Art THAT HAs INSPIRED HOBART'S WORK

Black and white illustrations from the late 1800s

During the second half of the Nineteenth Century governments that were looking to expand their territory would commission explorers to take scientists, biologists, botanists and surveyors along to document all that they could about new lands they wanted to occupy. Often these expeditions would include artists who would record the peoples, places and animals that they encountered along the way. 

Upon returning with their sketches these artists would create huge paintings for public display. Then, from these paintings and field sketches publishers of books and scientific journals would painstakingly create black and white (and occasionally color tinted) illustrations for wider distribution in the form of beautifully illustrated books and fine art prints. 

By the mid-1800s there were three dominant techniques for creating richly detailed illustrations using black ink. 

Etching and engraving are an intaglio printing process where the illustration is created with lines and textures that are acid etched or carved into a metal plate. The ink fills these recesses and, under pressure, is transferred onto the paper. 

Wood engraving is a relief printing process where the black parts of the image are raised and can be printed with type at the same time. 

Lithography, is a planographic process where the image, on a wet stone, has a greasy feel to it and attracts ink leaving 'white' parts of the paper unaffected.

We should be in awe of these craftsmen because it took considerable talent to create beautiful facsimiles of great paintings by famous artists, mostly with only one color of ink, and they had to do it in reverse! Sometimes they only had crude sketches or, worse yet, only written accounts to work from. 

All three of these labor-intensive processes were used throughout this period but were, by the end of the century, phased out in favor of a new photo-mechanical technique called ‘photogravure’. This is still an intaglio printing process but it eliminates the need for the talents of illustrators because it utilizes light-sensitive emulsions to control the way the acid etches the printing plate when photographing the original painting.