Skip to main content
Home

Main navigation

  • Visit
  • Exhibitions & Events
  • Art & Design
  • Search

Visit Main Menu Block

  • Hours & Admission
  • Accessibility & Amenities
  • Tours & Group Visits
  • Visitor Guidelines

Exhibitions and Events Main Menu Block

  • Exhibitions
  • Events

Art and Design Main Menu Block

  • The Collection
  • Projects & Publications
  • Past Exhibitions

Footer Main

  • Become a Member
  • Give
  • Who We Are
  • Opportunities
  • Rent the Museum

Bernard Boutet de Monvel, Les Marcheurs (The Strollers), ca. 1910. Bequest of Isaac C. Bates. RISD Museum, Providence, RI.

Introduction

Visions and Revisions

February 15 - August 4, 2019

Whether breaking with tradition or building on its foundation—challenging or celebrating—artists have always used the work of their predecessors as a point of departure for original expression. Printmakers in particular have been keenly aware of the history of their medium, constantly pursuing innovation while also reviving old techniques to produce new work. To create these results, printmakers often need to overcome considerable technical challenges. The print on this wall was produced from a single copper plate using some of the techniques explored in this exhibition, demonstrating the distinct visual effects they each produce.

Sometimes a technique becomes directly linked to its most famous practitioner, such as etching and Rembrandt or Goya and aquatint. Reference to these artists becomes virtually inescapable, almost embedded in the medium itself. The act of working in a traditional technique, then, provides a way for artists to confront the history of art and their place in it; to question originality, identity, and influence; and to reflect on time, distance, memory, and loss—issues at the core of art-making itself.

Jamie Gabbarelli
Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs
RISD Museum

Selected Objects

James Bretherton, etcher

The Three Trees, ca. 1770

Martin Schongauer

The Entombment, ca. 1480

Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, designer

Head of a Man (Tête d'homme renversée), 1768

Rembrandt van Rijn

View of Amsterdam from the Kadijk, ca. 1641

Richard Earlom, printmaker

The Forge, Published 1773

Frank Brangwyn

Windmill, Dixmuden, 1908

Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, designer

Head of a Young Woman (Tête de jeune femme penchée), 1768

Ferdinand Bol

The Family, 1643

Eugène Delacroix, printmaker

A Blacksmith (Un Forgeron), 1833 (printed 1865)

Claude Mellan, printmaker

Death of Adonis, 1636 - 1662

Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, designer

Head of an Old Woman (Tête de vielle penchée), 1768

Käthe Kollwitz, printmaker

Self-portrait at a Table, ca.1893, published 1921

James McBey

Night in Ely Cathedral, 1915

Robert Austin, printmaker

A Woman Praying, 1928

Johann Gottlieb Prestel, printmaker

The Dismissal of Hagar, ca. 1770-1790

Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, designer

Head of a Turk (Tête de Turc), 1768

Rembrandt van Rijn

Descent from the Cross by Torchlight, 1654

Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, designer

Head of a Woman (Tête de femme vue de face), 1768

Johan Barthold Jongkind

Mill in Holland (Moulin en Hollande), 1867

Carol Wax, printmaker

Singer II, 1985

James S. Gill, engraver

Ornament with Two Sphinxes and a Winged Man, 1879

Mary Cassatt

Under the Horse Chestnut Tree, 1896-1897

Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, designer

Head of a Turk without a Moustache (Tête de Turc sans moustaches), 1768

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, printmaker

Los ensacados (The Men in Sacks), 1816 - 1824 (printed 1864)

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, printmaker

A Way of Flying (Modo de volar) / Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way (Donde hay ganas hay maña), 1816–1824, printed 1864

Reynold Weidenaar

Self - 1950, 1950

Lucas van Leyden, designer

Ornament with Two Sphinxes and a Winged Man, 1528

Bernard Boutet de Monvel

The Strollers (Les Marcheurs), ca. 1910

Albrecht Dürer, designer

Nemesis, ca. 1501- 1502

Claude Jean Baptiste Hoin, printmaker

Death of a Capuchin Friar, 1796 - 1797

Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich

Adoration of the Shepherds, 1730 - 1760

Max Klinger

The Swan Prince (Der Schwanenprinz), Plate 7, 1915

Katsunori Hamanishi

Connection - Variation No. 4, 1980

Paula Rego, printmaker

Wendy Sewing on Peter's Shadow, 1992

Enrique Chagoya

The Men in Sacks (Los ensacados), 2003

Frederick Mershimer

42nd Street, 1997

Andrew Raftery

Scene One, Living Room, 2008

Katja Oxman

An Open Window, 1992

Kara Walker

Vanishing Act, 1997

Glenn Brown, printmaker

Half-Life (after Rembrandt), Plate 4, 2017

William E. C. Morgan

The Source, ca. 1927

Pat Steir

Self After Rembrandt #2, 1987

More objects +

Exhibition Checklist

Visions and Revisions

February 15 - August 4, 2019
View Checklist PDF

RISD Museum

  •  Facebook
  •  Twitter
  •  Instagram
  •  Vimeo
  •  Pinterest
  •  SoundCloud

Footer Main

  • Become a Member
  • Give
  • Who We Are
  • Opportunities
  • Rent the Museum

Footer Secondary

  • Image Request
  • Press Office
  • Rent the Museum
  • Terms of Use