Etching and aquatint on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
Ten Etchings
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/peter-doig-2361" aria-label="More by Peter Doig" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Peter Doig</a>
Pond Life
Presented by the artist and Charles Booth-Clibborn 1997
adults
architecture
building - non-specific
figure
people
townscapes / man-made features
tree
<p><i>Ten Etchings</i> is Doig’s first print portfolio. As the title indicates, it is a suite of ten etchings. The portfolio was produced in an edition of thirty-five. Tate’s copy is one of six additional proof sets. Each print is individually signed and numbered ‘TC’ (Tate copy) by the artist. The portfolio is presented in a red artist’s solander box with title and colophon pages designed by Peter B. Willberg. It was printed at Hope Sufferance Press, London on 350gsm Zerkall paper and published by Charles Booth-Clibborn under his imprint, The Paragon Press.</p>
paper print etching aquatint
9 November 2012 – 20 January 2013
2013-01-20
9 November 2012 – 20 January 2013
2013-01-20
2012-11-09
Metropolitan Arts Centre (Belfast, UK)
2012-11-09
Peter Doig
Loan-out
From ‘Pond Life’
image: 173 × 277 mm
Presented by the artist and Charles Booth-Clibborn 1997
<p><i>Ten Etchings</i> is Doig’s first print portfolio. As the title indicates, it is a suite of ten etchings. The portfolio was produced in an edition of thirty-five. Tate’s copy is one of six additional proof sets. Each print is individually signed and numbered ‘TC’ (Tate copy) by the artist. The portfolio is presented in a red artist’s solander box with title and colophon pages designed by Peter B. Willberg. It was printed at Hope Sufferance Press, London on 350gsm Zerkall paper and published by Charles Booth-Clibborn under his imprint, The Paragon Press.  
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<br/>Doig had previously experimented with prints as a student at Wimbledon School of Art, London during his foundation course (1979-80) and made a few unpublished etchings in the early 1990s. He has described the process of making the portfolio <i>Ten Etchings</i> as ‘a way of cataloguing some of the work I had made over the previous years’ (quoted in Elliott, p.307), referring to the paintings he made between 1992 and early 1995. The paintings were based on altered photographs, either taken himself or sourced from such media as newspapers, magazines, postcards and books. Doig may draw or paint on the photographs, cut them up, collage them and photocopy them (often repeatedly) before they reach their final state. Several versions of an image are often made in large and small paintings as well as more intimate works on paper. Printing results in a further version of the image. Doig found the layering process of colour etching sympathetic to his painting process of building up colour and image in many stages. The prints comprising <i>Ten Etchings</i> were made using one or two plates and a range of etching techniques. Variety in texture and tone was created with aquatint (a process for creating an even tonal field), deep bite (a process which results in very dark tones), sugarlift (a process which allows the artist to paint marks that print rather than having to outline them negatively) and <i>chin collé</i> (a method of attaching a thin piece of paper to the surface of a print with glue during the process of printing). The individual prints were originally untitled, but were titled by the artist on publication of <i>Contemporary British Art in Print: The Publications of Charles Booth-Clibborn and his Imprint The Paragon Press 1995-2000</i> in 2001.
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<br/>Most of Doig’s paintings of the 1990s were inspired by the landscapes of rural Quebec, where the artist spent his childhood and adolescence. The images in <i>Ten Etchings</i> depict three principal themes, all related to this history: snowscapes, woodland scenes and modernist buildings in dense vegetation. The print <i>Ski Jacket </i>(<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/doig-ski-jacket-p11471" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P11471</span></a>) depicts small figures silhouetted in black against a pale pink ground. The image was derived from a detail of the photograph that Doig used as the basis for his large painting of the same title made in 1994 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/doig-ski-jacket-t06962" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>T06962</span></a>). Their roughly delineated forms were created by the sugarlift process. A similar effect is visible in <i>From ‘Pond Life’</i>,<i> </i>in which three silhouetted black figures stand with their backs toward the viewer on a creamy pink surface in front of part of a building and some trees. In the painted version of this image, <i>Pond Life</i> 1993 (private collection, London), the foreground is a mass of colour and line representing the reflections of the building and vegetation in the background. The figures are standing on the frozen surface of a pond. In the print, they appear to be standing in open space. The same image is depicted in another print in the portfolio with the same title, <i>From ‘Pond Life’</i> (<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/doig-from-pond-life-p11477" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P11477</span></a>). In this print the rather crude, thick dark lines of <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/doig-from-pond-life-p11474" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P11474</span></a> are replaced by fine black lines etched on woodgrain <i>chin collé</i>. Definition of the figures’ clothes, the architectural details of the log cabin at the top of the image and the slender trunks and branches of trees are all now visible. The surface on which the people stand reads as land in front of the cabin. <i>White Out</i> (<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/doig-white-out-p11480" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P11480</span></a>) has a similar composition with a figure in an empty snow-covered foreground walking towards snow-laden trees in the upper half of the print. Areas of solid black combined with fine scribbly lines are printed onto light blue <i>chin collé</i>
paper, which gives its colour to the areas of snow.
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<br/><b>Further reading:</b>
<br/>Patrick Elliott, Jeremy Lewison, <i>Contemporary Art in Print: The Publications of Charles Booth-Clibborn and his Imprint The Paragon Press 1995-2000</i>, London 2001, pp.46-59, 307 and 334, reproduced p.54 in colour.
<br/><i>Peter Doig: Blizzard seventy-seven</i>, exhibition catalogue, Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Kunsthalle 
<br/>Nurnberg, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London 1998.
<br/>Paul Bonaventura, ‘Peter Doig: A Hunter in the Snow’, <i>Artefactum</i>, autumn 1994, XI, 53, pp.12-15.
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<br/>Elizabeth Manchester 
<br/>October 2002/Febuary 2008
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<br/></p>

Summary
2008-02-19T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<p>From a Portfolio of ten etchings printed in aquatint on Zerkall Paper. Proofed and editioned at Hope Sufferance Press, London. The prints were presented with a solander box, title page and colophon. All prints are signed individually by the artist.</p><p>Calvin Winner<br/>February 1998<br/></p>
Technique and condition
2001-09-05T00:00:00
technique-and-condition
TECHNIQUE_AND_CONDITION_TEXT
adults architecture building - non-specific figure people townscapes / man-made features tree