etching

etching. A printmaking method in which the design is bitten into the plate with acid; the term is also applied to the print so produced. Although there are alternative ways of carrying out some of the processes involved, the procedure is essentially as follows. A plate of polished metal—usually copper—is coated with a substance that will resist the action of acid. This ‘etching ground’ is typically made of beeswax, bitumen, and resin; often it is darkened by coating it with soot from a smoking flame so that the lines drawn on it can be more easily seen. These lines are made with a steel etching needle, which cuts through the ground and exposes the bright metal beneath. After covering the back and edges of the plate with an acid-resisting varnish, the etcher immerses it in a bath of dilute acid, which bites into the metal wherever the ground has been pierced by the needle. The depth to which the lines are bitten (and hence the darkness with which they will print) depends on how long the plate is immersed in the acid, and it is possible to achieve subtle variations of tone by ‘stopping out’ part of the design (covering it with the protective varnish) while other parts are bitten more deeply. This process of graduated biting may be repeated any number of times. Finally, when all is bitten as required, the ground is cleaned off and the plate is inked and printed. Etching is frequently combined with other processes, particularly drypoint; by this means additional work may be done on the plate after proofing without re-laying the ground, and the drypoint lines also provide a convenient method of adding strong black accents to the design.

Etching is a much more spontaneous technique than line engraving, as it is possible to draw on the waxy ground with virtually the same fluency as with pen or pencil. It is even possible to carry a grounded etching plate like a sketchbook to be used as the occasion demands; it seems that Rembrandt may sometimes have worked in such a way, for the picture dealer Edmé Gersaint (Watteau's friend) recorded that he made his famous etching ‘Six's Bridge’ (1645) ‘against time for a wager at the country house of a friend, Jan Six, while the servant was fetching the mustard, that had been forgotten for a meal, from the neighbouring village’. Similarly, a quick portrait sketch can be made direct from the sitter, ready for biting and printing when convenient. This would be unthinkable with line engraving, where the laborious action of pushing the burin through the metal is incompatible with drawing from life.

Close examination of the lines themselves sometimes reveals these different methods of working. Engraved lines swell and taper according to the pressure of the engraver's hand and end in a point as the needle comes to the surface. They are hard and true, whereas etched lines, especially if bitten with nitric acid, sometimes have slightly irregular edges. Such differences often make it easy to tell whether a print is an etching or a line engraving, but sometimes it is much more difficult to distinguish between the two processes, especially with examples from the early days of etching, for etching was initially used as a labour-saving method of achieving the effects of line engraving and consequently had to resemble engraving as closely as possible. Moreover, the practice arose, again in order to ease the engraver's labours, of beginning a plate with etching and finishing it by engraving. Thus etching was not at the beginning the free and spontaneous art it later became.

The first etchings belong to the early years of the 16th century (the earliest dated example, of 1513, is by Urs Graf), though the basic principle, that of corroding a design into a metal plate, had been utilized earlier for the decoration of armour. Dürer made a few etchings, of which the best known is The Cannon of 1518. He used iron plates, the biting is strong and rather coarse, and there is no stopping out to vary the tone of the lines. Other northern pioneers were Altdorfer and Lucas van Leyden. In Italy Parmigianino was etching soon after 1520; his prints are attractively luminous and free in drawing, indicating the direction the technique was to take in later years. The greatest of all etchers was Rembrandt, who made a complete break from the tradition of line engraving, drawing freely on the plate with great vigour and power, and often radically transforming his designs as he went along. His early plates are in the medium of etching alone. Later he added drypoint to the etched lines, and finally he came to rely still more on drypoint in plates that are remarkable for their boldness of handling and intensity of feeling.

Several major artists of the 18th century made memorable use of etching, including Canaletto, Piranesi, and Goya (who usually combined it with aquatint), but during the first half of the 19th century the technique was employed mainly for commercial illustration. From the 1860s to the First World War, however, there was a great renewal of interest in it as a medium for original expression, especially in Britain. Whistler and Sickert were leading lights of this movement, which is called the Etching Revival. The technique remains popular, Hockney being a leading contemporary exponent.