St. Philips (Church) 1925

This is Childe Hassam's etching, St. Philips (Church), of 1880. I can only imagine him, huddled over a copper plate, etching this image into the metal with tiny, precise lines. The image is almost ghostly, a memory of a place rather than a physical reality. I know this feeling so well: the scratch of the needle, the burn of the acid, the inky smell of the press. It’s a slow, laborious process, but the reward is that ghostly image, emerging from the darkness. Look at the way he's captured the light filtering through the trees, the way the shadows fall on the columns. It reminds me of Piranesi, but softened, more intimate. There's a whole history of printmaking embedded in this little scene. Hassam, like so many artists, was in conversation with the past, borrowing and reinventing, pushing the boundaries of what a print could be. I find myself inspired by this image and want to take a look at what others have made, and create some prints of my own.