The Blacksmith Shop from 1771 is based on Joseph Wright of Derby’s painting of the same subject. Richard Earlom was one English printmaker who had a successful career making mezzotint reproductions of oil paintings. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, England had earned the reputation as a prolific center for mezzotint production. During successive decades, native English artists learned from their Dutch contemporaries about how to make mezzotints and several technical manuals on the subject were also published locally. Artists who were adept at drawing, but not necessarily trained to engrave plates, found etching to be a suitable medium to make prints, since realizing a design in the ground with a needle was akin to drawing with a pen on paper.Īlthough mezzotint originated in Amsterdam during the second quarter of the seventeenth century, it found particular appeal in eighteenth-century London, so much so that the medium was even nicknamed “the English manner.” When the Dutch-born sovereign William III became King of England in the late 1600s, numerous printmakers from the northern provinces of the Netherlands relocated to London in hopes of achieving royal patronage. Whereas engraving takes considerable manual labor because the printmaker has to carve into the metal plate, in the etching process, the acid does all of that work, and so it was considered an easier alternative to engraving. Once the plate is taken out of the bath and the ground is removed, the incised matrix is ready to be inked and printed in the same way as an engraving. The acid bites into the exposed metal, creating linear grooves. ![]() ![]() After the design is complete, the plate is submerged into an acid bath and a chemical reaction takes place. With a stylus or needle an artist draws a design into the ground, removing some of the coating each time a mark is made. To etch an iron or copper printing plate, an acid-resistant substance (usually a varnish or wax) called a ground is applied to its surface.
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