Joseph Solman : monotypes

After buying a small cottage in Rockport, MA in 1967, Solman started to experiment with monotype printing when he was in Rockport from 1968. From his Smithsonian interview in 1981, Solman says….

“Well, in the early '50s someone had recommended Rockport as a nice place for a vacation. I still was working at the race track but I would get a month, a month and a half off during August when the ponies go to Saratoga. So we went there and we fell in love with it. Our two kids were very young and each summer we would go there for three weeks, five weeks, whatever I could afford. I would do some sketching then, maybe a little painting then, and we fell in love with that area. Well, I think all of New England is glorious.

And in 1967 through a few commissions and selling some paintings to a few dealers, I suddenly had for the first time in my life about $10,000 or $11,000 in the bank which seemed tremendous to me. When we visited our friend, Hans Moeller who invited us to Monhegan Island for eight days with him, they're wonderful people, on the way home we stopped off in Rockport to say hello to some friends, but I surprised my wife. While she was visiting, I went to a real estate agency and asked them if they had something around Rockport or Gloucester for such and such a price. So I said, "Good, I like that." So I called up my wife, said, "We're going for a ride." She says, "Where?" so I showed her. That was the first house they showed us, we fell in love with it and we bought it.

That's in '67. We didn't enter it until '68, although my son with his first wife had a honeymoon there. And that's where I began to take up monotypes because I had seen the great Degas show of '68 at the Fogg. I had tried monotypes long before on several occasions. I didn't know how the hell to do it. They came out very weakfish, but I found a book here called Monotype Printing by Rasmussen. I took that with me and after throwing away 15 monotypes, I finally developed my own method of printing with turpentine and sponge and from there on, that's what I do in the summertime. I go out sketching, take the long walks, and I do monotypes. I regard them as my country dances, my bagatelles, my little lay-to's, my fun - although I treat it very seriously, I work as hard on one of them sometimes as on an oil painting. And during the other eight and a half months I do my oil painting.”

Excerpts from “Monotype and Methods by Joseph Solman”, published in “The Monotypes of Joseph Solman”, Da Capo Press, New York, 1977.

“A Monotype is a single, printed impression produced by painting a picture or design on a flat surface of glass or metal, and transferring it onto a sheet of paper by means of pressure. The methods of pressure vary from rubbing by hand or spoon to a heavy roller or etching press. In effect the monotype combines the spontaneous quality of a drawing, wash or oil sketch with the “magical” impress of a fine print. The word monotype is used because the one transfer that is generally made removes most of the paint or ink from the surfaces of the plate.

The painting medium is usually oil thinned with turpentine, but printers’ ink or watercolor are also favored. Japan rice paper is preferred because of its excellent absorbent quality but fine-grained watercolor paper may be equally effective.”

Solman used a number of different techniques for his monotypes, some examples of which are shown here.