THE GRAPHIC ARTS Etchings

Ladies' Mirror, Volume I, Issue 3, 1 September 1922, Page 24

THE GRAPHIC ARTS Etchings

by T. V. GULLIVER

ALTHOUGH it is true that the main purpose of all Fine Art is ■ to decorate, and that prints especially do this admirably, yet I should be sorry to think that all interest in pictures ceased after they had been hung, and that from then onwards they were to be regarded as mere patches of tone doing something useful on awall. Unfortunately, this tendency for pictures to become part of the wall . is known to many of us, and if what . I write saves any prints from' a similar fate, I shall be satisfied. Whatever beauty is to be found in the Graphic Arts is due to two causes in particular—-to the artist’s outlook, and to the quality peculiar to whichever medium he employs. The first has to do largely with matters of individual taste, and provides endless , discussion for hundreds of art critics —I leave it to them; it is of the second that I wish to write—dealing with each process under its own heading, and naming them here for convenience—Etching, Drypoint, Aquatint, Mezzotint, Woodcutting and Engraving and Lithography. It will be observed that I have chosen those branches which belong to the reproductive side of the Graphic Arts. Etching is, without doubt, the chief of them all; it is to most artists what chamber-music is to most musicians—a hobby—and I think that of all the forms of pictorial expression it is the one which- allows to the artist the most spontaneous freedom. This is due directly to the surface upon which he works, and to the tool with which he draws, the absolute lack of resistance in the one, and the complete freedom of line possible with the other, enabling the etcher to forget his materials and to concentrate upon his subject. The whole feeling, when working direct upon the copper, is to eliminate, to endeavour to fix the impression, rather than the substance, to make every line “tell” to its utmost, and to produce a drawing impulsive and inevitable. The perfection of the material as a graphic medium, must have been the leading influence upon the great artists who have used it, Whistler, with that extraordinary elimination in his late work and always (like his signature, the butterfly), beautiful and pictorially perfect; Brangwyn, and his large, deeply-bitten plates, sometimes gloomy, always impressive and decorative; Meryon,- insane and

colour-blind, and rendering old Paris in a way never achieved before or since, with strange birds, witches and macabre verse queerly introduced; Rembrandt, greatest of all, etching marvellous portraits of burgomasters, rat-catchers, pigs even; and Rops, wonderful draughtsman of erotic work and unpleas a n t things ; but it is impossible to suggest more than a fraction of the delig h t f u 1 variation achieved, and which, i 11deed, is limited only by the possible variat i o n s of the artistic mind. Hamerton, writing of the artist’s attitude towards his subject, says, “T he motive of a picture is not so much material, as spiritual. It is a certain condition of the mind produced by the subject, which the artist in rendering that subject, desires to reproduce in the minds of the spectators. . . . Almost anything is a subject, but it only becomes a motive when the artist is moved by it. An etcher ought never to care about subjects, he should etch motives only,” and Seymour Haden, a great etcher himself, has this to say about the technical side: “Every stroke he (the etcher) makes, tells strongly against him if it be bad, or proves him to be a master if it be good. In no branch of art does a touch go for so much. The necessity for rigid selection is therefore constantly present to his mind. If one stroke in the right place tells more for him than ten in the wrong, it would seem to follow that that single stroke was a

more learned stroke than the scores of ten by which he would have arrived at his end.” IVrOST of what I have said and quoted above is concerned with the ideals of the art and the masters —the men who are faultless—may be counted on the fingers; but there is' a great amount of etching done at the present time by men and women, who are not master s, but who are revealing, neve rt h e I e s their personalities and attempting in their own ways to realis e some ideal. Their work can be obtained; some of them will be classed, undoubtedly, with the minor masters, and the majority are capable of affording a great deal of pleasure. I believe that a knowledge of -the lives and works of the great etchers of the past is necessary for a complete appreciation of etchings themselves —it enables us to understand the motives which in many cases clearly underlie their work, and —most important of all —it gives us a standard for comparison, or rather perhaps, to live up to. Any attempt here to give an historical outline of the art would degenerate into a catalogue of names and dates —a most unsatisfactory thing to write or read; and I will say only this, that a little time spent in reading about the subject will be repaid amply by an added interest. Most of the public libraries have a

selection if not a large collection of books of and about etchings and etchers. TJ'NGRAVING in metal is produced by means of a number of different processes, and it is to the particular method of obtaining a sunken line by means of a mordant acid that the term etching is applied. In this connection the probable derivation of the word from the Dutch etzen, to eat, may be pointed out. In the art as usually practised, the metal used is copper, and the mordant is nitric acid; zinc is often used, and some of the old etchers used iron. In starting to work, the etcher first prepares the plate, rounding off all sharp edges, and bringing one of the surfaces to a state of high polish. It is then warmed over a stove, and the polished side is evenly and thinly coated with etching ground—a • hard paste composed of asphaltum, pitch and wax. This thin layer is transparent, and whilst still hot is inverted over a candle or taper, and smoked until the whole surface is opaque. When cold, the ground is ready to be used, and is hard, black, and slightly shiny. The coating of etching ground is used to protect the copper 1 ! i j | from the action of the acid, and, if the prepared plate was flooded with it, no action would take place. The drawing is made with a steel needle sharpened to a fine round point, and set into a convenient handle—in fact, anything which is smooth and sharp may be used. Here are the perfect surface and the perfect tool, and the needle gliding over the prepared copper removes the ground wherever it touches, leaving a glistening gold line on the black surface, and the drawing, when completed, is seen as a network of these bright lines upon the dark ground. • The plate is now ready for biting, as it is called, and is either immersed in a nitric bath, in which case the back and edges are protected with an acidproof paint, or the acid may be applied to the needled surface only; whichever method is used, the lines of the drawing are covered over, almost immediately, with a frosting of minute bubbles, which show that action between the copper and the acid has commenced. These bubbles are removed occasionally with a feather, and the longer the acid is allowed in contact with the lines, the deener and

wider grooves it will cut. When the etcher judges that his lightest lines have been sufficiently bitten, he removes the plate from the acid, washes it in water, dries it, and covers over those" lines with some of the acidproof paint, allowing this to dry before again placing the plate in the bath. The same steps of biting and stopping-out are carried on until the whole of the work has been bitten to the different depths required. Wide and narrow lines are obtained in etching by the action of the acid alone, those originally drawn with the needle being all of the same width and of no depth, as the ( point is used to bare the copper through the ground, and not to cut into it. 'T’HE etching ground ■*- which all this time has been used to protect the plate from the acid in those places where no lines have been drawn, is now removed with turpentine, and the drawing is seen as a series of dark lines eaten into the piece of shining copper. Alterations or additions are made as required—alterations by rubbing out the mistakes with charcoal and other abrasivesadditions by a regrounding of the plate, and further biting, and when the drawing and biting are considered satisfactory the plate is ready for printing. It is to the print that . the etcher looks for the final realisation of his efforts, and it is to the printing that an etching owes most of its quality. It is possible for a beginner with one or two lessons to carry an etching as far as has been described, but a good printer may have to study for a lifetime — many of the effects used need the dexterity which comes only from long practice, and in addition to this it is the printer’s special art to get everything that is possible out of the plate from the pictorial point of view. The ink used is a mixture of brown or black colouring matter ground in a stiff oil, and is usually made as required colour, consistency and temperature having a great effect upon the proof obtained. It is forced into the lines of the plate, which is slightly warmed, and the surplus ink on the surface of the copper is cleaned off with the palm of the hand, or a pad of stiff muslin, in such a manner as not to disturb the ink in the lines. The whole may be removed, giving what is called a “straight proof, or faint or heavy stains may be left, as desired. The plate, which during the

inking has become cold, is - warmed again, and is ready for the press, which ;„ms ' a machine very 1 k e a mangle, with the difference i that the rollers are of steel and have a steel “plank” and sev- .... eral thicknesses of felt blanket gripped between : them. The paper on which the impression is to be taken (handma d e etching papers in themselves are beautiful things) has been dampened previously until it is in a spongy condition, but quite free from surface water. The warm plate is placed face up on the plank of the press, the damped paper is carefully placed over it, the felt blankets are smoothed down oyer all, and, on turning . the

handle, the whole is passed through between the rollers under such great pressure that the paper is forced into all the grooves of the plate, where the ink already there adheres to it. The blankets are turned back, and the paper, stripped off the plate very carefully, is found to bear a facsimile of the bitten lines in printing ink upon its surface. Fresh proofs are taken by a repetition of the above methods, and after all which are satisfactory have been dried and lightly pressed, they are ready for the artist’s signature. I would like to mention that every print from an etched plate bears in itself the proof of its origin, firstly in the raised lines of ink upon its surface, and secondly in the “plate mark,” or mark of the edges of the piece of copper on the paper, and 1 hope that the pointing out of these signs will help the novice to distinguish the true etching from the many frauds offered as such.