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What
is a mezzotint?
Mezzotint is a type
of engraving, though it differs from other engraving techniques common
in the eighteenth-century where the lines and shadings of an image were
inscribed into the hard surface of a metal plate. The "mezzotinto-scraper,"
as William Gilpin calls the engraver in his 1768 "Essay on Prints,"
works from a prepared plate uniformly roughed over or softened by a burring
tool. Thus, Gilpin writes, "Mezzotinto is very different from either
engraving or etching. In these, you make the shades; in mezzotinto the
lights" (235) Ellen D'Oench distinguishes engraving, etching, and
mezzotint processes in more detail:
"To engrave, the artist draws his image by pushing his graving tool,
or burin, along the surface of a copper plate, leaving a V-shaped incision.
The plate is then inked and wiped so that the ink remains only in the
lines. When paper is pressed onto its surface, the plate yields up the
inked image in the pattern of lines originally drawn by the artist. Etching
allows the artist to draw with less effort. The artist first coats his
plate with an acid resistent gum or resin ground. He draws through this
more agreeable surface with his needle, exposing the copper underneath.
The plate is then bathed in acid which eats down through the exposed lines
but leaves the rest of the plate untouched. When the ground is removed,
the result is a plate bitten with slightly undercut lines. It is then
printed in the same manner as the engraving. . . . While the artist could
sometimes achieve a tone by leaving a thin wash of ink on portions of
his plate, the unsual method of modeling forms or creating shadows was
by careful and time-consuming cross-hatching. It was difficult to recreate
the illusion of paint with these techniques." (Darkness into Light.
. ., p. 6)
It is precisely their proximity to "the illusion of paint" that
Gilpin credits to the finest productions of his contemporary "mezzotinto-scapers."
Gilpin writes,
"The characteristic
of mezzotinto is softness, which adapts it chiefly to portrait, which
adapts it to chiefly to portrait, or history, with a few figures, and
these not too small. Nothing, except paint, can express flesh more naturally,
or the flowing of hair, or the folds of drapery, or the catching lights
of armour. In engraving and etching we must get over the prejudices of
crossed lines, which exist on no natural bodies: but mezzotinto gives
us the strongest representation of a surface." (236)
D'Oench describes how this is achieved, echoing Gilpin's "in mezzotinto
[you make] the lights."
"In the mezzotint process, the artists works from dark to light.
First the plate is thoroughly roughened all over its surface, raising
a prickly copper burr above its original plane. If the plate were to be
printed at this stage, its thick and rug-like pile,capable of holding
a quantity of ink, would produce a right and uniform black impression.
The artist draws his image on the ground with chalk (or occasionallyetches
it), then uses a scraper, shaped like a lancet and sharpened on both sides,
to cut away the "pile." As if hollowing out his shapes, he reduces
the ground in areas where he wishes to model more light. A blunt burnishing
tool helps him to cut below the surface of the plate to create the whitest
highlights." (6)
When the plate is inked and wiped, the burred "ground" with
the deepest grooves will produce blacks with tonal shading where the burrs
have been partially scraped away. The result is "the representation
of a surface," to use Gilpin's phrase, that captures a sense of modeling
and volume through a tonal range of grays that escapes the engraving or
etching. As an example, numerous portraits of prominent eighteenth century
figures were reproduced as line engravings and mezzotints. Given two like
images of equally high quality, on comparison by a modern viewer, the
mezzotint will read rather like a photograph whereas the engraving, even
with careful shading, will remain relatively flat.
For all its superior value for the finest reproduction of painting, the
limitation of the mezzotint as a medium for popular art was the relative
brevity of a plate's capacity to produce prints of the highest quality.
Since the highest relief on the plate will be what remains of the initial
"rug-like pile," these areas--fragile compared to the smooth
metal surface of the engraving or etching-- will make first contact the
paper and be under the greatest pressure when printed. This burred surface
will break down in the process, though commentators differ on how soon
this will occur. Ellen D'Oench writes, "only the first fifteen to
twenty impressions retain their velvety deep blacks" (6). Therle
Hughes estimates around forty prints of the best grade and another hundred
of diminishing quality. (115) From his perspective within the print market
of the late eighteenth-century, William Gilpin is more expansive.
"You cannot well cast off more than a hundred good impressions from
a mezzotinto plate. The rubbing of the hand soon wears it smooth. And
yet by constantly repairing it, it may be made to give four or five hundred
with tolerable strength. The first impressions are not always the best.
They are too black and harsh. You will commonly have the best impressions
from the fortieth to the sixtieth; the harsh edges will be softened down;
and yet there will be spirit and strength enough."(236)
[For comparison, Gilpin estimates seven to eight hundred "good impressions"
from a line engraving and two to three hundred for etching.] Even allowing
Gilpin's most generous estimate, an edition of five hundred, a popular
print might be soon be exhausted given the flourishing market and distribution
throughout the kingdom, and in some cases, British America. One could,
of course, re-engrave the image, and this response to a lively market
may account for some of the instances of re-issue and piracy of selected
images. But in a burgeoning print market, the small edition would prove
a fatal shortcoming for attempting such a popular application of the mezzotint
process. In addition, the process did not lend itself, like line engraving,
to integration with other print media in the publication of newspapers,
books, and magazines. When Gillray, Rowlandson, and Cruikshank emerge
as prominent caricaturists in the mid-1780s, they would use line engraving
and etching, and by the turn of century the droll would virtually disappear.
The mezzotint would continue to be used to reproduce paintings, but its
brief history as medium for popular art may be an interesting early instance
of the misapplication of a technology, an experiment that failed due to
its own limitations, even though it yielded some of the sharpest caricatures
of London street life and culture during the few decades in which it flourished.
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