Prints

Printmaking is a technique that is used to make multiple copies of an image. Potato prints are a good way of understanding the process. A picture or pattern is cut into the potato and then the surface of the potato is covered with ink and the potato is pressed on to paper to produce a reverse image. The potato can be used again and again. Each print will be the same, except that the amount of ink used on the potato will vary and determine how dark the print will be.

Prints were a useful way to reproduce commercial images and popular paintings for a mass audience. Prints could be found in newspapers, advertisements, illustrated books and framed as pictures for the home. They were a very important way to spread information before photography and computer graphics were invented.
Printmaking began as a linear technique, but developed tonal effects, so that prints could resemble paintings. However, traditionally printmaking was considered inferior to painting. It was not considered to be a creative art form because it was tied up with industry and reproduction.

Whistler’s prints were different. They were original works of art in themselves, and not reproductions. Whistler involved himself in the actual process of printing, controlling the type of paper and the colour and amount of ink used, so that each print was different and an individual work of art in its own right. In fact, printmaking was just as important to Whistler as painting, and he approached it in a very similar way, thinking about colour, tone, line, patterning and composition.

Printmaking would have been attractive to Whistler precisely because it was considered a low art form. Whistler liked to challenge established ideas about what was high art. It was for this reason that he frequently came to blows with art critics. Ironically, following Whistler’s clash with the art critic John Ruskin, the libel trial in 1878 and Whistler’s bankruptcy in 1879, Whistler went to Venice to make a series of etchings, and also turned again to lithography, a technique associated more than any other with commerce.
The main printing techniques Whistler used were:

etching: a method of printmaking using a copper plate covered in a wax-like coating which resists acid. Using a needle, the artist scrapes away lines in the varnish to create a picture. Once the design is completed, the plate is placed in an acid bath. The acid eats into the copper plate where the coating has been removed by the artist, creating grooves. The plate is then covered in ink and wiped clean. The ink remains in the grooves, and a print can be made by passing the plate with a sheet of paper over the top through a rolling press.

drypoint: a method of printmaking by which the artist scratches directly onto the surface of a copper plate with a steel point or needle. The copper that is thrown up when the lines are made is called the burr. Both the groove of the line and the burr trap ink during printing. The burr creates a delicate shadowy effect, but it is fragile and only a few prints can be made before it wears down. This technique is sometimes used to enhance or rework an etching. It is not a direct and simple technical process and is good for making images quickly.

lithography: this process, which literally means “drawing on stone”, involves an artist drawing with a greasy crayon on the surface of a specially treated stone. The stone is then inked with a roller. The ink clings to the greasy design but is repelled from the rest of the stone. An image can then be printed on to paper.
lithotint: a kind of lithography that produces the effect of a watercolour, the artist drawing with a diluted wash of greasy paint on to the lithostone.
Whistler printed limited editions of his etchings and lithographs for sale to art dealers and collectors. By producing a small number of his prints, he kept the prices high. When he had finished printing, he cancelled the plate or stone by scoring or marking the surface, so that no more prints could be made.