The origin of printmaking - (2) The origin of printmaking in Europe (2)

5. Print sales and artists’ participation

Due to the continuous development and prosperity of urban handicraft industry and commercial economy, the public’s demand for prints is increasing day by day. There are all kinds of beautiful intaglio maps, portraits of famous people, religious statues, newly discovered strange scenery, political propaganda and book illustrations, etc. The variety is almost astonishing. In order to meet the needs of society, various publishing and sales companies came into being, and various sales networks spread all over Europe. The original prints of artists, especially those who have passed away, have become valuable assets for art dealers and publishers to make profits. After they purchased the original copy, they had regular craftsmen copy it in large quantities, and the number of prints reached the highest point of sales. In order to meet unlimited sales, after the original printing is damaged, craftsmen are asked to engrave and process it, and the printing is repeated until the plate is scrapped. The result is often far from the original.

This kind of sales of prints solely for profit not only affects the reputation of prints among the public, but also seriously damages the rights and interests of artists. As early as the end of the 15th century, in order to protect his works from being copied, Dürer not only engraved the identification mark "AD" on the works to symbolize his original works, but also made a special trip to Florence, Italy, to learn from Raimondi, a famous copper engraver at the time. M. Rairnondi) protested to prevent the illegal reproduction of his works. William Hogarth (1697-1764) was a famous British painter in the 18th century. His spicy and stylish "The Experience of a Prostitute" (Fig. 48) was the first set of six oil paintings. He only got a little over 34 Remuneration in guinea (old British gold coin). But before these paintings were copied into copper engravings and distributed in large quantities by publishers, more than 1,200 people came to order this set of guinea etchings. Hogarth's works were so popular that the painter had to appeal to Congress to enact a copyright law to protect the artist's copyright. To this end, Britain established the Copyright Act in 1753.

The laws of commodity economy have enabled painters to see that making a print is more profitable than painting an oil painting. Therefore, almost most painters of that era had made or commissioned copper engravers to make copper engravings on their behalf. In addition to some of the masters mentioned above, there are also the Italian Renaissance masters Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Raffaello Sanzio (1485-1520), and the Dutch rural painter Brueghe. Bruegel. 1525-1569); French painter Callot (1592-1645); Belgian Rubens (1577-1640); Tiepolo (1696-1696), the last representative of the old Venetian school 1770); the famous French painters Watteau (1634-1720), Boucher (1903-1770) and Chardin (1699-1770); the Spanish giant Goya (1746-1828), British W. Blake (William Blake, 1757-1827) and so on. The printmaking market is like a reliable link that closely connects painters with the public. It is also like a lubricant that promotes a virtuous cycle of copperplate engravings to achieve perfection day by day.

Since the rise of copperplate art in the mid-fifteenth century, Hopfer's first etched copperplate was produced in 1513; in the early seventeenth century, Siengen (1609-1682) of the Netherlands created "beautiful Mezzotint"; in the 18th century, the French engraver Belgin Demarteau invented the hob dot engraving method (Roulette); in about 1760, Prince of France invented the aquatint method ; In the late eighteenth century, French copperplate workshops successively introduced the soft ground etching method (Soft Ground) and the lift ground etching method (Lift ground), or Sugar aquatint (Sugar aquatint). At this point, modern copperplate technology has been formed. On the contrary, during the two to three hundred years when copper engravings developed and flourished, wood engravings only kept company with books, gradually declined, and were finally on the verge of being eliminated.

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6. The revival of woodblock prints

In the early eighteenth century, copperplate was introduced to Britain by Hogarth. Unlike continental Europe, British woodblock prints began to decline. At this time, many engravers with superb skills had to quit copying the works of famous artists such as Veronese, Tintoretto and Titian due to being squeezed out by copper engravings, and were forced to engage in the production of wallpaper. At the end of the 18th century (1775), in order to promote woodblock printing, the government established a special award to reward the winners of woodblock prints. The first award-winning work was the wooden mouth of the British printmaker Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) Woodcut "Hound" (Fig. 53 - 55) and other prints. He invented wood engraving and high-quality alloy carving knives, abandoned the original wooden boards and crude tools, and created a woodblock shading method of carving white lines (yin lines), which is as delicate and realistic as copper engravings. Thanks to Buick's innovations, ancient woodblock prints were brought back to life. Unlike copper engravings, wood engravings can combine picture plates and text plates and print them on a machine at the same time. Therefore, wood engravings were quickly promoted and used in a large number of newspapers and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic, throughout the Victorian era (1819 - 1901), and became a symbol of Vietnam. More and more people are reading and appreciating it.

All Victorian artists and their disciples, especially in the 1860s, drafted drawings directly on woodblocks for engravers' engravings. For example, a bland poetry collection, "Roadside Poems," contains many small, poetic woodcuts, all drawn by the painters North, Pinwell, and Walker. Carved by the highly skilled engravers Dalziell brothers. Their unparalleled carving skills have achieved a level of exquisiteness unimaginable in previous wood carvings. After the rise of wood engraving in England, it soon spread to Europe and the United States, and even surpassed the momentum of copper engraving. In the second half of the 19th century, French painter Paul Gustave Dore (1832-1883) pushed wood engraving to its peak. At that time, his woodcuts were called "Duré style" (Figures 58 and 59) (the artist drafted the woodblock with ink directly, and then his engravers carefully carved it), and were deeply loved by the public. favor. People loved it for its unambiguous precision, while deriding copperplate engravings for being simple, sketch-like, and too hazy. However, the potential force that threatened both was the emerging technology of photography.

7. The threat of photography

In 1826, the French lithographer Niépce (Nicephore Niepce, 1765 - 1833) The earliest photograph taken - "Courtyard outside the Window" and Daguerre's (Deguerre, 1787-1851) daguerreotype was published in Paris in 1839. More than ten years later, In the 1960s, photoengraving was introduced; forty years later (1880), photoengraving entered the printing industry. At this point, it increasingly threatened the printmaking industry that painters and engravers had previously engaged in. The French painter Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) once lamented, "Painting is finished from now on", which was circulated as a wise saying (Figure 60). However, the ones who were really panicked were the portrait painters and printmakers, especially the copperplate painters. Large slogans such as "The copperplate painter hanged himself" and "Copperprints, go to hell!" were common in comics at the time. Lithographs (commonly known as "lithographs") were invented at the end of the 18th century and became popular in the mid-19th century. Due to the challenges of photography, copper engravings quickly lost their former glory. Furthermore, at this time, public interest increasingly focused on prints made directly by artists rather than reproductions by craftsmen. In order to avoid the fatigue of engraving, painters focused on making lithographs themselves. The most representative painters here are: Spanish Goya (1746-1828), French Daumier (1808-1879) and Lautrec (1846-1901), who are engaged in a large number of paintings. Creation of political caricatures, advertising posters, etc. to meet popular demand. Under the threat of photography, some far-sighted artists realized that printmaking as a means of replicating paintings should come to an end. In order to survive, they began to look for new ways out. In order to get rid of the subordinate position of printmaking in printing, they strongly advocated hand-made and rough and simple ancient styles, making printmaking a truly original type of painting.

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