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Arts & Entertainment

Huntington Highlight: Art Out of the Shadows

A new exhibit in the Huntington Art Gallery sheds light on one of the most popular mediums of 18th-century British art—the mezzotint.

Back in my college days, I had the pleasure of taking a beginning printmaking class, which included instruction in the art of mezzotint. Of all the various printing processes I tried throughout the course, this was the one I enjoyed most, so when I heard about the new exhibit “Out of the Shadows: Joshua Reynolds’ Celebrity Portraiture and the Market for Mezzotints in 18th-Century Britain”, I was excited at the opportunity to see some quality examples of the method.

The exhibit opened July 2 at and features 13 prints made after portraits by Joshua Reynolds, a well-known painter and leading portraitist of his day. Located in the Works on Paper room on the second floor of the Huntington Art Gallery, “Out of the Shadows” gives a glimpse of what The Huntington’s Web site calls “[o]ne of the most innovative and popular mediums of the great age of 18th-century British art.”

Reynolds, who also became the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts, worked closely with many engravers to translate his paintings into prints that satisfied the demands of an increasingly affluent middle class whose particular interest in theater and celebrity generated a market for images of important stage and society personalities.

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As I entered the Works on Paper room, I was immediately amazed—the first print, “Lord Amherst” (1766) by James Watson, with its intricate details and subtle gradations of contrast, is a wonderful example of the rich textural and tonal possibilities afforded by the medium.

Then there’s the image of “Mrs. Blake as Juno” (1771) by John Dixon. From the realistically rendered feathers on the peacock’s tail to the variations of light and shadow in the billowing clouds and the folds of Mrs. Blake’s robe, the engraver proves his exceptional control over the medium.

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In order to appreciate the skill involved in creating these and the other works in the exhibit, it’s helpful to know a bit about the process of mezzotint. The artist begins with a blank metal plate (usually copper). Using a specialized tool with a serrated edge called a rocker, the artist scores the plate, roughening the entire surface so it will be able to hold onto the ink. Once this is done, the artist uses a burnisher to create the image by smoothing out selected areas. The smoother an area, the less ink it will hold; a completely smoothed section will print as “white.” In this way the artist works from dark to light, varying the amount of burnishing to achieve different degrees of tone. In fact, the term "mezzotint" comes from the Italian mezzo (half) and tinta (tone), or halftones. It is precisely the ability to create these nuances of tone that sets mezzotint apart from other print processes. Rather than being formed by lines, as in, say, an etching, the image emerges, quite literally, “out of the shadows”. When the image is complete, the artist applies ink to the whole plate, then wipes it (carefully) off of the burnished areas and transfers the image to paper through a press.

Melinda McCurdy, The Huntington's Associate Curator of European Art, said, "It was the first printing method that was able to mimic the lights and darks of paintings." She went on to explain that the big prints could be fairly expensive, yet they were still more affordable than an original oil painting; hence their popularity with members of Britain's middle class.

Aside from its potential for depth of expression and textural refinement, an attractive feature of mezzotint is that it easily allows for different versions of the same image, as the “Four Portraits of Miss Kemble” (1784) by John Jones attest. McCurdy said it was quite common to re-work an image that was much in demand, which a portrait of Miss Kemble (a famous actress of the time) would have been. The same plate can be used to produce images that vary according to color and tone, and engravers banked on the fact that collectors would want to own an example of each state of an image. 

Mezzotints were thus embraced by painters like Reynolds as a way of reaching a wider audience with their work and thus increasing their reputations—and by engravers as a great way to make more money (a mezzotint could produce a hundred or so prints of the same image). "Out of the Shadows" is a small but worthwhile exhibit highlighting the wonderful qualities that led to this unique method's extraordinary popularity in Britain during the 18th century.

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