Etching (Dutch etsen, from German atzen to etch, corrode, from Old High German azzen) is an engraving technique in which the chemical treatment of the plate
by acid replaces the mechanical treatment with different engraving tools. The
method gained currency in the late 16th century.
Etching emerged a
little later than xylography – in the early 16th century; it owes
its origin to jewellery making and gun making, where acid was used to etch a
design on metal. Etching is a variety of intaglio
printing – the technique of filling out the incisions along the lines of
the pattern with ink and running the plate with a paper secured thereon through
a printing press to produce an impression. Whereas burin engraving, dry-point
and mezzotint are purely mechanical methods, etching (as well as soft ground
etching, aquatint, crayon manner and stippling) are chemical methods, or
methods involving the use of acids.
The metal plate
(copper, zinc, and starting from the early 19th century – steel or
copper with a galvanized steel coating) is heated and coated with a special
acid-proof varnish, and then “smoked” slightly. Next the engraver uses a sharp
etching needle to scratch a design into the ground, exposing the metal. Then
the engraver puts the plate in a bath with acid, which eats into the metal only
in those areas where the ground was scraped away, in other words, along the
lines of the pattern. Next the plate is washed with water and the varnish is
removed with turpentine or spirits. The result is the plate with the lines of
the pattern bitten into the surface of the metal with acid.
Then the etcher
applies to the plate an ink, which fills out the grooves, after which the ink
is sponged away from the non-printing areas of the plate with a wiper. Allowing
for a most intricate design and for most diverse strokes, etching as a
technique is suitable for conveying impetuous motion as well as fanciful
patterns. Areas of dense cross-hatching convey tonal gradations and chiaroscuro
effects of different solidity. Repeated treatment by acid (Jacques Callot was
the first to employ this method, in the 17th century) helps to
achieve a bigger density of tone in a certain area and softer transitions from
one tone to another. Serial exposure to acid enables the engraver to secure
every “stage” in a tentative print and then, applying a new coating, to
introduce changes into the design, to add details. Finally, the etched plate
becomes ready for printing, and the engraver pulls impressions from it. When an
etched matrix becomes overused, the fine lines, “barbs”, dots and little
scratches, which lend so much charm to an etched piece, gradually fray. Not
surprisingly, prints from frayed matrices are valued less.
First experiments
in etching date to the early 16th century, and already in 1515-1518
Albrecht D?rer undertook attempts to treat metal plates with acid. The Italian
Mannerist painter Parmigianino in the late 16th century lifted
etching to the level of true art, and in the 17th century etching
reigned supreme. Rembrandt achieved in his etchings the most sophisticated
light and depth effects, printing on different kinds of paper and applying the
method of serial exposure to acid. Also, he was the first artist to turn
etching into a form of graphic art, using this technique to produce quick small
sketches.
The varieties of
etching include so-called soft ground
etching, a technically quite simple method invented perhaps in the 17th
century. The ordinary etching ground is softened and made easily removable with
the addition of tallow. The plate is covered with coarse paper on which the
etcher traces a design with a hard blunt pencil, varying the pressure on the
drawing tool. The lines cut through the paper and into the ground. When the
paper is removed, the bits of the varnish become removed as well. The acid bath
brings out an image with rich grainy texture resembling a pencilled drawing.
Aquatint (invented by the French artist Jean-Baptiste Le
Prince in 1765) is a more complicated technique, used to achieve soft
half-tones similar to those found in water-colour paintings. As a first step,
the etcher applies a pattern puncturing it through a tracing paper, then the
lines are etched by slight exposure to acid, then a new ground is applied and
the areas that must come out black on the print are washed with a solution and
coated with powdered asphalt or resin. When the plate is heated, the powder
melts and the surface becomes rough and grainy. Areas that must come out light
in tone are protected against biting with a varnish. Artists often used the
aquatint technique in combination with etching or burin engraving, and
sometimes in combination with colour printing, as did Francisco Goya, one of
the best etchers in history.
Experiments in
combining the techniques of burin engraving and etching brought about, in the
18th century, crayon manner
(a design is incised into an etching ground, then the grooves are treated with
roulettes and a mattoir, and after the biting, deepened by dry-point, so that
the print on paper features wide thick and grainy lines similar to those produced
by a black carbon pencil or sanguine – this explains why crayon manner was
mostly used for reproduction of drawings) and stippling, or dotting (clusters
of dots blending into a single-tone area are impressed in the etching ground
with various needles, rollers and roulettes, after which the plate is treated
with acid; dots on faces and naked bodies are punched directly into the plate
with a burin or a needle), which was used for reproduction purposes alone.
The process of creating rosin etchings starts with coating the plate with powdered resin
and melting the resin. Then the etcher traces a pattern in the ground with an
ordinary brush or a special fibreglass brush soaked in a mixture of acid,
binder and gouache, after which the mixture is wiped away. When necessary, this
process can be repeated several times. The technique of sugar aquatint involves the tracing of a drawing, by a brush (or a
pen) and a special ink or gouache, straight on the plate, and the application
of a layer of varnish over the drawing. Then the plate is put into a bath with
water, which exposes the sections earmarked for treatment by acid.
Quite naturally,
artists attempted to produce coloured
etchings. Hercules Seghers came up with the easiest method, which was also
most unsuited for mass reproduction: he coated different sections of the plate
with differently coloured inks and sometimes printed them on tinted paper.
Jacob Christoph Le Blon in the 18th century already employed four
plates, three of which were of primary colours, and the fourth carried black
for printing dark shades. They were overprinted, yielding impressions with
blended colours (according to the principle that “the marriage of yellow and
blue produces green”, etc.). To ensure that the colour is applied exactly to the
area reserved for it, the rim of the paper is secured on the press, and the
position of the paper is fixed while the etcher takes the matrix from the press
and applies a new ink to it. Colour can be “managed” by varying pressure on the
tool and the depth of the cut. For instance, in black areas, a wide and deep
stroke yields black, and a fine and shallow stroke yields light tones of grey.
Another way to
achieve colour effects is to paint the etching by hand as a monotype. Yet
another method involves covering the surface with black ink and then painting
over the black in the manner of monotyping – this will yield a one-colour image
against a painted background. So, there is a large variety of colouring methods
and different masters improve them to their liking. For reproduction purposes,
sometimes finished prints were touched up with water-colour.
In Russia, the earliest known etchings were created by the acclaimed icon painter Simon Ushakov in the 17th century. In the 18th century etchings were made by such artists as Alexey Zubov, Mikhail Makhaev and others. In later times, many artists made forays into etching – in fact, all graphic artists and painters who tried their hand in engraving, including Orest Kiprensky and Fyodor Bruni. In 1871, a rising interest in etching among painters led to the creation of a society of etchers in St. Petersburg, with Nikolai Ghe, Ivan Kramskoi, Ivan Shishkin, Ilya Repin, Vassily Polenov and others among the members. The technique of reproduction etching, whose most notable practitioner was Vasily Math? (Mate), was in wide use until the late 19th century. Even though Math? did not create a tradition (because the age of reproduction etchings was short-lived), he educated many graphic artists of the 20th century. Searching for new methods of reproducing paintings in print, Vasily Math? elevated etching and xylography to a very high level. Valentin Serov, who introduced into etching light strokes, steep lines, limpid colours, made a significant contribution to the art of etching, although he left behind but a few prints. The best etchers of the early 20th century were Yelizaveta Kruglikova, Georgy Vereisky, Ignaty Nivinsky; the artists who made forays into etching included L?on Bakst, Alexey Kravchenko, Pavel Shillingovsky, Ivan Fomin, Vadim Falileev, Dmitry Mitrokhin, Alexander Samokhvalov, Vladimir Favorsky. With several exceptions, all of these artists stayed and continued to work in Soviet Russia.
In the Soviet era,
the engraving and etching techniques were taught at the schools of art and
architecture VHUTEIN-VHUTEMAS (Higher Art
and Technical Institute - Higher Art and Technical Studios), at the Moscow
Institute of Printing Arts, at art colleges in Moscow and Leningrad. Original
etching traditions were formed in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Armenia. In
the 1960s-1970s etching experienced a true revival when it became the focus of
interest of the “unofficial” artists from most diverse artistic backgrounds,
including Vladimir Yankilevsky, Oleg Tselkov, Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, Lev (Leo)
Kropivnitsky, Ernst Neizvestny, Dmitry Plavinsky, Garif Basyrov. And today, as
before, many graphic artists use etching methods, boldly experimenting with
this flexible and in many respects astonishing technique.
