Fine prints

Artists’ prints have been around for almost as long as the printed book. Indeed, they have similar origins in Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press and the boom in book and paper production that followed. Consequently, although the art dealer Bernard Jacobson has been around for quite a while — his gallery celebrated its 50th anniversary this year — and began as a print publisher, he arrived on the scene rather too late to have acted for Albrecht Dürer in person. Nonetheless, and for good reasons, it is with Dürer that he begins his current exhibition, Prints I wish I had published.

Dürer was the first great artist to achieve fame by selling multiple editions of engravings and woodcuts rather than unique pictures. He was also an example of another phenomenon: the draughtsman of genius whose prints were better than his paintings. The same was true of Francisco Goya, work by whom features in Jacobson’s selection, at least in the opinion of Lucian Freud (who doesn’t, but perhaps deserved a place).

This brings us to a crucial point, which is subtly made throughout this beautifully selected and presented exhibition. Namely, that prints are generally less expensive than paintings, because in more plentiful supply, but they are not necessarily inferior. Indeed, they may be just as good or better. Gauguin is another artist whose graphic work was far from secondary. He had a particular affinity for the roughness of woodcuts — there are several examples in the show — and his works in this medium were often tougher and more radical than his oils.

Some great painters make no prints at all. Others find that a certain type of print medium suits them, and stick to it. Thus Patrick Caulfield concentrated on the screenprint, of which he was a master.