Art on Paper
From old master prints and drawings to large-scale contemporary works that incorporate elements of collage or photographic techniques, works of art on paper encompass prints, drawings and photographs in seemingly unlimited variety. In the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this includes diverse works of art produced throughout the world over many centuries such as finely crafted etchings and engravings by artists from before the Renaissance to the present day, Japanese color woodblock prints, color lithographic posters by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and screenprints by Andy Warhol. Distinguished among the drawings and paintings on paper in the Museum collections are pencil sketches by Paul Cézanne, charcoal studies by Thomas Eakins, pastels by Mary Cassatt and Joan Miró, watercolors by John Marin and Winslow Homer, and opaque watercolor paintings by Indian artists. Highlights of the photography collection include superb gelatin silver photographs by Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand, as well as masterly nineteenth- and twentieth-century platinum and albumen prints. Many composite pieces—collages by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, assemblages by Marcel Duchamp, and Asian hanging scrolls and folding screens—also incorporate paper.
What unites these works of art is, of course, the paper, a most familiar material. Paper was invented in China in the second century A.D., spread along the silk route through Central Asia, and reached Europe by the eleventh century. In 1690, William Rittenhouse established the first paper mill in the United States near Philadelphia. A surge in demand for paper during the the Industrial Revolution led to mechanization and experimentation with new raw materials, primarily wood pulp, and a period of decline in the quality of paper. In the mid-twentieth century, however, revived interest in the craft of hand papermaking and an awareness of the properties of more durable and permanent paper has lead once again to the development of high quality materials.
Papermakers produce a variety of types of paper to meet the specific needs of printing, writing, or drawing. In the late eighteenth century, for instance, paper with a smooth surface was made for wood engraving and lithography, new processes that required a more consistent surface than traditional etching and engraving1. Drawing materials also respond uniquely to different papers. For example, the loose particles of charcoal and pastel are held more securely by a textured paper, but that same texture might interrupt the fluid qualities of an ink or watercolor wash. The perceptive artist selects a paper whose surface texture, color, and absorbency is best suited to his or her chosen medium.
Despite the versatility and widespread use of paper, works of art on paper are quite fragile. Paper is subject to deterioration by all sorts of physical and chemical agents such as bright light, pollution, cigarette smoke, poor matting and framing, casual handling and storage, and display environments that are too hot or humid. Equally vulnerable to degradation are the art materials used to create drawings, prints, or photographs. This is true especially of colored materials such as watercolors, water-based printing inks, and color photographs, which fade with prolonged exposure to light. Pastel and charcoal drawings also require particular care, as loose powdery particles of the drawing material can be easily disturbed by vibration or mishandling during installation or shipping. Given proper care, however, a work of art on paper will last for many centuries.
[1] Traditional handmade laid and wove papers are formed on wood framed molds with different metal wire surfaces. To create a sheet of paper, the molds are dipped into a slurry of fibrous paper pulp suspended in water and pulled out so that the water drains away leaving a mat of paper pulp covering the mold. In laid paper molds, widely spaced wires, called chain wires, run across the mold in one direction, while the more narrowly spaced laid wires are lashed perpendicularly to the chain wires. Narrowly spaced ridges created by the laid wires are often apparent in the paper surface. In wove paper molds, a woven wire mesh is fastened across the wooden mold. The surface of wove papers tends to appear smoother and more uniform. To form a watermark in a paper, shaped watermark wires are tied or sewn onto the other paper mold wires.
