Effect of Moon at Dieppe

The 1890s in France was not only a decade that produced marvelous color lithographs but also beautiful color etchings. This renaissance of color intaglio prints was the result of many factors, including an interest in French 18th-century etchings—an earlier period of glorious color printmaking—and the popularity of Japanese color woodcuts, introduced in France in the 1860s. Around 1885 Guérard, an inventive artist, began to experiment with color etching. In Effect of Moon at Dieppe, he realized the glow of the lights around the harbor and their reflections in the water by burnishing away etched lines on the plate so that nothing printed in these areas. The highlights, therefore, are the unprinted white paper.