Although, basically, the Impressionists were concerned with the creation of light through colour, several artists identified with them made major contributions to printmaking. Of these, Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas are the most important. Both were superb draftsmen, and, in spite of their association with an avant-garde movement, their roots were firmly planted in traditional art. Manet made a few fine etchings, but his best and most personal works are lithographs, in which his swift but astonishingly precise drawing found its proper medium. Degas’s drawings of horses and ballet dancers are miracles of observation and precision—as are his etchings and lithographs. Degas also made a series of monoprints, including a group of remarkably abstract landscapes. The grand old man of the Impressionists, Camille Pissarro, made 194 prints, both etchings and lithographs. His fine graphic work is representative of forceful Impressionist drawing.
Woman Reading, monotype by Edgar Degas, c. 1885; in the Rosenwald Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 38 × 27.7 cm.Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Rosenwald Collection, 1950.16.292
Mahana Atua (The Day of God), woodcut in black heightened with watercolour on Japan paper, by Paul Gauguin, 1894–95. 18.4 × 20.2 cm.Clarence Buckingham Collection, 1948.267/Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago
The discovery of Japanese colour woodcuts was a revelation that profoundly influenced European art. Until the middle of the 19th century, Japanese printmaking was unknown to the West. As trade relations opened up with Japan, some colour prints came into the hands of young Parisian artists, who responded to the exotic images with great enthusiasm. The simple, abstract handling of colour and design represented a totally new visual experience. Paul Gauguin was one who profited greatly from their influence, which is perhaps more evident in his paintings than in his prints. Following centuries in which the woodcut was used for reproduction, Gauguin’s powerful, boldly cut woodblocks were like a breath of fresh air. In the prints of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Japanese influence is more immediate. Although most of his prints were lithographs, the simple bold design, the flat, decorative colour, and the startling disposition of blacks clearly show this influence, which he assimilated and turned into a thoroughly personal expression. A very strong Japanese influence can be seen also in the brilliant colour aquatints of the American-born Impressionist Mary Cassatt.
The giant of Postimpressionism, Paul Cézanne, made three etchings and three lithographs. His immense influence on modern art makes his colour lithograph The Bathers (c. 1900) an important graphic document. The Dutch artist Johan Barthold Jongkind, who lived in France, created sensitive landscapes and marine etchings that were a transition between the Barbizon school and Impressionism. Japan
The most famous Japanese master of woodcut, Hokusai, was born near Edo (Tokyo). From age 15, when he became an apprentice, until his death in 1849 at 89, he produced an unending stream of masterpieces—about 35,000 drawings and prints, a staggering figure even considering his long life. He also wrote books and poems. There are few masters in the history of art whose work is comparable to Hokusai’s in variety and depth. His interests encompassed history and mythology, popular customs, animal life, and landscape. His output was so enormous and the quality of his work so high that it is difficult to single out individual pieces. The Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (c. 1826–33) is probably his most popular set of prints. The 15 volumes of the Hokusai manga (“Hokusai’s Sketches”), published between 1814 and 1878, are fascinating work, for in these rather informal woodcuts the artist gives a comprehensive record of Japanese life and culture. Of all the Japanese masters, the universal genius of Hokusai had the greatest impact on European art.
The Breaking Wave off Kanagawa, woodblock colour print by Hokusai, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, 1826–33.SuperStock
The last master printmaker of Japan was Hiroshige, whose death in 1858 ends the remarkable dynasty of artists that had begun two centuries earlier. Hiroshige was a great landscape painter and, with Hokusai, the first to capture the European imagination. He was also a versatile artist, famous in Europe as a painter at a time when in Japan he was known mainly as a poet. His greatest period of landscape-painting activity was from 1830 to about 1844. During that time he embarked on a sketching journey (1832), and these sketches formed the basis of Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, his most important series of landscapes.
Hiroshige: Fifty-three Stations of the TōkaidōJapan Bridge, colour woodblock print by Andō Hiroshige, from the series Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, 1833–34.Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Maurice H. Cottle, 79.253.10
Like the work of the Impressionists in Western art history, Hiroshige’s prints are spontaneous both in style and in atmosphere, capturing the essence of the fleeting moments of nature. Other countries
In Germany, Max Liebermann made a few etchings of real individuality, but the most important German achievement of the period was the invention of lithography (c. 1796) by Aloys Senefelder, who was not an artist. Although the Belgian artist Félicien Rops lived outside France, he was strongly influenced by the school of Paris. His witty, erotic etchings represent a minor but personal expression of the period. In Sweden, the enormously successful Anders Zorn made etchings and drypoints with great virtuosity.
Whistler, James McNeilclass="underline" The KitchenThe Kitchen, etching by James McNeill Whistler, 1885.Pennell Fund/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital. id. cph 3b49330)
The Limehouse, lithotint by James McNeill Whistler, c. 1887. 17.5 × 26.6 cm.Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, bequest of Staunton B. PeckEnglish printmaking of the 19th century centred around two great personalities, Sir Francis Seymour Haden and his brother-in-law, James McNeill Whistler. Haden was a Victorian country gentleman, a surgeon who loved and collected etchings. He started to make prints in his leisure time—and ultimately produced over 200 plates. His etchings, sensitively observed documentations of his environment, represent a significant contribution to the English landscape tradition. Whistler was born in America and attended West Point for a period; but he left to study art in Paris, where he met many of the leading artists, including Degas. In 1859 he went to London, where he resided until his death. Whistler was an immensely gifted, complex personality. Simultaneously with his fashionable portraiture, he did a great deal of experimentation; in the nearly abstract paintings and prints that he called Nocturnes (begun in 1866), for example, he was far ahead of his time. His graphic oeuvre, 442 etchings and drypoints and 150 lithographs, had great impact on modern printmaking. The freedom and painterliness of Whistler’s etchings were particularly significant because they came to act as a strong liberating influence.