Same But Different

sketchy scene of city building facades; wavy lines; darkness at top and bottom of scene

In 1879, James McNeill Whistler was down on his luck. A gallery owner rescued him with a commission to go to Venice to produce a dozen etchings. There, watery reflections of ancient architecture and atmospheric light provided endless inspiration suited to the artist’s loose treatment of form. He fell in love with the city and stayed for more than a year, producing over fifty etchings plus many other works of art. 

Nocturne: Palaces is among the most poetic of his Venetian creations. This is an exceptionally early proof, taken after his first retouching of the plate with his drypoint needle. He printed it himself.  Leaving a carefully modulated veil of ink on the surface of the copper printing plate and printing it on antique paper, he produced magically luminous effects of light.

Whistler called the image a nocturne to emphasize his intention to produce “an artistic arrangement” rather than a topographical depiction. Indeed, scholars have been unable to locate the place of this view, which may have existed primarily in Whistler’s imagination.

Nocturne: Palaces

James McNeill Whistler was down on his luck in 1879 when a sympathetic gallery owner sent him to Venice to make a dozen etchings. Finding that the watery reflections and atmospheric light suited his loose treatment of form, Whistler stayed for more than a year and produced some fifty prints. Nocturne: Palaces is among the most poetic. The term “nocturne” underscored Whistler’s intention to create “artistic arrangements” rather than topographical views. Indeed, scholars have been unable to locate this site, which may have existed primarily in the artist’s imagination.

Whistler liked to fuss with his printing plates. At least six years and ten stages of alteration came between this impression and an earlier proof (Mia 2014.117.3). Perhaps it was his now distant memory of Venice that caused him to mute the light in the present impression. He achieved this softer effect by using a chocolaty brown ink on a copper plate whose drypoint lines had become somewhat worn and by printing on warm-toned Asian paper.

Close drew this larger than life-size portrait of American avant-garde composer Philip Glass directly on a lithographic stone using the impressions of his own fingers that had been "inked" with lithographic tusche, a dense, greasy black liquid normally applied with a brush. As was his practice, Close worked directly from a photograph of his subject, using a grid to systematically arrange the image on the stone. The resulting portrait is both a compelling depiction of his friend Glass at age 44 and a spatial and temporal record of the artist's own "hand."

Phil / Fingerprint

The Exchange Bridge

Saint Bavo, the great church of the town of Haarlem, stands on the horizon at left in this panoramic landscape. The fine country estate, with a tower and gatehouse amid a grove of trees at right, was long thought to belong to a tax receiver who had assisted Rembrandt in building his career; hence the etching came to be known as The Goldweigher's Field. Twentieth-century scholars discovered the country house was in fact Saxenburg, an estate belonging to Christoffel Thijsz., to whom Rembrandt was deeply in debt and behind on his mortgage payments.

The landscape space, with its curving sweep and gentle undulations, is highly original. There are few continuous contours; broken lines, short hatchings, and patches of drypoint burr suggest a space illuminated by diffuse light and dissolved in atmosphere. Rembrandt worked from atop one of the dunes to the west of Haarlem. Close inspection reveals the picturesque sights Rembrandt enjoyed on his walk that day, including the gathering of women spreading cloth to bleach in the sunny fields, and the domed pavilion standing in the middle of a duck pond. One can only wonder about Rembrandt's thoughts as he studied the wealth of the man who could determine his own financial fate.

The Goldweigher's Field

In the eleventh state of this print Meryon removed the flocks of menacing birds and added a number of small balloons.  The change from the previous state is dramatic and the omnious character of the image been transformed to one of lightness and even festivity.  The balloons have enigmatic titles including Vasco da Gama (a famous Portugese navigator), L'Asmodée (the name of a demon in the Book of Tobias who was thought to raise roofs of houses and discover the secrets of the inhabitants), le Protée(Proteus was a Greek sea god who could change his form at wil), and le Saint-Elme (St. Elmo's Fire was an appearance of flame on prominent points of a ship that was taken to be a bad omen by sailors).

In 1653, dust from repairs to his home left Rembrandt unable to paint. He instead poured his energy into making some of his most spectacular prints, including this one. It shows the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate letting the public decide whether to grant the annual Passover pardon to Jesus or the notorious criminal Barabbas. The jeering crowd cries for Jesus’ crucifixion. Rembrandt chose to work in drypoint—directly scratching into the surface of the plate—because the method was not very sensitive to dust and because he could produce rich, velvety lines. He took pains with this image and printed successive versions; this is the fifth. The fine brown pen lines in the crowd may reveal efforts to adjust the lighting before committing to yet more changes to his copper printing plate.

Rembrandt and his mistress Hendrickje Stoffels fell into disgrace in 1654 when she became pregnant. After church officials subjected her to harsh and unfair judgment, Rembrandt returned to the copper printing plate of Ecce Homo, literally “Behold the man,” the phrase spoken by Pontius Pilate when presenting Christ to the crowd for judgment. By the final version (Mia 2012.92.1), Rembrandt had scraped away the crowd scene in the foreground, replacing it with a pit, a bottomless opening leading to hell. He had shifted the role of the viewer from observer to participant: now we become the crowd who must answer Pilate’s entreaty to choose between Barabbas and Christ—here recast more as a sinew-and-bone man rather than an ethereal Holy Spirit.

Christ Presented to the People (Ecce Homo)

original copperplate for etching and aquatint

In the 18th century, France and Sweden were strong military allies, and upperclass Swedes adopted French artistic trends. Born in Stockholm, Per Gustav Floding was sent to Paris as a young man to learn the art of engraving. He remained there for most of his career but retained close ties to his homeland. King Adolf Frederick was so pleased with a portrait that Floding made of him that he gave the artist money to re-equip his studio. This led directly to Floding’s invention of a new printmaking technique, lavis aquatint. The technique involved covering the copper printing plate with powdered resin, heating it to make it adhere, and then subjecting it to repeated acid baths while selectively applying protective coatings between the successive immersions. The result is a field of minute dots of various sizes, which simulate the effect of dilute ink washes when printed. As we see here, various effects could be achieved by printing the plate in various colors.

"Un Corps de garde" is one of Floding’s first productions in his new technique (see Mia 2002.185.2 and 2002.185.3). It is based on a drawing by François Boucher whose fame gave rise to a veritable industry devoted to reproducing his drawings and paintings. Floding dedicated the image to Ulrik Scheffer, whose military career led to his appointment as a military advisor to the king. We do not know if Scheffer appreciated the irony of having his name attached to a corps of sleeping guardsmen.

Printing plate for "Un Corps de garde"

This magnificent panorama was long thought to be the estate of Jan Uytenbogaert, a tax receiver and gold weigher in Holland, which is how the print acquired its name. When the landscape is viewed in reverse, however, as the counterproof enables us to do, it is clear that the etching shows the property of Christoffel Thijsz., to whom Rembrandt owed money for his house. The artist may have made this print, sketched from the dunes outside Haarlem, to help offset his debt. The rare counterproof, which would have been a useful working tool for Rembrandt because its orientation was the same as that of the copper plate, was made by running a freshly printed impression through the press a second time with another sheet of paper.

In this view of a prison interior, Giovanni Battista Piranesi explored his imagination through architecture realized only on paper, unfettered by practical considerations. The scene revels in the sublime—the flipside of the Age of Enlightenment—in which Romantics opened themselves to the sensation of forces beyond human comprehension and control. Piranesi intended us to lose ourselves as we wander through his maze of stairways, balconies, and catwalks leading to unknown destinations. This is the scary movie of the 18th century.

Perspective of Arches belongs to a suite of such prison scenes. A decade after their first appearance in the late 1740s, Piranesi went back to work on his copper plates, darkening the images both literally and figuratively. It is in no small part due to the radical rethinking evident between the two iterations of the Prisons (see Mia 2010.87) that Piranesi is sometimes called “the Rembrandt of Architecture.” Perspective of Arches is among the most freely drawn plates of the first edition and among the most radically transformed in the second.

The Smoking Fire

The Owl

4 figures: 1 on steps at top center, 3 clustered in foreground; flags, shields, swords and helmets in foreground; printed in black

In the 18th century, France and Sweden were strong military allies, and upperclass Swedes adopted French artistic trends. Born in Stockholm, Per Gustav Floding was sent to Paris as a young man to learn the art of engraving. He remained there for most of his career but retained close ties to his homeland. King Adolf Frederick was so pleased with a portrait that Floding made of him that he gave the artist money to re-equip his studio. This led directly to Floding’s invention of a new printmaking technique, lavis aquatint. The technique involved covering the copper printing plate with powdered resin, heating it to make it adhere, and then subjecting it to repeated acid baths while selectively applying protective coatings between the successive immersions. The result is a field of minute dots of various sizes, which simulate the effect of dilute ink washes when printed. As we see here, various effects could be achieved by printing the plate in various colors.

Un Corps de garde is one of Floding’s first productions in his new technique (see also Mia 2002.185.3 and 92.22). It is based on a drawing by François Boucher whose fame gave rise to a veritable industry devoted to reproducing his drawings and paintings. Floding dedicated the image to Ulrik Scheffer, whose military career led to his appointment as a military advisor to the king. We do not know if Scheffer appreciated the irony of having his name attached to a corps of sleeping guardsmen.

Un Corps de Garde

4 figures: 1 on steps at top center, 3 clustered in foreground; flags, shields, swords and helmets in foreground; printed in brown

In the 18th century, France and Sweden were strong military allies, and upperclass Swedes adopted French artistic trends. Born in Stockholm, Per Gustav Floding was sent to Paris as a young man to learn the art of engraving. He remained there for most of his career but retained close ties to his homeland. King Adolf Frederick was so pleased with a portrait that Floding made of him that he gave the artist money to re-equip his studio. This led directly to Floding’s invention of a new printmaking technique, lavis aquatint. The technique involved covering the copper printing plate with powdered resin, heating it to make it adhere, and then subjecting it to repeated acid baths while selectively applying protective coatings between the successive immersions. The result is a field of minute dots of various sizes, which simulate the effect of dilute ink washes when printed. As we see here, various effects could be achieved by printing the plate in various colors.

Un Corps de garde is one of Floding’s first productions in his new technique (see also Mia 2002.185.2 and 92.22). It is based on a drawing by François Boucher whose fame gave rise to a veritable industry devoted to reproducing his drawings and paintings. Floding dedicated the image to Ulrik Scheffer, whose military career led to his appointment as a military advisor to the king. We do not know if Scheffer appreciated the irony of having his name attached to a corps of sleeping guardsmen.

central rectangular section with an owl perched on a book and an open book; sketches around edges including man smoking pipe, ship, figure playing a lute, lanterns and horse-drawn carriage

The nocturnal world of darkness and dreams kept a firm grip on Félix Buhot. His personal emblem was an owl, which in Spanish—búho—sounds like his name. Here the owl's shadow takes the form of Buhot’s silhouette. Vignettes surround the central image: Paris street scenes, a ship, an artist's palette, a train on a viaduct, and so on. Such borders were a hallmark of Buhot’s work. He called them “marges symphoniques” (symphonic margins) for both their complexity and their similarity to the images that music stimulates in the imagination.

After printing a trial proof in which he delineated his basic ideas, Buhot returned to the plate to refine the details and bathe the whole in darkness. Note the expansion of his silhouette and the elimination of the date. He used aquatint to add the deep tones throughout.

The image was intended as the frontispiece for a portfolio of his works. The Latin inscription PAUCA PAUCUS (a few for the few) suggests that he meant to produce a few images in a small edition for a few collectors, but the project never reached the light of day.

smudgy, grey image; horizon line with triangular shape and light linear marks and splotches. Not signed Aquatint on heavy wove paper, Delteil i/vi (one of two impressions of the first state (of six)

Rain Effect

mule at L and large stallion at R on their hind legs, butting together; clouds of dust under their feet; man with pitchfork at R; fence and tree at L

John Steuart Curry was a leading proponent of Regionalism, a movement of modern artists who found inspiration in rural and small-town America. In line with this populist approach, Curry often re-created his oil paintings as black-and-white lithographs that were issued in large editions and priced for middle-class customers.

In 1932, he painted Stallion and Jack Fighting, in which a powerful, glistening horse tangles with a gaunt mule. Deciding this subject would have wide appeal, he set about reducing and refining the image, as seen in his drawing made on tracing paper (Mia 2009.48.1). He started with erasable pencil and then marked his final ideas in ink. In 1943, he elaborated the image once again, drawing with a greasy crayon on a lithographic stone. The stone was then used to print the image, reversing the composition.

Stallion and Jack Fighting

stallion and donkey, both on their rear legs, pushing each other; stallion at left, donkey at right; figure with pitchfork at left; sketchy tree and right; sketchy, with ink details

John Steuart Curry was a leading figure among the Regionalists, artists who sought inspiration in rural America as an alternative to the urban centers of Europe. As part of his populist orientation, Curry often reiterated his painted subjects in lithographs printed in large editions and priced for middle-class consumption. In 1932, he painted Stallion and Jack Fighting, in which a powerful glistening horse tangles with a rawboned mule. At some point he decided that this subject would have wide appeal; so he set about reducing and refining the image, as we see in his drawing executed on tracing paper. He started with erasable pencil and then finalized his thoughts with ink. In 1943, he elaborated the image once again, drawing with a greasy crayon on a lithographic stone. The stone was then used to print the image, reversing the composition.

Study for "Stallion and Jack Fighting"

Plate 6 from Carceri d'Invenzione large archways integrated with monumental stone architecture; silhouettes of figures standing below

In this view of a prison interior, Giovanni Battista Piranesi explored his imagination through architecture realized only on paper, unfettered by practical considerations. The scene revels in the sublime—the flipside of the Age of Enlightenment—in which Romantics opened themselves to the sensation of forces beyond human comprehension and control. Piranesi intended us to lose ourselves as we wander through his maze of stairways, balconies, and catwalks leading to unknown destinations. This is the scary movie of the 18th century.

Perspective of Arches belongs to a suite of such prison scenes. A decade after their first appearance in the late 1740s, Piranesi went back to work on his copper plates, darkening the images both literally and figuratively. It is in no small part due to the radical rethinking evident between the two iterations of the Prisons (see Mia P.11,330) that Piranesi is sometimes called “the Rembrandt of Architecture.” Perspective of Arches is among the most freely drawn plates of the first edition and among the most radically transformed in the second.

bound standing Christ at center standing on raised platform with two dark arches below; Christ is accompanied by sanding soldiers and other figures; onlookers at left and right below platform; figures in windows in upper quadrants

In 1654, Rembrandt and his mistress Hendrickje Stoffels fell into disgrace when she became pregnant. After church officials subjected her to harsh and unfair judgment, Rembrandt returned to work on the copper printing plate of his drypoint tour de force Ecce Homo, literally “Behold the Man,” the phrase spoken by Pontius Pilate when presenting Christ to the crowd for judgment. 

Using a scraper, he set about the onerous task of effacing the crowd scene that had animated the foreground. He also retouched many of the figures remaining in the image, most tellingly that of Christ, whom he transformed from the apparition of the Holy Ghost into sinew and bone, a very physical man. He replaced the ground upon which the crowd had stood with a pit, a bottomless opening leading to hell. Now we stand on one side, Christ on the other, and we viewers become the crowd that must answer Pilate’s entreaty to choose between Christ and Barrabas.

Rembrandt’s highly structured composition imparts a sense of inevitability to the decision. The artist’s sorrow for all involved seems to be reflected in his inclusion of a melancholic river god who mourns the event.

image of a man's head and shoulders made of finger prints in black ink on a grey aluminum plate

In 1981, in collaboration with Minneapolis-based publisher Vermillion Editions Limited, Chuck Close created a lithographic portrait of composer Phillip Glass using his fingerprints to draw the image on an aluminum litho plate. He inked his index finger over and over as he touched the plate, leaving his marks as he went. The present plate is the result of that effort. When he sent the plate to the printer, it became apparent that the dark areas of the plate became overly dense and proved unsuitable for printing. Close made a new fingerprint drawing on another plate, this time cleaning his finger with a solvent between each touch and re-inking. The first plate was kept by the publisher and will now join the Vermillion Editions Limited Archival Collection at Mia.

Saint Jerome is down on one knee, gazing at the crucifix he holds in his left hand; lion sleeps in rocks at left

Legend has it—and probably rightly—that after Agostino’s death, his cousin and artistic collaborator Ludovico Carracci turned the plate over to Francesco Brizio, an engraver who had trained with the cousins. Francesco completed the image, but comparison of sections such as Jerome’s left leg and his hat reveal his weakness by comparison to the formidable Agostino. A Roman publisher, Pietro Stefanoni, added the extra plate expressing Christian faith in an afterlife sweeter than earthly pleasures.

Saint Jerome

Saint Jerome is down on right knee, facing right; outstretched arm holds a rock;

This engraving of Saint Jerome is unfinished because Agostino died while he was working on it. The misfortune of one of the most skillful engravers of his time allows us to see his working methods. After scratching his copper plate to rough-in the design, he began to engrave the image, apparently starting with the most important parts. The casual scratching in open parts of the paper creates a sharp contrast with the mesmerizing, high precision of the burin (engraving tool). The truncated composition has a remarkably modern, sculptural form.

Saint Jerome, unfinished

two figures seen from back--one seated, one standing--in LLC; haystack in URQ; diagonal lines of rain falling; row of trees at horizon line

Camille Pissarro was a founding father of Impressionism. This image of two people out in the rain is typical of his interest in the experiences everyday life. The disarmingly modest subject belies the technical sophistication of the Pissarro’s development of the image. His initial conception of the scene was painted with a brush and bitten into the copper printing plate using the aquatint technique, resulting in a dreamy, foggy image—see Mia's trial proof impression taken at this early juncture (2008.9.1). He then scratched at the plate with his drypoint needle, adding compositional elements, such as the two people and the steaks of rain that give the image its name, eventually giving greater substance and definition to the forms.

Printmaking traditionally focuses on the production of multiple images that are the same, but the artists involved usually make variants of their images. This exhibition pairs closely related objects that reveal stages of the creative process and the evolution of artistic thoughts. Visitors will also see several of the MIA’s remarkable new acquisitions, including masterpieces by artists such as Rembrandt, James McNeill Whistler, and Chuck Close.

Nocturne: Palaces, 1879-1880

James Abbot McNeill Whistler

Printing plate for "Un Corps de garde"

Maker: Per Gustav Floding; after François Boucher

The Goldweigher's Field

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn

The Smoking Fire

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

The Owl

Félix Buhot

Un Corps de Garde

Per Gustav Floding; Artist: after François Boucher

Un Corps de Garde

Per Gustav Floding; Artist: after François Boucher

The Owl

Félix Buhot

Rain Effect

Camille Pissarro

Stallion and Jack Fighting

John Steuart Curry; Publisher: Associated American Artists, New York

Study for "Stallion and Jack Fighting"

John Steuart Curry

The Smoking Fire

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Christ Presented to the People (Ecce Homo)

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn

Phil / Fingerprint

Chuck Close

Saint Jerome

Agostino Carracci; Engraver: Francesco Brizio

Saint Jerome, unfinished

Agostino Carracci