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Home>Exhibitions>Past>2023>Etched by Light: Photogravures from the Collection, 1840–1940

# Etched by Light: Photogravures from the Collection, 1840–1940

Past Exhibition

## October 15, 2023 – February 4, 2024West Building, Ground Floor - Gallery 22

Discover an intriguing chapter in the history of photography.

In the 19th and 20th centuries innovative practitioners searched for and perfected a method to produce identical photographic prints in ink. The process came to be called photogravure. These yielded some of the most beautiful photographs ever made—featuring delicate highlights, lush blacks, a remarkably rich tonal range, and a velvety matte surface. *Etched by Light: Photogravures from the Collection, 1840–1940*tells the story of the first 100 years of this process.

Artists and scientists working across Europe from the 1840s through the 1870s were dismayed to discover that identical silver-based photographic prints were not only difficult to make but also faded quickly. Building on one another’s discoveries, innovators such as William Henry Fox Talbot, Hippolyte Fizeau, and Charles Nègre advanced a method for etching a photographic image into a copperplate and printing it in ink. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, photographers such as James Craig Annan, Peter Henry Emerson, and Alfred Stieglitz utilized this process to demonstrate the artistic nature of photography. Somewhat later photographers such as Man Ray, and Laure Albin Guillot used the technique to create large, bold pictures that they disseminated widely.

See 40 photogravures and 4 bound volumes illustrated with photogravures, many never before exhibited. *Etched by Light* shows how these works, through their proliferation, have helped shape our collective visual experience.

The exhibition coincides with the symposium *Photomechanical Prints: History, Technology, Aesthetics, and Use*, organized by the FAIC Collaborative Workshops in Photograph Conservation and hosted by the photograph conservation department of the National Gallery from October 31 to November 2, 2023.

## Selected Works

Etched by Light: Photogravures from the Collection, 1840–1940
Clarence H. White, *Edge of the Woods, Evening*, 1900, photogravure, Robert B. Menschel and the Vital Projects Fund, 2010.76.13

Etched by Light: Photogravures from the Collection, 1840–1940
Alvin Langdon Coburn, *Brooklyn Bridge*, c.1910, photogravure, Robert B. Menschel and the Vital Projects Fund, 2010.76.9

Etched by Light: Photogravures from the Collection, 1840–1940
Peter Henry Emerson, *A Winter's Morning*, 1887, photogravure, Carolyn Brody Fund and Robert B. Menschel and the Vital Projects Fund, 2010.28.1

Etched by Light: Photogravures from the Collection, 1840–1940
Mathilde Weil, *Beatrice*, 1899, photogravure in sepia on chine collé mounted on cream wove paper, Anonymous Gift, 2002.120.26

Etched by Light: Photogravures from the Collection, 1840–1940
Charles Nègre, *Cathédrale de Chartres - Portique du Midi XIIe Siècle*, c. 1854, printed c. 1857, photogravure, The Sarah and William L Walton Fund, 2008.92.1

Etched by Light: Photogravures from the Collection, 1840–1940
James Craig Annan, *The Riva Schiavoni*, 1894, photogravure, Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund and Robert B. Menschel and the Vital Projects Fund, 2009.66.3.6

Etched by Light: Photogravures from the Collection, 1840–1940
James Craig Annan, *A Black Canal*, 1894, photogravure, Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund and Robert B. Menschel and the Vital Projects Fund, 2009.66.3.9

Etched by Light: Photogravures from the Collection, 1840–1940
Alvin Langdon Coburn, *Trafalgar Square*, 1909, photogravure, Robert B. Menschel and the Vital Projects Fund, 2010.76.5

Etched by Light: Photogravures from the Collection, 1840–1940
Alvin Langdon Coburn, *The Battery*, c.1909, photogravure, Robert B. Menschel and the Vital Projects Fund, 2010.76.3

Etched by Light: Photogravures from the Collection, 1840–1940
Peter Henry Emerson, *The Poacher-A Hare in View*, 1888, photogravure, Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon and Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2006.133.72

Etched by Light: Photogravures from the Collection, 1840–1940
Alfred Stieglitz, *Old and New New York*, 1910, printed in or before 1913, photogravure on beige thin slightly textured laid Japanese paper, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949.3.311

Etched by Light: Photogravures from the Collection, 1840–1940
Alfred Stieglitz, *The City of Ambitions*, 1910, printed in or before 1913, photogravure on beige thin slightly textured laid Japanese paper, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949.3.308

Etched by Light: Photogravures from the Collection, 1840–1940
Alfred Stieglitz, *After Working Hours—The Ferry Boat*, 1910, printed in or before 1913, photogravure on beige thin slightly textured laid Japanese paper, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949.3.305

Etched by Light: Photogravures from the Collection, 1840–1940
Alfred Stieglitz, *The Steerage*, 1907, printed in or before 1913, photogravure on cream moderately thick smooth wove Japanese paper, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949.3.292

## Explore & Share

Video
The Photogravure Process
Watch photographer Jon Goodman demonstrate the photogravure process in this video (3 minutes).

**Organization**                        Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington                    

The exhibition is curated by Sarah Greenough, senior curator and head of the department, with Andrea Coffman, collection manager, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art. 

**Passes** Admission is always free and passes are not required

**Banner detail**: Clarence H. White, *Edge of the Woods, Evening*, 1900, photogravure, Robert B. Menschel and the Vital Projects Fund, 2010.76.13

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