Talk

27 November – 2pm

Ad Stijnman: The Colourful Printed Past: early colour printmaking 1450-1700.

For the first three hundred years after the invention of the printing press, printing in colour was a (seemingly) rare yet important procedure. New materials and methods were employed to enhance the rhetoric of visual and textual printed materials in disciplines such as anatomy, astronomy, biology, cartography, mathematics and militaria in both single-sheet prints and books. Artists explored ways to produce prints with coloured inks so that they could elide the conventional distinctions between monochrome graphic arts on the one hand and paintings on the other. In other instances, the application of colour was a purely commercial attempt to enhance a product through the novelty of the technique and aesthetic appeal.

Despite the significance of these developments in early modern European colour printmaking, scholars have long been unable to analyse and explain them because of the rarity and difficulty of accessing the objects themselves. However, as the technology to disseminate images of these prints in accurate colour has become widespread in recent years, a large amount of new and important material has suddenly become available to a wider audience.

This presentation bases itself on the research of Elizabeth Upper (Cambridge University, UK) on early woodcut colour printing and the research by Ad Stijnman on early colour printed engravings and etchings. It shows that rather than being obscure anomalies in the history of printmaking, it now appears that colour prints were highly significant, even commonplace.

Following the presentation some historical colour printing methods will be demonstrated.

Artist: Louis-Marin Bonnet (French, 1736-1793)
Title: Head of Flora (1769) / 408.18 x 325.63 mm
Technique: Pastel-manner engraving printed in color from eight plates