A Guide to Paintings, Prints, Engravings, Lithographs & Reproductions
When most people hear the words “original work of art,” they imagine one object.
One canvas. One painting. One drawing made by the artist's hand.
And sometimes, that is exactly what an original is.
But walk through the print collection of a major museum and you will encounter engravings, etchings, woodcuts, lithographs and screenprints. There may be many impressions of the same image—and museums still collect, preserve and exhibit them as works of art.
How can more than one example exist and still be original?
The answer begins with something that has largely disappeared from everyday life:
For centuries, making multiple images was itself an art.
One Original Does Not Always Mean One Object
Consider an oil painting.
An artist applies paint to a particular canvas or panel. That painted surface is the work itself. Unless the artist paints the composition again, there is only one.
Now consider an engraving.
Instead of creating the final image directly on paper, an engraver cuts thousands of lines into a metal plate. Ink is worked into those incised lines. The surface is wiped, damp paper is placed over the plate, and enormous pressure transfers the ink from the recessed lines onto the sheet.
Remove the paper and you have an impression.
Re-ink the plate and the process can be repeated.
The resulting sheets are not necessarily photocopies or modern reproductions of a separate paper original. They are impressions produced from the matrix that was created for the purpose of making the image.
That distinction is fundamental to understanding printmaking.
The National Gallery of Art describes printmaking as creating a design on a matrix—often metal, wood or stone—and transferring that design to paper or another material. Because the matrix can be inked again, multiple works can be produced.
This is why an edition can contain multiple original impressions.
There can be more than one original.
Before Photography, Images Had to Travel Somehow
Today an image can cross the world in seconds.
Take a photograph. Scan a painting. Download a file. Print thousands of posters.
For most of human history, none of that existed.
Yet people still wanted images.
They wanted portraits of rulers and famous people. Biblical scenes. Maps. Scientific and anatomical illustrations. Views of distant cities. Famous paintings. Architecture. Political events. Fashion. Landscapes.
And eventually, art made specifically to exist as prints.
Printmaking became one of the great technologies through which images and ideas traveled.
Woodcut, engraving and etching were among the principal methods of producing printed images long before photography. The National Gallery in London notes that these were the primary printmaking methods before photography's invention.
A print therefore wasn't necessarily the inexpensive substitute we might imagine when hearing the word today.
It could be the actual object created by the printing process.
So What Exactly Is a Print?
At its simplest, a traditional print is an image transferred from one prepared surface to another.
That first surface is called the matrix.
Depending on the technique, the matrix might be:
- a block of wood
- a copper or other metal plate
- a limestone
- a metal lithographic plate
- a screen
The artist or printmaker creates the image on that matrix. Ink is then transferred from it to paper.
Each resulting sheet is called an impression.
A group of impressions produced from the same matrix can form an edition.
This is fundamentally different from taking a photograph of an existing painting and printing the photograph.
In one case, printing is how the artwork comes into existence.
In the other, printing reproduces an artwork that already exists.
That difference explains much of the confusion surrounding the word print.
The Major Families of Traditional Prints
Although printmaking encompasses many techniques, several appear repeatedly in museums, galleries and collections.
Engraving
With an engraving, the image is physically cut into a metal plate, traditionally often copper.
The engraver uses a sharp tool called a burin to carve grooves into the metal.
Ink is pushed into those grooves and wiped from the plate's surface. Under pressure, paper is forced into the incisions and picks up the ink.
The extraordinary detail found in historical engravings isn't a digital effect.
Someone actually cut those lines.
Engraved plates began being used for prints in Europe around the fifteenth century, and the technique became enormously important for reproducing and distributing images.
Etching
Etching can look similar to engraving, but the image reaches the metal differently.
Instead of cutting every line directly with a burin, the plate is covered with an acid-resistant coating. The artist draws through that coating with a needle, exposing the metal beneath.
The plate is then exposed to acid.
The acid bites into the uncovered lines.
Those recessed lines hold ink and are transferred to paper under pressure.
Because the artist can draw relatively freely through the coating, etching can preserve something of the spontaneity of drawing.
Lithography
Lithography changed the process dramatically.
Instead of carving into a surface, the artist traditionally draws with a greasy material on a specially prepared flat stone. The process relies upon the interaction of grease and water: properly prepared image areas accept greasy printing ink while damp non-image areas resist it.
Paper is pressed against the inked surface to produce the impression.
Later lithographic processes also used metal plates.
This ability to work more like drawing made lithography enormously expressive. Artists could produce marks that would have been extraordinarily difficult to carve line by line into copper.
And this is where modern language becomes especially misleading.
An original lithograph is not simply a photographic copy of a painting printed by a lithographic machine.
Lithography can itself be the medium in which the artwork was created.
Screenprint — or Serigraph
Screenprinting uses a different method again.
A fine screen is prepared with areas that allow ink to pass and areas that block it.
Ink is pulled across the screen with a squeegee and passes through the open areas onto the paper below. Different colors can require separate applications.
The technique became particularly prominent in modern and contemporary art.
It is also called silkscreen or serigraphy.
Woodcut
Woodcut is among the oldest forms of printmaking.
The artist cuts away portions of a wooden block. The areas left standing receive ink. Paper is pressed against the block, transferring the image.
Think of a stamp, although executed with vastly greater sophistication.
The National Gallery of Art traces woodcut printmaking back to at least seventh-century China.
But What If the Print Copies a Painting?
This is where terminology becomes more nuanced.
Imagine an eighteenth-century engraver creating a copper plate based upon a painting by another artist.
The resulting engraving is obviously not the original painting.
But neither is an eighteenth-century impression from that engraved plate necessarily equivalent to a photographic reproduction made yesterday.
The engraving is a separate object created through another artistic and technical process.
Historically, this was enormously important.
Before photography, engraving was one of the ways a famous painting could be seen by people who might never stand in front of the painting itself.
A skilled engraver interpreted color, brushwork, light and shadow through carved lines of ink.
Such works are often described with terminology such as “after” the original artist.
For example:
Engraved by John Smith, after a painting by John Doe.
That language matters.
It tells us that Doe created the composition being interpreted, while Smith created the engraved image.
The engraving should not be represented as Doe's original painting or necessarily as an original print personally created by Doe.
But a genuine period impression can still be an authentic historical engraving produced from the engraved plate.
Accuracy is more interesting than exaggeration.
Continue reading about Original Print vs. Reproduction in our next article here.