And up and down the long canals they go,
And under the Rialto shoot along,
By night and day, all paces, swift or slow,
And round the theatres, a sable throng
~Lord Byron, Venice, 1816
Venice, Italy, “The Floating City” has beckoned artists for centuries. From Tintoretto to Rembrandt, the canals and piazzas have been subjects of paintings and etchings that now illuminate the walls of the most prestigious museums in the world.
I’m an art history neophyte, and except for William Blake’s mysterious relief etchings and Doré’s ubiquitous parade of angels spiraling through heaven—part of the consummate 1960s ‘informed artist’ kit (next to Hendrix, Hesse and Escher— know next to nothing about the history of the needle and metal print rendering technique so eloquently represented by the current exhibition at Washington College’s Kohl Gallery.
Next to a Raphael or Vermeer, etchings seemed to me to be a distant, malnourished, and too-precious cousin of great art rendered in oil, a kind of vivre without the joie, and generally uninteresting. I was incredibly wrong, of course, set straight by an encounter some years ago with some Goya etchings at the Prado museum in Madrid. Since then, and knowing a little more about the mechanics of the art form and printing of the plates, I have learned to keep an open mind.
I was reminded of my old dismissive attitude (and rehabilitation) while recently attending a wonderfully informative lecture at Washington College given by Dr. Eric Denker, Senior Lecturer at the National Gallery of Art. Dr. Denker is the curator of “Reflections & Undercurrents, Ernest Roth and Printmaking in Venice, 1900-1940” now being exhibited in the Kohl Gallery at Washington College, and also at St. John’s College in Annapolis.
It doesn’t get any better than that if one is new to the genre. For me, context—artist, place and technique—is paramount, and Denker guided the audience through a forty year period in Venice, Italy, when a group of artists beheld Byron’s “aquatic city” and etched their vision into copper with a needle.
Roth returned to Venice a decade after his first visit and as a more mature artist left behind some of the ‘preciousness’ of his previous work, the heavy lines and shadows, which gave a whole new quality to his art in terms of the immediacy of creating the etchings on the spot, directly on the plate. When printed, the images were naturally reversed.
“Eric Denker is one of those rare people who, besides being a discerning collector, can also talk about the work in such an eloquent fashion. He leads us through the show as our well informed gondolier,” says Alex Castro, Interim Director of the Kohl Gallery.
“Reflections” is an interesting tale about a group of artists who followed the vastly influential James McNeill Whistler to Venice some 20-60 years later. Whistler had visited Venice for 14 months in the early 1880s after a financially ruinous legal battle over a slanderous critique of his work. Forgoing the standard iconic vistas favored by tourists, Whistler instead chose to etch the workaday world of Venice, the “Venice of the Venetians.” He would also render his etchings ‘on site’ and refused to reverse the image so that when printed they would appear correctly oriented. This would become a turning point, both in Whistler’s career and also for how other artists would approach Venice as a subject.
These images capture the artistry of etching and the technique of printmaking. Whistler would have approved of etching on the spot even though the images were reversed.
The community of artists following Whistler, though less known to modern audiences, offer a spectrum of interpretations of the ancient city, sometimes in homage to Whistler, sometimes as contradiction. They revered the master’s work, but sought to explore their own aesthetic vision.
Predominant among this group was Ernest Roth, an artist considered by Eric Denker to be “one of the most significant American etchers of the first half of the twentieth century” and who visited Venice on several occasions, sometimes decades apart, allowing us a glimpse of the trajectory of his work. Others included Jules André Smith, John Taylor Arms and Fabio Mauroner. There was much camaraderie, sharing of techniques and spirited brinksmanship among them as they interpreted the city of canals, often traveling together and gifting each other images, perhaps as gentle challenges.
One interesting aspect of the etching process was deciding whether or not to etch on the spot with needle and plate in hand, or to sketch the subject and etch it later. Etching it later allows the artist to use a mirror during the etching process so that the print it created would render its subject as it would be in life. Etching on the spot meant that the print would reverse the real-life image. While both techniques were used, etching on the spot lent a certain airy spontaneity to the image. The two Roth etchings appearing here are interesting in that they are from his more mature period and less intricate. His earlier works were incredibly detailed to the point of actually being criticized for keeping too much extraneous detail in the image. He took it to heart and his etchings began to breath more negative space.
There is much to see at this exhibit and I would highly recommend purchasing the helpful catalog and artistic history of this slice of art history, “Reflections and Undercurrents, Ernest Roth and Printmaking in Venice, 1900-1940”, by Eric Denker. The Kohl Gallery etchings will introduce you to the wider collection curated by The Trout Gallery at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. Other etchings from the Trout Gallery are offered at the Mitchell Gallery at St. John’s College in Annapolis.
The Kohl Gallery at Washington College is a treasure, and the Venetian etchings a perfect example of what goes on there. Not only hosting a selection of art curated and introduced by a Senior Lecturer at the National Gallery of Art, The Kohl Gallery has continued to fulfill, if not surpass, its mission to “foster visual and cultural literacy” by bringing stellar exhibits to the area and by inaugurating the Sandbox project, a Program for Creativity and the Environment which recently hosted the distinguished artist, John Ruppert.
And all this is just up the street. Go there. Discover. Be enriched.
The exhibit will be showing through December 10, Wednesdays through Sundays, 1-6. Closed Monday and Tuesday.
For more information about the Kohl Gallery visit here.
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