Woodcut
Woodcut
was the earliest artists’ printing
technique devised. In Europe the first
examples date from about 1400.
Designs
had been cut into wood blocks earlier for
printing patterns onto fabric and when
European paper mills were established towards
the end of the 14th century and a supply
of paper became available it was a natural
progression to independent woodcut images
printed on paper.
Though
Oriental paper was first imported about
950 AD it was over two centuries later
before papermaking began in Europe. The
first factory was in Spain, followed by
France and Italy. Fabriano in Italy, the
main supplier to 14th century Europe, is
still an important place of paper manufacture
today. Papermaking was not established
in Germany till the end of the 14th century
and in the Netherlands until the 16th century.
In England there was a short-lived factory
by the end of the 15th century.
Woodcut
is carried out on planks of soft woods
such as apple, pear, cherry, sycamore and
beech, sawn along the grain.
The
tool is a knife (with a flat steel blade
trimmed at the end to an angle to create
its cutting edge and bevelled on one side
only along the cutting edge) or a variety
of V-shaped chiselling gouges. In old master
woodcuts the artist generally only drew
his design onto the block, but left the
cutting to a professional “form cutter” who
cut away the unnecessary surface to leave
the lines of the artist’s design
standing proud. This resulted in a “black
line” woodcut, that is the printed
design appeared as black lines on the “white” ground
of the paper.
The
process could sometimes be reversed if
the artists chose to cut his design himself
directly into the block, thus leaving the
background in relief, with the result that
the printed design reads as a “white” line
against a black background and is consequently
known as a “white line” woodcut (see illustration of "Pelbartus
studying, in a Garden", below right).
Modern
artists cut their own blocks and freely
mix black and white line in their designs
and sometimes use the texture of the grain
of the wood itself as a contributing factor.
The
earliest woodcuts were produced in Germany,
though the technique soon spread to Italy,
Switzerland, France and the Netherlands.
Even in England, where original printmaking
generally got off to a slow start, Caxton
issued his second edition of Chaucer’s “Canterbury
Tales” in 1484 with woodcut illustrations.
The convenience of being able to print
woodcuts on the same press and simultaneously
with the typeface, led to their extensive
use as early book illustrations.
However,
the ‘single leaf’ or independent
woodcut belonged to an even earlier tradition,
initiated by the monasteries for images
of the Virgin, Christ and the Saints, to
sell to pilgrims.
The
earliest woodcuts were in general hand
coloured. (See separate section
on Hand-Coloured
Woodcuts .) It
was only as woodcut design became more
sophisticated in the closing years of the
15th century that its inherently powerful
expression was allowed to stand alone in
black and white.
Albrecht
Dürer (1471–1528): "The Visitation".
Woodcut,
c1503. (300 x 213 mm)
Dürer above
all raised the medium to a fine art. With ‘white’ areas
contrasted against closely worked areas
of fine parallel and even crossing lines
he achieved tonal contrasts that revolutionised
the medium. He also extended the range
of theme and scale and generally brought
the breadth of a Renaissance mind to bear.
The
early 16th century was an exciting period
in woodcut. Dürer’s German
contemporaries included Cranach, working
in Wittenburg,
Burgkmaier in Augsburg, Baldung Grien in
Strasbourg while in Venice Titian was inspired
by Dürer and the grand schemes carried
out for the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian
to produce monumental compositions made
up from joined impressions printed from
a multitude of individual blocks.
Superimposition
of different blocks and the use of coloured
inks or printing onto coloured paper led
to the final flowering of old master woodcuts
in the chiaroscuro print. (See separate
section on Chiaroscuro
Woodcuts.)
The
woodcut tradition declined after the 16th
century as artists preferred the finer
detail that intaglio prints could give
in their search for realism and finesse.
It was only with the Modern movement, with
its accent on plasticity and painterly
qualities, and which looked beyond realism,
that woodcut was rediscovered and revived
as an original artist’s printmaking
technique by such artists as William Nicholson
in England (see illustration at the
top of this page), Lepère,
Vallotton and Gauguin in France, Munch
in Norway and the German Expressionist
artists of Die Brücke (see illustration
right by Schmidt-Rottluff).
In
the modern period it can be difficult to
distinguish woodcut from wood engraving;
indeed Charles Ginner initially described
his own prints as woodcuts but later changed
the terminology (though with no change
to the actual technique) to wood engravings. |
