American Monotypes from the Baker/Pisano Collection | Page 13

(American, b. 1937) Corot is a monoprint. Like a monotype, a
monoprint allows the artist the creative freedom to apply ink
spontaneously; however, the monoprint is made on a surface that
has already been incised with a design. Grooms made an etched
plate that was inked in black to guide his brush in his likeness
of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (French, 1796–1875), and as
a result retains the lines of Grooms’ etching beneath its color
inking, which is unique among the twelve impressions he made
of this print.
Around the same time that Grooms created his portrait of
Corot, Joseph Solman (American, 1909–2008) was experimenting with his own variations on the monotype. By working on
glass, Solman was able to take advantage of the transparency of
his plate to work up his monotypes from drawings that he would
place under the glass. His approach included stippling color onto
the glass plate, letting it dry, then wetting a blank piece of paper
in turpentine, so the ink could be drawn into the paper.9
The continued experimentation with monotype is the result of
exactly the same features of the process that interested artists in
the process at the end of the nineteenth century. Of all the print
processes it is the most spontaneous and simple. Its ability to
capture a deft stroke of the artist’s hand gives it great appeal to
the skilled sketcher, while its simplicity makes it an ideal platform
for the sorts of experiments that have intrigued American artists.

Taken together, the Baker/Pisano Collection allows viewers a
glimpse into the history of American art from a different point
of view, casting new light onto artists and their work.
Andrew Stevens, Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs,
Chazen Museum of Art
NOTES
1.  e excellent examination of monotype in America is Joann Moser’s catalog for
Th
an exhibition at the National Museum of American Art, Singular Impressions: The
Monotype in America. A broader survey, The Painterly Print: Monotypes from the
Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century, accompanied an exhibition of the same name
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, provides a longer, international view.
2.  contemporary of Chase’s, Hubert Herkomer (English, 1849-1914), reports
A
Chase saying he learned the medium in Munich, two monotypes by Chase seem
date from that period. See, Herkomer, Etching and Mezzotint Engraving, 105.
3. Moser, Singular Impressions, 12.
4. Ibid., 22–23.
5. Coffin, “Monotypes,” 517–519.
6. Moser, Singular Impressions, 11.
7. Herkomer, Etching and Mezzotint Engraving.
8.  edley Howell Rhys and Perry T. Rathbone, Maurice Prendergast, 1859–1924
H
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), 34, quoted in Moser, Singular
Impressions, 47.
9. Solman and Johnson, Monotypes of Joseph Solman, unpaginated.


INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN MONOTYPE

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