Ink and Time: European Prints from the Wetmore Collection
This exhibition presents a group of woodcuts, engravings, and etchings from the late 15th through late 18th centuries drawn from the Wetmore Collection at Connecticut College. The collection was assembled in the early 20th century by Fanny S. Wetmore, and bequeathed to the College in 1930. From familiar favorites like Dürer’s Adam and Eve and Rembrandt’s Three Trees to hidden gems like the gold-sprinkled surface of Maria Katharina Prestel’s Virtue Overcoming Vice, the show explores more than three centuries of artistic innovation on paper.
Although little is known of Wetmore herself, her collecting activities place her within a tradition dating back to the rise of printmaking in early modern Europe. The surging production of prints by the beginning of the 16th century represented a sea change for both artists and consumers. For artists, prints provided additional revenue, increased their personal fame, and offered greater latitude for experimentation outside the traditional patronage structure. For consumers, prints represented access to visual art on an unprecedented scale; even those who would never have been able to commission an independent work from a great artist could now readily obtain an engraving or an etching. Prints were easily transported, could be pasted up on walls or into albums, and even large collections of them took up relatively little room. And, with the rise of reproductive printmaking, even geographically distant or physically inaccessible artworks could be added to the collector’s “paper museum.”
This exhibition is the second in the Museum’s history to have been co-curated with Fairfield University students, and has been supported by generous funding from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
Image: Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve, 1504, engraving