Dürer to Goya: Three Centuries of Printmaking from the Needles Collection

DePaul University Via Sapientiae DePaul Art Museum Publications Academic Affairs 2001 Dürer to Goya: Three Centuries of Printmaking from the Needles Collection Louise Lincoln Belverd E. Needles Jr. Marian Needles Timothy Smith Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/museum-publications Part of the Printmaking Commons Recommended Citation Lincoln, Louise; Needles, Belverd E. Jr.; Needles, Marian; and Smith, Timothy, "Dürer to Goya: Three Centuries of Printmaking from the Needles Collection" (2001). DePaul Art Museum Publications. 12. https://via.library.depaul.edu/museum-publications/12 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Academic Affairs at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in DePaul Art Museum Publications by an authorized administrator of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact [email protected]. T OD U G R OE R Y A Three Centuries of Printmakingfrom the Needles Collection Dürer to Goya Three Centuries o f Printmaking from the Needles Collection S E P T E M B E R 2I-NOVEMBER 21, 2001 DEPAUL UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY CHICAGO, ILLINOIS Dürer to Goya Three Centuries of Printmaking from the Needles Collection September 21-November 21, 2001 Depaul University Art Gallery 2350 North Kenmore Avenue Chicago Illinois, 60614 COPYRIGHT © 2001 BY DEPAUL UNIVERSITY COVER ILLUSTRATION Rembrandt van Rijn The Death o f the Virgin (detail), 1639 PREFACE The history of print collecting is virtually as old as printmaking itself. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when printmaking in Europe was largely directed to Biblical illustration, the pious often acquired religious images for devotional use. By the mid-seventeenth century nobility and wealthy merchants had begun to form so-called cabinets of curiosities, collections of extraordinary natural or manmade objects, often including extensive print holdings which helped to illustrate the wonders of the world. Rembrandt himself collected prints by other artists and kept them systematically. A century later many of the practices of print collecting clustered within the term connoisseurship were already in place: an interest in the quality and condition of the impression; identification of a print’s state, or progress of the image while the artist works on the plate; and an emphasis on the technical aspects of the print’s creation and history. Then as now, print collectors were scholarly in their research, fastidious in the care of their objects, and patient in the pursuit of choice examples. One could find no more apposite examples in the present day than Belverd and Marian Needles. As they explain in the accompanying foreword, print col lecting has absorbed them for nearly thirty years. Systematic in identifying their criteria for collecting, and disciplined in the pursuit of excellence, they are col lectors’ collectors: knowledgeable and passionate. Both are respected academics in the field of accountancy, and they bring without question some of their pro fessional skills to bear in the formation and the cataloging of their collection. But they also understand the collection as a balance to their teaching and writ ing, since it requires different skills entirely: visual responsiveness, historical curiosity, and a specialized technical knowledge This project draws its strength from the rich resources of the university. Timothy Smith, a faculty member in the Department of Art and Art History, has ably served as guest curator. Laura Fatemi, assistant director of the art gallery, and our student staff have installed the works with care, and staff in the library and facility operations have contributed in countless ways. Finally, we are delighted, as any museum would be, to be able to show such a distinguished group of works, and particularly proud that the collection comes from within the DePaul community. The Needles’s larger group of American prints has formed the basis of three previous exhibitions at DePaul’s gallery, and we are grateful for their continuing interest in the gallery and their generosity in mak ing their collections available not only within the university but in the larger community as well. Louise Lincoln Director 3 FOREWORD By Belverd E. Needles, Jr. and Marian Needles We began collecting prints almost thirty years ago when we purchased the print Ten-Pound Hammer by Thomas Hart Benton in a small gallery in Lubbock, Texas. Shortly thereafter, we visited a gallery specializing in old-master prints in Chicago. The gallery owner showed us various states of Rembrandt etchings, pointing out their differences. We began to frequent galleries and museums, and to study aspects of prints and their history. It was not until 1984 that we finally took the leap and purchased our first old-master print: Banderillas with Firecrackers by Goya (cat. no. 58). As our collecting became more focused, we decided to concentrate on old-master prints and on American prints from the late 1800s to 1960, the beginning of contemporary printmaking. We are partic ularly interested in the intellectual and historical ties among artists and their work. Every print has a story to tell if one takes the time to find out what it is. In collecting old-master prints, we chose to build our collection around the three pillars in the history of printmaking: Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Francisco Goya. We set a goal of collecting several works that are represen tative of the body of work by the great artists who were also master printmakers. We included influential printmakers from other countries: Pieter Brueghel, Jacques Callot, and Giovanni Battista Piranesi, for example. We also wanted to collect other important artists, mostly in individual images, in the three-centu ry period from these six countries to give a comprehensive view of printmaking. We chose to collect only prints of the highest quality. From a technical standpoint, we sought to meet the following criteria: (1) the print had to be an important and representative work by the artist, (2) it had to be a “very fine” or “fine” lifetime impression, and (3) it had to be in “excellent” or “very good” condition. From an emotional standpoint, the print had to speak to us for the artist and the time period; we never tire of examining such prints and search ing for meaning. Since works of this nature are rare and often prohibitively expensive, collecting requires patience and is becoming something of a scav enger hunt. Adding four to six prints per year, the collection has already grown to almost seventy images. We are often asked why we prefer to collect fine prints and not other kinds of art. For one reason, it is difficult to collect early paintings or drawings because those worth collecting are usually in museums. The very rare work that might be available is far too expensive for most people and is often of inferior quality. Further, it is often difficult to determine with certainty the creator of paintings and drawings, especially those available now. Prints by master print makers, on the other hand, are usually well documented. In addition, prints are made by the artist in multiple copies, so that even though items such as the works shown here are also in museum collections, other copies are in private hands and become available on occasion. The main issue is determining whether a particular work is a lifetime impression. Since we were not satisfied 4 to collect inferior or non-lifetime works by great artists or derivative works by secondary artists, the best option is to collect prints. Another reason for collecting prints, as opposed to drawings, is a matter of personal taste. Drawings are often sketches and preliminary studies for other projects. Prints, on the other hand, are usually finished compositions that represent the artists fully realized vision of a subject. To our eyes this is a desirable characteristic. A more important reason for collecting prints is the connection we feel to the artists and to the lives that they led. As wonderful as a Mozart sonata is, one cannot actually hear Mozart play. The work has to be interpreted by someone else. With fine prints, however, it is possible to have the actual work that the artist made. Prints are intensely personal statements, and as we mentioned above, every print tells a story. A lifetime impression of a Durer engraving, for example, is the same piece of paper that Durer labored over five centuries ago. The fact that it has survived five centuries and can now give us insight into a world long past can be awe-inspiring. Unfortunately, fine old-master prints have been entering museums at such a rate in recent years that fewer and fewer high-quality examples are available. Due to the increasing difficulty of finding works that meet our criteria, it is unlikely that our collection will grow much larger. Because the images in this exhibit are so rare and wonderful, we feel a responsibility to share them with others, in exhibitions such as this one, and to protect them so that future generations will also have the opportunity to enjoy them. 5 FIGURE I. Albrecht Dürer, Four Horsemen o f the Apocalypse, cat. no. 2 . 6 DÜRER TO GOYA: THREE CENTURIES OF PRINTMAKING FROM THE NEEDLES COLLECTION By Timothy Smith The present exhibition of old-master prints from the Needles Collection pro vides a rare glimpse into a world seldom considered by the public today, despite the common display of printed images in museums. Artistic printmaking in the West is as old as the printing press itself, yet the notion of printing as a cheap ly produced, disposable journalistic medium often colors perceptions of the aes thetic importance of fine prints. Indeed, in an age when any printed material, whether text or image, is endangered by our increasing reliability on computer and digital technologies, it is all the more appropriate to point out the unique qualities of this particular art form and trace its evolution and rise in status, which in part defines its worth.

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