Produced in conjunction with Matisse as Printmaker: Works from the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, an exhibition organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation.

Clicking on a word in bold text will lead you to its definition.

Aquatint – Aquatint is a variation on the etching process that allows the artist to add passages of tone to a print. To create an aquatint, an etching plate is dusted with a fine rosin powder and heated to bind the rosin onto the plate. The particles of rosin dust are acid resistant; thus when immersed in acid, the metal is bitten in small areas around the particles. The result is a plate etched with fine recesses that hold onto ink and print as a network of small, irregular dots. The depth of the recesses, and hence the darkness of the tone, can be controlled by varying the amount of time that the plate is exposed to the acid. Aquatint plates can be burnished or rubbed with a smooth metal tool to modify or add highlights to areas of tone.

Brayer – A brayer is a hand roller used in printmaking to spread ink or offset an image from a plate to paper. Brayers can be made of rubber, sponge, acrylic, or leather. Rubber brayers come in varieties of hardness and are primarily used for relief printing. Leather rollers are only used in lithography.

Cubism – Between the years 1908 and 1914, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque developed the style that became known as cubism, a term coined in an art review by critic Louis Vauxcelles, who described Braque’s work as consisting of cubes. Among cubism’s most important features is the incorporation of multiple perspectives into a single work of art. Inspired by the work of Paul Cézanne, cubists departed from the standard of creating a believable illusion of three-dimensional space with a two-dimensional medium. Matisse experimented with this style in 1913, partly in an attempt to compete with the younger Picasso, a longtime rival.

Dabber – A tool, covered in leather, used to apply ink to a woodblock or intaglio plate.

Drypoint – Drypoint is an intaglio process. To take an impression from an intaglio plate, ink is forced down into the incised lines of a metal plate, and excess ink is wiped from its surface. A sheet of paper is placed on top of the plate and passed under the roller of a printing press. Under the pressure of the press, the paper is pushed down into the lines to receive the ink. To make a drypoint, the artist scratches lines directly on the plate with a sharp instrument, such as a needle or a knifepoint. The process of scratching the plate displaces metal and creates a rough burr of metal along the edges of each line. The burr holds extra ink that, when transferred to paper, creates lines with a soft, feathery quality.

Edition – The limited number of prints made from a specific plate, woodblock, or stone.

Etching – Etching is an intaglio process in which the lines of the design are etched or bitten into the metal plate using the corroding action of acid. To make an etching, the plate is covered with a ground layer of an acid-resistant material such as wax or resin. The artist draws through the ground with a needle to expose areas of bare metal. When the plate is brushed with or immersed in acid, the artist’s drawing is etched into the metal. The ground layer is removed, and the plate is inked and printed using an intaglio press.

Fauvism – The style of the Fauves, a group of artists including André Derain, Henri Matisse, and Maurice de Vlaminck, who worked in a similar style between the years 1905 and 1908. Louis Vauxcelles’s review of their 1905 exhibition at the Salon d’Automne, from which their name is derived, referred to their unconventional use of bold, strident color as the work of “wild beasts.” The style practiced by the Fauves focused on the use of color toward an expressive end rather than as means to reproduce what they observed around them.

Intaglio – One of the three major categories of printmaking techniques (in addition to relief and planographic printing), characterized by printing areas that are recessed, most often from a metal plate. This is a class of printing technique that includes aquatint, drypoint, engraving, etching, and mezzotint. In intaglio printing, a design is etched or engraved onto a plate, which is then covered with ink and wiped clean, leaving ink only in the incised areas. An impression is made directly onto the paper.

Lift-ground aquatint – Also known as sugar-lift aquatint. Lift-ground aquatint is an intaglio process that allows the artist to create prints that have the fluid appearance of pen-and-ink or brush-and-ink drawings. In this process, the artist draws or paints on the plate with a sugar-based (water-soluble) solution. After the solution dries, the plate is coated with an acid-resistant varnish and immersed in water. As the water-soluble solution slowly dissolves, it lifts the varnish from the areas of the plate where the artist has drawn. Then, as with a standard aquatint, the plate is dusted overall with rosin, heated to fuse the powder in place, and etched with acid.

Linoleum cut – Linoleum cut is a variation on the woodcut in which a sheet of linoleum is carved instead of a plank of wood. Introduced in the late nineteenth century for use in floor coverings, linoleum was originally produced from solidified linseed oil mixed with wood dust and adhered to a burlap backing. Because linoleum is strong but relatively soft and has no directional grain, it can be more easily carved than wood and is not susceptible to splitting during carving or printing.

Lithograph – Lithography is a planographic process based upon the chemical incompatibility of oil and water. To make a lithograph, the artist draws with an oil-based crayon or ink on a smooth, porous surface, such as a limestone block or a specially grained metal plate. The stone is then prepared in order to hold ink in areas of an artist’s design and repel ink in non-image areas. Once the image is fixed on the stone, the artist can add highlights and detail to the design by scraping the surface of the stone with a needle or a knife. Printing a lithograph requires a special flatbed press that forces the paper in contact with the inked stone at a high, even pressure.

Monotype – A monotype is a print made after an artist paints or draws with printing ink directly on a flat, smooth surface, such as a sheet of glass or an otherwise unprepared metal printing plate. Normally, only one good impression can be taken from a monotype. Monotypes generally fall into two distinct groups: those made in the “light-field” manner, where the ink is built up on the plate in the same manner as an ink drawing; and those made in the “dark-field” manner, created by removing ink from a fully inked plate.

Neo-impressionism – Also called pointillism or divisionism. In 1886, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Camille Pissarro, and his son Lucien Pissarro pioneered a new painting technique. By 1887, Charles Angrand, Henri-Edmond Cross, Albert Dubois-Pillet, Léo Gausson, Louis Hayet, and Maximilien Luce had joined in this new stylistic venture. New-impressionism is characterized by its scientific approach to color and systematic application of paint to canvas.

Planographic process – A planographic process involves printing from a flat surface, or plane, as opposed to printing from a raised surface (as in relief printing) or a recessed surface (as in intaglio printing). Lithography and offset lithography, both planographic processes, are based on the principle that water and oil do not mix, making some areas of the printing surface ink-receptive while others are ink-repellant.

Pointillism – Also referred to as divisionism. A technique employed by Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, and other neo-impressionists, consisting of the placement and organization of small dots of pure color in order to achieve certain optical effects. Matisse experimented with this style, learning of it from Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross.

Print – An image inked onto paper that has been taken from an engraved plate, woodblock, silkscreen, stencil or lithographic stone and is one of multiple copies.

Printer – The person responsible for operating the press and maintaining accuracy of color and composition. The relationship between a printer and an artist is often of a collaborative nature as printers are often the most knowledgeable about the capabilities of a particular medium.

Relief – A printing technique in which the image is printed from the raised part of a carved or etched block. Relief printing is the opposite of intaglio printing because the unprinted areas of the block are carved or engraved away, leaving the lines to be printed on the surface. The surface is inked with a dabber, and the ink is transferred to paper either by hand or through a press.

Transfer Lithograph – Lithographs do not need to be drawn directly onto a stone. Drawings made with lithographic crayons on another surface, such as paper, can be transferred by pressure onto a stone and prepared for printing using the standard techniques. Transfer lithography is advantageous because the artist can draw on a surface that is more portable and familiar than a lithographic stone, and the printed image will be in the same orientation as the original drawing.

Symbolism – More a philosophy than an actual style of art, symbolism is linked to a late nineteenth-century group of French poets led by Charles Baudelaire. In their exploration of dream-like subjects, the symbolists shared a common interest in mystical and spiritual expression in their art and an opposition to realism and naturalism. The symbols used are not the familiar emblems of mainstream iconography but intensely personal, private, obscure, and often ambiguous references. There are several disparate groups of symbolist painters spanning a broad geographical area from France and Russia to Mexico and the United States. Among them are Henri Fantin-Latour, Frida Kahlo, Gustav Klimt, Edvard Munch, Maxfield Parrish, and Odilon Redon. The symbolist painters influenced surrealism, the contemporary art nouveau movement, and the Nabis. Matisse began his artistic career studying under two symbolists, Gustave Moreau and Eugène Carrière.

Woodcut – A woodcut is created by carving into a plank of wood with knives, gouges, and other cutting tools. Since woodcut is a relief process, the areas carved away from the wood define the highlights, or non-printed areas. To take an impression, the raised areas of the block are rolled with a layer of ink, and then the image is printed on paper with pressure applied by a printing press or through rubbing.

 

The definitions above are drawn from The Oxford Companion to Western Art (Oxford University Press, 2007–09); Grove Art Online (Oxford University Press, 2007–09); and “Matisse’s Printmaking Processes” by Tom Primeau in the brochure for Matisse as Printmaker: Works from the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation.