Rembrandt van Rijn - Mastery and Plate Tone

 Rembrandt van Rijn was a prolific dutch painter and printmaker in the 17th century.

I took Printmaking I last semester as part of my Studio Art Minor, and it was my most work-intensive class to date. In this course, students are introduced to the major printmaking techniques: linocut, drypoint, and etching. Each of these techniques are some form of engraving into a sheet of linoleum, metal, or wood followed by application of ink and then printing itself. The purpose of printmaking as a craft is to produce something that can be replicated exactly many times over so that the work can be sold and disseminated to a large number of people. Naturally, this process takes a lot of time to do. 

Van Rijn was an etcher, and the process of etching involves laying wax over a piece of metal, and then carving out the wax and letting the whole thing soak in acid to eat away at the exposed parts. This process is done repeatedly to create value because different lines will come out darker if they spend more time in the acid bath. This process also means that the artist can get extremely detailed and precise with their prints. This detail is seen in van Rijn’s work. 

The dutch artist, though, didn’t always play by the rules. Van Rijn often played with plate tone, which is the amount of ink left on the plate of metal when it is printed. Plate tone can be difficult to control which makes it less appealing to printmakers attempting to produce many identical copies. 

Van Rijn didn’t seem to care about this, and it reminds me of how in The Creative Act, Rick Rubin talks extensively about the balance between artistic routine and the ability to break free of it. Van Rijn demonstrated this excellently in his work. As a dedicated artist, he must have spent thousands of hours etching and printing in his studio. Still, though, he took his skills and went beyond the typical rules of the craft and many times makes his work more compelling. 

Take these two prints, for example. One of them is a pretty cut and dry etching that you would expect to see in a collection of identical pieces. It is clean: you can see each line and there are clear values. The second print is the same one, but a heavy plate tone was left on it, and only parts of the piece were wiped to reveal small areas of dim highlight. These prints could not go into a typical etching collection because of their differences, but their differences reveal both van Rijn’s artistic dedication and his willingness to step outside of expectations. Because of this, both of the etchings become more interesting situated next to each other. The clean printing of the first piece reveals van Rijn’s mastery over the etching techniques and printing process. The piece with plate tone, though, obfuscates the details which makes it more interesting through its clear break from what would be expected in the field. 

Van Rijn practiced his craft meticulously, but he was not bound by the rules or expectations of his field. Because of this, he created many pieces that are both technically very good while simultaneously being technically “wrong.” Still, this dichotomy serves his work by making the pieces more interesting when situated in the context of printmaking as a field. He broke from the expectation and by doing so, he was able to produce work that revealed his technical prowess and his inclination to follow his passions to create something different.