Pissarro and Preservation
Claude Pissarro, “Path in the Woods at Pontoise,” state iv, Aquatint and Etching, 19th-20th Century, G8703, Harvard Art Museums
Claude Pissarro’s etching “Path in the Woods at Pontoise” and Preservation
In my experience etching, I found my attention continually directed towards preservation. Etching could be described as a balancing act between using materials to create an image and protecting that image from those materials – lines and negative space must be constantly shielded from aggressive acid and floods of ink. Might we then consider an etched print a palimpsest of what has been preserved?
For example, acid not only bites, inscribes, and strengthens lines, but also, with the introduction of aquatint, erases them. Catalyzed by acid, aquatint constantly threatens to overwhelm etched lines, as is evident across two states of Pissarro’s print. In the earlier state (iv), the tree on the left is relatively deeply cut. In the later state (v/vi), the line’s visual prominence is dramatically diminished. The later application of aquatint reduced the contours and largely obscured the finer lines in the trunk. Aquatint also softened the edges of the buildings and figures alike, threatening their finalities. The aquatint granules blanketed these lines, reducing their depth, submerging them into the topography of the plate. In etching, line must be constantly preserved from aquatint’s aggressive absorption.
Practical experience also reveals how difficult it is to achieve white working with aquatint. In visual media, we are accustomed to reading whiteness (or blankness) as the absence of work. In painting, for example, white canvas indicates a gap in a painter’s labor. In contrast, any whiteness in an aquatint signifies large amounts of foresight and work – highlights must remain at the forefront of an artist’s attention or they risk being overrun. White must be constantly preserved from contact with the acid by selectively applying resist. In “Path in the Woods at Pontoise,” for example, the highlights in the haystacks had to be purposefully blocked out and then carefully protected during subsequent exposures to acid. This labor invested in whiteness often lies invisible in the print, glossed over as absence, when, in fact, such voids evidence extended acts of preservation.
By using resist to preserve lines and highlights, the etching process requires the artist to cover and remove from sight the marks he/she wishes to see in the print. Media inserted between design and eye renders the final image visible – to remain in the image marks must be rendered momentarily inaccessible to the artist. Etching thus places temporary, during the act of making, and lasting presence, in the print, in conflict.
This tension between temporary and lasting presence pervades the inking of the plate. Once the plate has been bitten, the image is first covered and then laboriously recovered from the black, sticky mass of ink. Pushing the ink across the plate resembles the rural, physical labor Pissarro so often depicts in his scenes – the plate is tilled to uncover the ruts of the bitten grooves. Ink is removed from the plate to reclaim the image as one would clear underbrush to mark a path in the woods, pick weeds, or plow a field. In both the countryside and studio, the need to preserve order and structure drives these acts. The road the two figures tread in “Path in the Woods at Pontoise” and the lines that form this scene both result from similar labor. Pissarro thus perhaps most closely resembles the rural workers and inhabitants his art captures, when he works to clean and preserve his etched images against the overtaking forces of acid, aquatint, and ink.
-- Thea Goldring, PhD Student, Harvard University
Claude Pissarro, “Path in the Woods at Pontoise,” state iv and v/vi, Aquatint and Etching, 19th-20th Century, G8703, Harvard Art Museums
Claude Pissarro, “Path in the Woods at Pontoise,” state v/vi, Aquatint and Etching, 19th-20th Century, G8703, Harvard Art Museums