A Different Impressionism: International Printmaking from Manet to Whistler
Eugène Carrière, Sleep (Jean-René Carrière) (detail), 1897, lithograph © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
Sunrises, water lilies, light and shadow effects: almost everyone has an idea of what constitutes an impressionist painting. But what most people don't think about are works of printmaking - can there even be impressionist art in this medium? In black and white, in editions and with the technical challenges that make the spontaneity so characteristic of impressionism seemingly impossible? In this exhibition, the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett is showing treasures of the "other" impressionism, most of which have never or rarely been shown before - with 110 works by 40 artists, including Édouard Manet, Auguste Renoir, James Whistler and Lesser Ury.
Using new or rediscovered techniques, this "different" impressionism put atmospheric moods on paper: impressions of shadows, steam and smog, haze and rain, night and electric light. As original prints, they had the magic and dynamism of hand drawings and were therefore considered the epitome of artistic individuality. Some of them were created directly from nature.
From the mid-1850s, artists such as Camille Corot and Charles-François Daubigny met in the forest of Fontainebleau. They experimented with the proto-photographic technique of cliché-verre, using the sun itself to expose their hand-drawn glass plate negatives. From 1862 onwards, painters such as Édouard Manet, Johann Barthold Jongkind and Francis Seymour Haden took their inspiration from Rembrandt's etchings and used them to create their own works. Some, such as Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas and later the Dutchman Charles Storm van's Gravesande, reworked their printing plates after each printing process. This resulted in "state prints", i.e. new originals within a series. Since the 1880s, lithographers such as Paul Signac and Eugène Carrière were fascinated by shadows, by the immaterial, and created painterly and mysterious impressions.
1881: first modern prints in Berlin museums
Printed or exposed, black and white or in color: the new prints paved the way for Impressionism to enter the museum. In 1881, an exhibition of "Painter's Etchings by French and English Artists of the Modern Period" brought this international art to Berlin museums for the first time: an incredible number of 740 prints were presented at the time - all on loan - including some that can also be seen in the exhibition now, such as masterpieces by Édouard Manet, Charles-François Daubigny, Camille Corot, Francis Seymour Haden and James McNeill Whistler.
This was a revolution in the way we see things, a coup, because at that time, Impressionist art was by no means considered worthy of being in a museum. This exhibition got the public excited about modernism, gave contemporary artists in Germany new, international impulses, and modern prints were the beginning of a new focus of the collection at the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett. The museum was able to purchase the approximately 300 English etchings that had been borrowed directly from the exhibition; this was not possible for the French works, so the art market was subsequently monitored in search of other prints of these works.
Artists represented in the exhibition
The Berlin Kupferstichkabinett presents its selection of this "other", print-based impressionism and shows rarely shown works by famous artists that were already on display in 1881, but also new discoveries by previously completely unknown artists or impressionist works that were only created after 1881: in addition to those already mentioned, there are works by Alfred Sisley, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Albert Besnard, Henri Fantin-Latour, Joseph Pennell, Anders Zorn, Frank Brangwyn, Anna Duensing, Lovis Corinth, Max Liebermann and Max Slevogt.
Individual etchings by Rembrandt from the 17th century - the greatest painter-etcher of impressionist light and shadow effects before impressionism - as well as photographs of pictorialism accompany and expand the selection. The broad spectrum of impressionist prints can be spread out between these two poles - Rembrandt and pictorialist photography.
Seeing the world impressionistically was not just the result of a stylistic era, nor was it a method limited to painting. Rather, it is a particular way of seeing. In the "other" impressionism, this worldview, this way of seeing, is taken literally.