe
Yokoi (1943 – ))
Michael
Lasuchin (1923)
Konstantin
Chmutin (1953)
Kazuo
Yamaguchi (1949 – ) )
Sharon
Augusta Mitchell (1960 – ))
Herman
Zaage (1927)
Craig
McPherson (1948 – ))
Craig
McPherson (1948 – ))
Frederick
Mershimer (1958 – ))
Frederick
Mershimer (1958 – ))
Frederick
Mershimer (1958 – ))
Frederick
Mershimer (1959 – ))
Art
Werger (1955 – ))
Art
Werger (1955 – ))
Peter
Jogo (1948 – ))
Robert
Kipniss (1931 – ))
Charles
Ritchie (1954 – )