A drawing with multiple copies
Drawing with an etching needle in the soft ground layer laid on top of the copper plate is very similar to drawing with pen on paper, enabling the artist to work quickly and freely.
For that reason, the champion of etching, Phillipe Burty, called the tecnnique ‘a drawing with multiple copies.’
The spontaneous character of the etching was seized on in the second half of the nineteenth century by critics, writers, and publishers to promote the etching as the most artistic and expressive printmaking technique.
Prints like this, it was said, brought the viewer closest to the personal ‘signature’ and intimate thoughts of the artist.
Albert Besnard, Intimacy (Intimité), 1889
Free and accessible medium
The fact that etching resembled drawing so closely made it a relatively accessible medium for artists. They required little in the way of technical knowledge to get down to work, and frequently left the more complex printing process to professional printers like Auguste and Eugène Delâtre.
There were also artists, however, who immersed themselves wholeheartedly in the technical possibilities of etching and took control of the entire process from design to printing. Félix Buhot showed a boundless urge to experiment, and used not only line etching, but also the drypoint, aquatint, and roulette techniques to achieve surprising and often unique prints.
Félix Hilaire Buhot, Funeral Procession on the Boulevard de Clichy (Convoi funèbre au Boulevard de Clichy), 1887
Further reading
- Gabriel P. Weisberg, The Etching Renaissance in France: 1850-1880, exh. cat., Salt Lake City 1971
- Alison Mc Queen, The Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt: Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth-Century France, Amsterdam 2004
- Ad Stijnman, Engraving and Etching 1400–2000: A History of the Development of Manual Intaglio Printmaking Processes, Houten 2012