Engraving

Engraving (fr. graver — cut, carve, germ. graben — dig) is a technique for creating works of art by printing an image from a printing plate onto paper. Manually or using a machine, artists-engravers cut out a drawing on a wooden board, stone or metal plate, paint it and make a print. The peculiarity of the technique is possibility to make multiple copies, and graphic style of the finished drawing, which depends on the hardness and processing technology of the printed medium, as well as the method of image creating. In woodcut, the artist works with wood, in etching — with metal, in linocut — with a polished sheet of linoleum. To create convex engravings, the artist carves the image on wood, plastic or metal. Print on paper consists of strokes, lines and spots that add up to a picture. To make flat engravings, the artist draws with pencil and ink on a stone carrier. To create intaglio prints, the artist needs to make furrows on polished metal plates and fill them with paint.
The first examples of “carved” graphics appeared in the 6th century in China, and later they spread to Japan. European artists mastered the technique in the 14th century, with the development of book printing, since there had been no paper in the Old World before. For five centuries, the art of engraving has provided the poor with access to art and literature. In the 20th century, in the USSR, printing technology was used by the state and propaganda.
Japanese artists have created a unique heritage of engravings. Thousands of works depicting svelte oriental beauties, birds of paradise and mountain landscapes adorn the museum halls and cause pride for collectors. Suzuki Harunobu, a talented master of ukiyo-e painting and the discoverer of colour engraving, painted portraits of kabuki actors and slender girls against the backdrop of a landscape. The public was captivated by his genre scenes, Young Woman Admiring a Snow Rabbit 1761, Young Lovers Walking Together under an Umbrella in a Snow Storm 1767 and Young Couple by a Gate 1769. The artist Katsushika Hokusai brought European painting trends to the foundations of Japanese engraving and created a canonical graphic series, 36 views of Mount Fuji. It includes paintings, such as Red Fuji and The Great Wave off Kanagawa, the samples of the technology that boldly claim to be the most famous engravings in art history.
The 14th century European artists mastered the graphic technique and created compositions with clumsy, disproportionate and childishly naive figures. Then was Albrecht Dürer. During his lifetime, the German painter and printmaker won the glory of a genius, and the Renaissance period in Germany was called the “era of Dürer”. To be acquainted with the masterpieces of engraving technique, one name of Dürer is enough for you: look at the artist’s works, Melancholy, The Mass of Saint Gregory or Knight, Death and the Devil — and you will fall in love with the printed graphic art. The Frenchman Paul Gustave Doré is recognized as the greatest illustrator of the 19th century who enriched the treasury of world art with atmospheric scenes from The Bible, The Divine Comedy, The Fairy Tales by Charles Perrault, and Don Quixote by Cervantes. The Englishman Thomas Bewick invented the transverse engraving method and created masterly illustrations for the History of British Birds, Aesop’s fables and Robert Burns’ poems. The 20th century of graphics passed under the sign of Maurits Cornelis Escher. The Dutch artist did not paint a single painting in his life, but in his engravings, he built a magical parallel world of Stars, Snakes and Metamorphoses.
The most famous engravings:
Knight, Death and the Devil 1513, Melancholy 1514 by Albrecht Dürer; Seven Deadly Sins series 1558, Seven Virtues series by Pieter Bruegel the Elder; Pieta 1582, The Madonna Appearing to Saint Jerome 1588 by Agostino Carracci; South Wind, Clear Sky (Red Fuji) 1832, Crossbill and Thistle 1834 by Katsushika Hokusai; Dante. Hell 1861, illustrations for the Don Quixote novel 1863 by Paul Gustave Doré; Battles 1915, Nervous People Eating 1917 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
Famous engravers:
Albrecht Dürer, Francisco Goya, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, William Blake, Paul Gustave Doré, Marc Chagall, Maurits Cornelis Escher.