La Rentrée, no. 15 of a series of 25 prints (The Return)

Description

To make an etching a copper plate is covered with a waxy ground through which a design is drawn with a steel etching needle. The plate is then placed in a mordant, or acid bath, which bites, or eats into, the exposed metal. After the ground has been removed, any parts of the plate that the etcher wants to stay faint can be stopped out, or protected with varnish. Repeated immersions in the acid bath make deeper lines that print darker. When the ground is removed and the plate inked and wiped to leave ink only in the etched lines, a dampened sheet of paper is placed on the plate and both are pulled through a roller press.To create the texture of a crumbling stone wall, Jacque added dots with a "roulette". This tool has at one end a cylinder with sharp ridges that is rolled over the copper plate.