A Revival for the Ages

The Delaware Art Museum presents a stellar exhibition, tracking the history of etching from Europe to the United States

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Joseph Pennell (1857-1926), A Watergate in Venice, 1883. Etching, plate: 7% x 11½ in. sheet: 12%/16 x 16% in. Delaware Art Museum, Gift of Helen Farr Sloan, 1978.

Stemming from the Delaware Art Museum's robust collection, comes the significant exhibition Inked Impressions: Etchings in the Age of Whistler, featuring 46 objects. Beginning in the mid-19th century, the movement to promote and professionalize etching made its way from France to Britain, and eventually the United States—pioneered by Frances Seymour Haden (1818-1910) and James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), one of the most innovate printmakers of his era and an iconic American painter.

"In Paris, Haden and Whistler were introduced to the method of 'artistic printing' by master printer Auguste Delâtre," explains Sophie Lynford, the museum's Annette Woolard-Provine curator of the Bancroft Collection. "Artistic printing involved leaving a thin film of ink, known as plate tone, on the surface of the etched plate. The plate tone was then wiped carefully to create areas of light and shadow. Inspired by Rembrandt's techniques, Delâtre taught Haden and Whistler how to vary the color of the ink and use different types of paper to enhance the mood of a print or change its tone from warm to cool.