Lines and Colors art blog

Eye Candy for Today: Karl Friedrich Schinkel pen lithograph

Das Schloss Prediama in Crein XII Stund: von Triest (The Castle of Predjama in Carniola, Twelve Hours from Trieste), Karl Friedrich Schinkel, pen lithograph
Das Schloss Prediama in Crein XII Stund: von Triest (The Castle of Predjama in Carniola, Twelve Hours from Trieste), Karl Friedrich Schinkel

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Use zoom or download icons below the image.

This striking print by the German artist, active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, is a pen lithograph. In pen lithography the artists draws on the stone with a dip pen using a waxy lithographic ink — known as tusche — rather than the more common method of drawing with a litho crayon.

The resulting lines share some of the character of etching, engraving, pen and ink, and even scratchboard — as in the way Schinkel has delineated the dark passages on the face of the mountain and the inside of the cave.

You can find another impression of this print, likely from a different state, from the National Museum of Slovenia on the Google Art Project.


Comments

9 responses to “Eye Candy for Today: Karl Friedrich Schinkel pen lithograph”

  1. Gerard Paradies Avatar
    Gerard Paradies

    The ink on a lithographic stone does not resist the ink, it is the other way around.
    It is a shame that so many art-lovers do not know much about the graphic arts and do not know the difference between graphic art and printed matter.

  2. Hilde Van den Abeele Avatar
    Hilde Van den Abeele

    Not only your choice of artworks is a pleasure to the eye, but one sees that you have been thinking about it in order to instruct autodidacts, like me, how to improve their experiments. Thank you

  3. Richard Last Avatar
    Richard Last

    Thanks – beautiful control of line and tone and thereby building a wonderful sense of the values. Checking a photo of the castle on Google one finds little change in the basic structure (other than of course it being ‘reversed’!)

    Gerard, if I might add – thanks for pointing out the technical stuff correctly but, please, it would be nicer if you did so a bit less angrily or arrogantly.
    Delivery is everything.

    1. Richard, Thanks for the comment, and the suggestion about the level of discourse.

  4. Gerard Paradies Avatar
    Gerard Paradies

    Thank you Richard Last, I hope to keep your remark in mind.

    1. Gerard, You’re correct, of course. Thanks for pointing that out. The post has been corrected. I should try not to write these late at night.

  5. Gerard Paradies Avatar
    Gerard Paradies

    The picture is reversed, which would be the case with a woodgravure. I guess that this picture is most likely not a lithography, but a reproduction of an original watercolor/gouache. I think it is a woodgravure like they were made in the late 18th and early 19th centuries for the Illustrated London News.
    In a lithography on limestone one can not scratch thin white lines like in this reproduction, as above the roofs of the castle and in the water .
    It might also be possible that Schinkel made the sketch directly on wood and let the engravers finish the job.

    1. An interesting assessment; thanks, Gerard.

      My knowledge of the process is limited; I’m taking my description of the print as a pen lithograph from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website, and from the National Museum of Solvenia description provided on the Google Art Project page for a similar impression (under the “Details” drop-down).

      One thought might be that once the lithographic ink is applied in a broad enough area, likely with a brush, perhaps it can be scratched away with a pen point or stylus in a manner similar to scratchboard.

  6. Impressive to see how lines are used to create all these visual effects. These artists are definitely dedicated, talented and very patient! 🙂