Mezzotint
An
important aspect of 17th century painting
was the interest in chiaroscuro, the expressive
use of contrasting light and shade, usually
with a night-time or tenebrous subject
selectively lit (dramatically or intimately)
by a single source of light. Mezzotint,
invented in the period, creates a similar
painterly effect in print. The image is
achieved entirely without lines through
tonal contrast and subtle continuous gradation
of tone (mezzo tinto is Italian for “half-tone”).
Invented
in 1642 by a Dutch Soldier and amateur
artist, Ludwig von Siegen, another cultivated
soldier, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, perfected
the technique as it is now still practised
by inventing the rocker for grounding the
plate. Whereas Von Siegen used a form of
roulette (a toothed wheel) to add dark
tones only where they were required and
left light areas of the plate unworked,
Prince Rupert worked the entire surface
of the plate to an initial uniform ‘black’ and
scraped away the areas that were to be
lighter in tone.
The
mezzotint engraver grounds his plate in
a time-consuming process whereby the rocker,
a curved serrated chisel, is ‘rocked’ systematically
back and forth across the plate many times
in all directions producing a rough burr
which holds the ink and prints as a complete
velvety black. The design is made to emerge
from the dark by scraping away degrees
of the burr or burnishing right back to
the original smooth copper. These areas
hold less ink, or none at all, and print
in shades of grey or allow the ‘white’ of
the paper to show as highlights.
Dutch
artists, such as Dusart, Vaillant, Blooteling,
van Somer and Valck, took up the technique
enthusiastically for a wide range of subjects,
though portraiture came to predominate.
The
technique was brought to England by Prince
Rupert when he accompanied Charles II on
his restoration in 1660. Mezzotint enjoyed
such immense popularity in England that
its subsequent history is largely British,
and in the 18th century it was known as ‘engraving
in the English manner’.
Prince
Rupert demonstrated the technique to John
Evelyn, who recognized its potential for
reproducing painted portraits in print,
with which it came to be identified throughout
the 17th and 18th centuries. All of the
leading portrait painters, from Van Dyck
and Lely, to Kneller, Reynolds and Hoppner
were published in mezzotint.
By
the second half of the 18th century new
subjects came to be introduced, genre,
rustic pastorals, the drama of the developing
industrial revolution, interpreted by engravers
such as William Ward and Valentine Green
after the paintings of George Morland or
Joseph Wright of Derby. In the 19th century
the expressive tonal potential of mezzotint
was exploited by the great Romantic landscape
artists, Turner and Constable.
J
M W Turner (1775–1851) "Interior
of a Church".
Mezzotint with etching,
1819. (215 x 304 mm)
Mezzotint
remained largely an interpretive process
for the reproduction of oil paintings.
Notable exceptions in the 18th century
are the series of twelve
original lifesize heads drawn from life
by the manager of the Bow China Factory,
Thomas Frye, and the delightful studies
of sleeping cheetahs, recumbent lions and
tigers, and foxhounds on the scent by the
artist George Stubbs and in the early 19th
century the cataclysmic landscapes of John
Martin.
Towards
the end of the 19th century, largely through
the example of Sir Frank Short, mezzotint
was rediscovered by artists for making
original prints. Though such English engravers
as Short and William Strang largely worked
in the traditional method, some artists
in Germany returned full circle to Von
Siegen’s method and used the tools
of mezzotint to create selective tonal
areas on otherwise etched plates and exploited
constructively the patterning of the incised
serrations made in the plate by the rocker. |
