Season's Greetings from Arader Galleries

As the holiday season draws near, the quest to find the perfect gift begins!

Please stop by Arader Galleries throughout the holiday season to view our
impressive collection of original maps, engravings,
lithographs, and watercolors.

Hours:

Monday - Friday 10am - 6pm

Saturday 11am - 5pm

Holiday Hours:

December 24th (Christmas Eve) - 11am - 3pm

December 25th - Merry Christmas!

December 26th - Closed

December 31 - Closed

January 1st - Happy New Year!

January 2 - Closed

Printmaking: A Continuous Dialogue

Sorbum
Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1567)
From De Historia Stirpium
Basel: 147
Hand-colored woodcut engraving

On Tuesday, February 23, 2010, Arader Galleries in San Francisco had the pleasure of attending “Art Sandwiched In,” a series of noontime luncheons held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which presents prominent members of the art community in panel discussions on a myriad of art related topics. “Printmaking at the Heart of the Creative Process,” a discussion on the history and current practices of printmaking, featured a panel including Kathan Brown, founder of the Crown Point Press artist Laura Owens, Griff Williams, owner of Gallery 16/Urban Digital Color, artist Darren Waterston and was moderated by the SFMOMA’s curator of painting and sculpture, Janet Bishop.

An informative video, filmed at the Crown Point Press, introduced the process of printmaking. Viewers witnessed the different steps to making prints and saw as Laura Owens, an artist-in-residence at the time, carefully created her works. Kathan Brown and Griff Williams spoke about their interests in printmaking and how their respective workshops and galleries have developed the process with modern technology while using the same skill, dedication and preciseness as artists in the 15^th century. Laura Owens spoke about her influences in printmaking, the images and ideas she uses and her process and how they may relate to, but become far removed from her other formal paintings and works.

Griff Williams and Darren Waterson also discussed their interests in using digital technology to create images which are then engraved and printed. In their collaborative book, “The Flowering,” thirteen images by Waterson were inspired by the experience and readings of St. Francis of Assisi and produced through relief printing, digital pigment printing and hand-coloring.

The dialogue between original and contemporary printmakers is still strong, as the process and desire for originality remain the same. Arader Galleries is proud to have numerous printmaking artists in its collection including Leonhart Fuchs’s woodcut herbals from the 16th century, Giovanni Battista Ferrari’s copperplate engraving from the 17th century and Pierre-Joseph Redoute’s botanical stipple engravings, all of which are meticulously created and expertly hand-colored.

Botanical Mezzotints by Thornton

The Snowdrop by Dr. Robert John Thornton

There are many different techniques of printmaking from woodcut to aquatint, but only one style, mezzotint, allows the engraver to produce finite shades of gray and subtle details for “smoother transition between line and shade.” As the article, Made in the Shade, in the November 2009 Arts & Antiques magazine states, mezzotint is a printmaking technique developed in 1642 in the Netherlands by Ludwig von Siegen, who served as an aid to nobles of the Holy Roman Empire. In the mezzotint process, the engraver creates a very detailed and luxurious print by pressing a rocker, a chisel-like tool with evenly spaced teeth onto copper plate to create peaks and valleys. Mezzotints start black and work their way lighter through this process. When finished with the engraving, the engraver “scrapes and burnishes the surface to shape the image” bringing forth the desired image from the background. Through the use of color, the image comes alive as the ink sinks deep into the valley of the copper plates and the black of the peaks creates the lines and shadows.

The mezzotint technique traveled across Europe and became widely popular in England in the mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. It was at this time, in the late eighteen century that English physician and botanical writer Dr. Robert John Thornton began engraving and printing a series of botanical illustrations using the mezzotint technique. Assembling the finest flower painters to paint original designs for the engravings, the series, Temple of Flora, was unsurpassed as a botanical document of the Romantic era. Mezzotint was a popular engraving technique in England because it was a faster process and less expensive than line engravings and other more intensive forms of printing. Arader Galleries in San Francisco is proud to exhibit Dr. Robert John Thornton’s mezzotint engravings from the Temple of Flora.

Thornton began to indulge his lifelong love for botany in 1799 when he began the engraving and printing process for the Temple of Flora, which includes five frontispieces, portraits and allegorical compositions with thirty-two plates of flowers. As with all of his brilliantly colored plates, in The Snowdrop, the blue, orange and white flowers stand vividly in the foreground against rolling, snow covered hills behind. This whimsical landscape engraving, in excellent condition, shows the range of tone and shade that the mezzotint process brings to an image, while the coloring and background adds to the dramatic velvety effect. Arader Galleries currently has a wide selection of Dr. Robert John Thornton’s mezzotints from The Temple of Flora available. For more information, please visit www.aradersf.com or call 415.788.5115.