DOI Heft:
No. 289 (April 1917)
DOI Artikel:Salaman, Malcolm C.: The art of the colour-print
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.24576#0122
The Art of the Colour-print
with her husband in his versatile craftsmanship,
is also happy upon the coloured aquatint plates,
as her charming print, On the Suffolk Coast:
Sea Holly, reproduced here in monochrome, will
show, with its suggestive simplicity of treatment.
Among other noteworthy artists who find this
a sympathetic medium one may name Mrs.
Mabel Lee Hankey, Miss Robertine Heriot, and
Mr. Raphael Roussel.
The colour-prints of Mr. E. L. Laurenson
have a distinction of their own. An interesting
landscape-painter, with an artistic instinct for
admirable design, he began aquatinting single
plates, and, painting them laboriously for each
impression, he produced a number of prints
of telling effect. But this did not satisfy his
artistic sense of craftsmanship, and he now
prints his tones generally from three plates,
getting luminosity and vitality into his colour-
ing by using the spirit-ground. Miss Hilda
Porter, whose The Hour Whispers Peace, with its
tenderness of tone and sentiment, is seen here
in monochrome, prints all her colours together
from a single plate, believing that the fact of
their slightly overlapping in the printing helps
the effect of atmosphere.
A new process of printing colour from metal
plates—a process with great possibilities in it—
has been devised by Mr. William Giles. His
experience, that the chief difficulty of printing
from wood-blocks is the rapidity with which
the colours dry upon the wood, suggested to
him that colour might be printed from zinc
plates etched in relief, on the principle of the
wood-block, and that, by using a volatile oil
instead of water for mixing the colours, the
rapid drying might be avoided by the longer
process of evaporation, and many extra grada-
tions of tone printed at a single printing.
The colours, meanwhile protected from any
chemical action of the plate by giving it a thin
coating of shellac, would be left with their
maximum of luminosity and brilliance by the
complete evaporation of the volatile oil in the
drying process after printing. The charming
Sand Dunes, Denmark, reproduced here in
colours, exemplifies Mr. Giles’s practice with
his new method. One may briefly describe
this. The key outline is scratched on a sheet
of gelatine with an etching-needle. Soft black-
lead is rubbed into the lines, and an impression
is taken on as many zinc plates as may be
required for the colour-printings, the polish of
the zinc being first removed by weak acid.
“THE HOUR WHISPERS PEACE”
112
COLOUR-PRINT BY HILDA PORTER
with her husband in his versatile craftsmanship,
is also happy upon the coloured aquatint plates,
as her charming print, On the Suffolk Coast:
Sea Holly, reproduced here in monochrome, will
show, with its suggestive simplicity of treatment.
Among other noteworthy artists who find this
a sympathetic medium one may name Mrs.
Mabel Lee Hankey, Miss Robertine Heriot, and
Mr. Raphael Roussel.
The colour-prints of Mr. E. L. Laurenson
have a distinction of their own. An interesting
landscape-painter, with an artistic instinct for
admirable design, he began aquatinting single
plates, and, painting them laboriously for each
impression, he produced a number of prints
of telling effect. But this did not satisfy his
artistic sense of craftsmanship, and he now
prints his tones generally from three plates,
getting luminosity and vitality into his colour-
ing by using the spirit-ground. Miss Hilda
Porter, whose The Hour Whispers Peace, with its
tenderness of tone and sentiment, is seen here
in monochrome, prints all her colours together
from a single plate, believing that the fact of
their slightly overlapping in the printing helps
the effect of atmosphere.
A new process of printing colour from metal
plates—a process with great possibilities in it—
has been devised by Mr. William Giles. His
experience, that the chief difficulty of printing
from wood-blocks is the rapidity with which
the colours dry upon the wood, suggested to
him that colour might be printed from zinc
plates etched in relief, on the principle of the
wood-block, and that, by using a volatile oil
instead of water for mixing the colours, the
rapid drying might be avoided by the longer
process of evaporation, and many extra grada-
tions of tone printed at a single printing.
The colours, meanwhile protected from any
chemical action of the plate by giving it a thin
coating of shellac, would be left with their
maximum of luminosity and brilliance by the
complete evaporation of the volatile oil in the
drying process after printing. The charming
Sand Dunes, Denmark, reproduced here in
colours, exemplifies Mr. Giles’s practice with
his new method. One may briefly describe
this. The key outline is scratched on a sheet
of gelatine with an etching-needle. Soft black-
lead is rubbed into the lines, and an impression
is taken on as many zinc plates as may be
required for the colour-printings, the polish of
the zinc being first removed by weak acid.
“THE HOUR WHISPERS PEACE”
112
COLOUR-PRINT BY HILDA PORTER