State (printmaking)

In printmaking, a state is a different form of a print, caused by a deliberate and permanent change to a matrix such as a copper plate (for engravings etc.) or woodblock (for woodcut).

Artists often take prints from a plate (or block, etc.) and then do further work on the plate before printing more impressions (copies). Sometimes two states may be printed on the same day, sometimes several years may elapse between them.

States are usually numbered in Roman numerals: I, II, III ..., and often as e.g.: "I/III", to indicate the first of three recorded states. Some recent scholars refine the work of their predecessors, without wishing to create a confusing new numbering, by identifying states such as "IIa", "IVb" and so forth. A print with no different states known is catalogued as "only state".

Most authorities do not count accidental damage to a plate – usually scratches on a metal plate or cracks in a woodcut block – as constituting different states, partly because scratches can disappear again after being printed a number of times.

The definition of states mostly goes back to Adam von Bartsch, the great cataloguer of old master prints. A great deal of work was done by art historians during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and most non-contemporary printmakers now have all the states of their prints catalogued. To discover a new or unrecorded state of an old master print is therefore now rare, although it was only in 1967, after it was sold to Cleveland, that it was realised that what had long been famous as the best impression of the highly important print, the Battle of the Nudes by Antonio del Pollaiuolo (1465–75) was the unique surviving impression of a previously unrecognised first state. This is especially surprising as the whole plate was extensively reworked between the two, apparently to renew it after it was worn from printing.

In modern prints, a distinction is made between proof states or working proofs, which are produced before the print is regarded as finished, and other states. This is usually possible because modern prints are issued in editions, usually signed and numbered. In the case of old master prints, before about 1830, this was not usually the case, and proof state is only used when the print is clearly half-finished, as with two impressions of Albrecht Dürer's Adam and Eve in the British Museum and the Albertina in Vienna. However, most "artist's proofs" are impressions of the main state which are not counted in the main limited edition numbers, and are taken by the artist; they are therefore from the same state as the main edition.

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