printmaking Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proces ...

, surface tone, or surface-tone, is produced by deliberately or accidentally not wiping all the ink off the surface of the printing plate, so that parts of the image have a light tone from the film of ink left. Tone in printmaking meaning areas of continuous colour, as opposed to the linear marks made by an engraved or drawn line. The technique can be used with all the intaglio printmaking techniques, of which the most important are

engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design on a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a Burin (engraving), burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or Glass engraving, glass ar ...

etching Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other type ...

drypoint Drypoint is a printmaking technique of the intaglio (printmaking), intaglio family, in which an image is incised into a plate (or "matrix") with a hard-pointed "needle" of sharp metal or diamond point. In principle, the method is practically iden ...

mezzotint Mezzotint is a monochrome printmaking process of the intaglio (printmaking), intaglio family. It was the first printing process that yielded half-tones without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple. Mezzo ...

and

aquatint Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching that produces areas of tone rather than lines. For this reason it has mostly been used in conjunction with etching, to give both lines and shaded tone. It has also been used ...

. It requires individual attention on the press before each impression is printed, and is mostly used by artists who print their own plates, such as

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (; ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), mononymously known as Rembrandt was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and Drawing, draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in ...

, "the first master of this art", who made great use of it. Before the invention of tonal intaglio techniques such as

and

surface tone was really the only way to add tonal effects, but the technique sometimes continued to be used with the new tonal techniques, especially in the

etching revival The etching revival was the re-emergence and invigoration of etching as an original form of printmaking during the period approximately from 1850 to 1930. The main centres were France, Britain and the United States, but other countries, such as t ...

than began around 1850, the "most visible characteristic of

hich Ij () is a village in Golabar Rural District of the Central District in Ijrud County, Zanjan province, Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq ...

.. was an obsession with surface tone". This was perhaps under the influence of Rembrandt, whose reputation had by this point reached its full height. According to

Antony Griffiths Antony Vaughan Griffiths, (born 28 July 1951) is a British museum curator and art historian, specialising in prints and drawings. From 1991 to 2011, he served as Keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum. He was Slade Pro ...

and others, the technique should be distinguished from accidental plate tone caused by slight imperfections or scratches in a new copper printing plate, which hold the ink and show in the print. These generally disappear after a few impressions are printed, and are taken as a sign that an impression is a very early one. However some scholars use the terms as synonyms. Especially in the case of Rembrandt, the degree of surface tone used can vary greatly between impressions, and it is often only discussed in works such as catalogues which cover specific impressions, and ignored in those discussing a print in a general way, as other impressions may lack it. Especially if heavy, it also tends to reproduce badly in book illustrations, smothering detail, and is often avoided for that reason. A note at the start of the most widely available book reproducing all Rembrandt's prints explains that, where possible, impressions without surface tone were selected for this reason.

Technique

The intaglio printmaking techniques all print images from ink held in the lines or other recesses made by the artist in the printing plate. For each impression, ink is spread over the whole plate, worked well in, and then the flat surface is normally wiped carefully clean to remove all ink except that in the recesses, using a form of

squeegee A squeegee is a tool with a flat, smooth rubber blade, used to remove or control the flow of liquid on a flat surface. It is used for cleaning and in printing. The earliest written references to squeegees date from the mid-18th century and conc ...

. The print is then run through a high-pressure press with a piece of slightly damp paper, forcing the soft paper down into the recesses to collect the ink there. To create surface tone, parts of the image are selectively not fully cleaned, leaving a thin film of ink on the surface of the plate, which prints as a "pale and attractive bloom". In practice the plate was perhaps often fully cleaned, and then a cloth dirty with ink used to re-add the film. Sources often distinguish degrees of tone, as "heavy" or "light". Surface tone could also occur by accident, "due to the incompetence of the printer". ''Retroussage'', sometimes "dragging out", was a related technique involving working along the lines in an inked and wiped plate with a piece of

muslin Muslin () is a cotton fabric of plain weave. It is made in a wide range of weights from delicate sheers to coarse sheeting. It is commonly believed that it gets its name from the city of Mosul, Iraq. Muslin was produced in different regions o ...

to pull out a little of the ink, so giving a softer or blurry effect to the sides of the line. The effect could be similar to the short-lived "burr" on a drypoint.

Leading exponents

The technique became very widely used, but a few important artists who made heavy use of it should be mentioned.

Hercules Seghers Hercules Pieterszoon Seghers or Segers ( 1589 – 1638) was a Dutch painter and printmaker of the Dutch Golden Age. Segers is in fact the more common form in contemporary documents, and was used by the painter himself (modern use is about equall ...

was a highly experimental printmaker in many respects. He was not very famous in his lifetime, but was keenly collected by Rembrandt, who was "probably inspired" to use surface tone by his example. Rembrandt used it in his late prints, from about 1647 onwards, and only in some impressions. It was one of a number of ways, notably including printing on different papers, and

vellum Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. It is often distinguished from parchment, either by being made from calfskin (rather than the skin of other animals), or simply by being of a higher quality. Vellu ...

, and using the burr from drypoint, that he used to vary the appearance of his etchings. In several impressions of his ''Flight into Egypt: A Night Piece'' (B. 53) surface tone covers most of the plate.

Francisco Goya Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 1746 – 16 April 1828) was a Spanish Romanticism, romantic painter and Printmaking, printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Hi ...

's mature prints were mostly in the tonal technique of

, in which he became very skilled in producing dramatic contrasts, fully satisfying his needs for tonal effects. Reflecting the mid-19th century taste for a "rich overall tone", when his series ''

The Disasters of War ''The Disasters of War'' () is a series of 8280 prints in the first published edition (1863), for which the last two plates were not available. See "Execution". prints created between 1810 and 1820 by the Spanish painter and printmaker Franc ...

'' (1810–20) was given its first real edition in 1863 by the

Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (RABASF; ), located on the Calle de Alcalá in the centre of Madrid, currently functions as a museum and gallery. A public law corporation, it is integrated together with other Spanish royal aca ...

, they made the "disastrous" choice to make considerable use of surface tone, which is not seen in the few early impressions made by Goya himself. Instead of the "luminosity and delicacy" of these, the later editions "provide a dulled and distorted reflection of the artist's intentions", according to Juliet Wilson Bareau.

James Whistler James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter in oils and watercolor, and printmaker, active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral a ...

was heavily influenced as a printmaker by Rembrandt, and in his "middle period" made great use of surface tone, before reducing it in his later work.Hardie, 20; Von Sonnenburg, 213 File:B204 Rembrandt.jpg,

, ''Jupiter and Antiope, the smaller plate'', etching, c. 1631 File:Félix Bracquemond, La Lac du Bois de Boulogne - The Metropolitan Museum of Art.jpg,

Félix Bracquemond Félix Henri Bracquemond (; 22 May 1833 – 29 October 1914) was a French painter, etcher, and printmaker. He played a key role in the revival of printmaking, encouraging artists such as Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro to use ...

, ''La Lac du

Bois de Boulogne The Bois de Boulogne (, "Boulogne woodland") is a large public park that is the western half of the 16th arrondissement of Paris, near the suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt and Neuilly-sur-Seine. The land was ceded to the city of Paris by the Em ...

'', 1858 File:Un jour de fête au quartier St. André à Anvers (BM 1888,0612.161).jpg, Edgar Alfred Baes, ''Un jour de fête au quartier St. André à Anvers'', drypoint, 1873

Notes

References

*Filedt Kok, Jan Piet, ''Rembrandt, etchings & drawings in the Rembrandt House: A catalogue'', 1972, Rembrandt House / Gary Schwartz, * Gascoigne, Bamber. ''How to Identify Prints: A Complete Guide to Manual and Mechanical Processes from Woodcut to Inkjet'', 1986 (2nd Edition, 2004), Thames & Hudson, with sections not page-numbers * Griffiths, Anthony, ''Prints and Printmaking'', British Museum Press (in UK), 2nd edn, 1996 *Hardie, Martin, ''The British School of Etching'' 1921, The Print Collectors Club (London)
online text
*Hinterding, Eric, Luijten, Ger, Royalton-Kisch, Martin, ''Rembrandt the Printmaker'', 2000, British Museum Press/Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, *Orenstein, Nadine. “Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669): Prints.”, 2004, In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

*Schwartz, Gary, ''The Complete Etchings of Rembrandt'', 1994, Dover, *Von Sonnenburg, Hubertus, ''Rembrandt/not Rembrandt in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Paintings, drawings, and prints: art-historical perspectives'', Volumes 1–2, 219 (see also p. 204), 1995, , 9780870997549
google books
* White, Christopher, ''The Late Etchings of Rembrandt'', 1969, British Museum/Lund Humphries, London * Wilson Bareau, Juliet, ''Goya's Prints, The

Tomás Harris Tomás "Tommy" Joseph Harris (10 April 1908 – 27 January 1964) was a British art dealer and artist, who also served as an MI5 intelligence officer during World War II. As a Spanish-speaker, he worked with Juan Pujol García, a very im ...

Collection in the British Museum'', 1981, British Museum Publications, ISBN {{ISBN, 0714107891 Printmaking Rembrandt