Daylilies
Item
Title
Daylilies
Creator
Peter Milton
American, b. 1930
American, b. 1930
Date
1975
Materials
Photosensitive-ground etching, engraving, and direct photographic transfer
Measurements
19-3/4 x 31-7/8 in. (50.2 x 81 cm)
Description
Peter Milton didn't develop an interest in art until he started classes at Yale University in 1950. After graduating with a B. F. A., he concentrated on forging a career in painting, supporting himself through a variety of day jobs, including the position of drawing instructor, first back at Yale (where he would later earn an M. F. A.) starting in 1960, and then at the Maryland Institute College of Art, from 1961 through 1968. After discovering he was inflicted with color blindness in 1962, Milton relinquished his work on canvas and turned instead to etching, a medium in which he became so proficient that by 1970 he was able to terminate his teaching and devote himself full time to printmaking.
Daylilies began as a drawing, titled The Theft, which Milton had meticulously copied from an illustration found in an old book on dirigibles and augmented with images appropriated from several photographs by André Kertész. The drawing had recently been sent to an exhibition in Yugoslavia, but Milton had a photograph, which he enlarged onto a sheet of Kodalith, a black-and-white film manufactured by Kodak, to form the essence of the composition that rests above the mantle in the print. To this he added, on top of and around the original tableau, drawings after other photographs he had gathered for the project, including a portrait photo of Frank Cushing by Thomas Eakins, which here dominates the foreground. To transfer the design, the artist laid the Kodalith over a copper plate coated with photoresist and exposed to it ultraviolet light, thus embedding the drawing into the ground and rendering the plate suitably prepared to be etched, inked, and printed as an intaglio.
Daylilies began as a drawing, titled The Theft, which Milton had meticulously copied from an illustration found in an old book on dirigibles and augmented with images appropriated from several photographs by André Kertész. The drawing had recently been sent to an exhibition in Yugoslavia, but Milton had a photograph, which he enlarged onto a sheet of Kodalith, a black-and-white film manufactured by Kodak, to form the essence of the composition that rests above the mantle in the print. To this he added, on top of and around the original tableau, drawings after other photographs he had gathered for the project, including a portrait photo of Frank Cushing by Thomas Eakins, which here dominates the foreground. To transfer the design, the artist laid the Kodalith over a copper plate coated with photoresist and exposed to it ultraviolet light, thus embedding the drawing into the ground and rendering the plate suitably prepared to be etched, inked, and printed as an intaglio.
Source
Palmer Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania State University.
Identifier
75.135
Rights
This image is posted publicly for non-profit educational uses, excluding printed publication. Other uses are not permitted.