Portrait of Rabelais 1868

Félix Bracquemond created this print, "Portrait of Rabelais", using etching, a printmaking technique that requires a high degree of skill. The artist coats a metal plate with a waxy, acid-resistant substance called a ground, then draws his image, here the French Renaissance writer Rabelais, with a sharp needle to expose the metal. The plate is then immersed in acid, which bites into the exposed lines. The depth of the lines determines how much ink they hold, and thus the darkness of the printed line. Bracquemond's image, built up from a dense network of tiny lines, gives a wonderful sense of form and texture. The final print, the result of a meticulous, almost industrial process, could be reproduced many times over. In this way, printmaking democratizes images, making them available to a wider audience, and blurring the lines between fine art and more accessible forms of visual culture.