The Printmaker’s Art: Rembrandt to Rego

This accessibility has attracted a stunning array of artists over the centuries. A fact attested to by this superb exhibition of prints from the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS).

Displaying works that span more than 500 years of printmaking, this beautifully constructed show offers the viewer pictures by artists as diverse as the great German printmaker Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) and his compatriot Christiane Baumgartner (born 1967).

It also, by means of rooms dedicated to particular forms of printmaking (from engraving, through lithography to screenprinting), collects together works made using similar techniques and, crucially, explains those techniques by means of short videos made in Scotland’s various print studios.

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With its technical bases neatly and clearly covered, the exhibition’s greatest assets are its diversity (both chronologically and artistically) and the sheer quality of the art works on display.

From the Japanese iconographer Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) to the German Expressionist Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945), the Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) to the modern Portuguese fableist Paula Rego (below) (1935-2022), the number of works by truly great artists is almost head-spinning.

Indeed, it is a reflection of the productive capacity and relative accessibility of printmaking that the NGS are able to put this show together at all. Impressive though Scotland’s national art collection is, it is unimaginable that an exhibition of paintings held by the NGS would be able to bring together works by such an array of world class artists.

Here, for example, we have The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (about 1498) by, surely one of the greatest printmakers who ever lived, the German master Dürer. The picture depicts Death, Famine, War and Conquest as, with an angel observing from on high, they trample upon cowering humanity.

Dürer’s expressive genius is such that one can almost see the merciless movement and hear the relentless violence of the horsemen. Death here is the justice bringer, carrying a set of scales.

Reflecting the dark wit of the artist, famine is depicted as an old, famished man, riding an equally bedraggled, starved horse. Yet he is as remorseless as his partners in destruction, cackling maniacally as his horse crashes down on a bishop whose splendid mitre contrasts symbolically with hunger (and who, on closer inspection, is about to be devoured by a large monster).

There is bleak satire, too, in Where There’s a Will There’s a Way (created between 1819 and 1823) by the Spanish master Francisco de Goya (above) (1746-1828). Created in monochrome, the picture depicts the Icarus-like folly of human beings attempting means of self-propelled flight.

The reflected light from the men’s white bodies and the wings they have attached to themselves provide the contrast to the dark gloom in which they conduct their futile experiments. As so often with Goya, the work is humorous, empathetic, thought provoking and, in the brilliant etching that forms the basis for the print, hugely technically accomplished.

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Also in monochrome, Kollwitz’s etching Woman with Bowed Head (1905) reflects the artist’s political sympathies with the exploited and oppressed. The picture depicts a woman (presumably from the contemporary, industrial working-class, but also, in the stark simplicity of the image, almost timeless) her head bowed, not in defeat, but in thoughtful concern.

Worries and a life of travails are (almost literally) etched on her forehead. There is a defiance and a dignity here. An honest, socialistic sympathy on the part of an artist of the early-20th century which would be betrayed later in the century by the cynical (or, on the part of many artists, fearful) depictions of the working-class demanded by the state orchestrated ‘Socialist Realism’ of Stalin’s Soviet Union.

The Japanese printmaking tradition is an illustrious one, and one of the most beautiful colour prints in the exhibition is Shin Ōhashi Bridge (1926), by Kawase Hasui (1883-1957). Depicting the titular Tokyo landmark at night, in the rain, this woodcut sets the round hat of a wretched rickshaw man, the large umbrellas of pedestrians and the light from various street lamps against the iron darkness of the bridge’s ornate archway and the petrol blue tones created by the rainstorm.

As so often in Japanese art (think of the works of Hokusai or Hiroshi Yoshida), the picture is characterised by a gorgeous visual stylisation. Although it reflects certain human realities (not least the hard labour of the rickshaw man), its predominant visual aesthetic (not least of the shimmering reflection of the light on the wet cobblestones) is one of exquisite, romantic idealisation.

The pictures selected above are extraordinary art works, yet one could not describe them as highlights, such is this exhibition’s rich array of memorable prints by genuinely great artists. There are works here by such artists as William Blake, William Hogarth, Otto Dix, Laura Knight, Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso (above), Edvard Munch, Bridget Riley, Cornelia Parker and Chris Ofili. And that is to say nothing of artists who are Scottish, such as Eduardo Paolozzi, or have lived and worked in Scotland, like Mabel Royds and David Shrigley.

One leaves this show almost overwhelmed by the astonishing diversity of the collection, and by the history, ideas, artistic techniques and aesthetic styles contained within it. Not only that, one also leaves educated in the history and forms of the art of printmaking.

Rarely does one emerge from an exhibition of work by diverse artists (rather than a retrospective of one great artist) so entirely impressed. The Printmaker’s Art: Rembrandt to Rego is genuinely unmissable.

At the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh until February 25: nationalgalleries.org