Reverse Image Print, What is it Called? Vlaminck

I bought this print of "Cottages at the Roadside" by Maurice Vlaminck. Couldn't find it online till I noticed that the image on the print I bought is the mirror image of the original painting. What would this type of print be called? Thanks.

 

@moreotherstuff

 

Thanks for tagging me. I'm not sure my knowledge is all of that in-depth.

This appears to be a photo mechanical print. As such, there's no good reason for it to be reversed.

They give it the title "Winter Landscape", which it is not. Well... Vlaminck did do winter landscapes with cottages on the left, so maybe the wrong color separations got sent to the printer with instructions that the cottages were on the left. Just a guess.

 

offset lithography..

 

Offset lithography, yes. But offset lithography is photo mechanical and doesn't explain why the image is reversed.

 

maybe to distinguish it from the original...

 

Could it be that some sort of projection process was used to transfer the image that reversed it? I have a print on silk (not sure whether it qualifies as a serigraph) of Albani's 'Amoretti dancing at the Rape of Proserpina' that is reversed.

 

I believe that this is a print that came off a press - some sort of rotary press. No idea how many copies were made. You would hope that, if it was a mistake, someone caught it. The process is capable of mass market production.

The thing is that to come off a press, printing plates had to be prepared. It's my understanding that the most common form of color printing is a 4-color separation. The original art is photographed 4 times with different colored filters to produce 4 single color images of the art (densities throughout the image favoring the color of the filter - and that gets into really technical stuff). One plate is produced for each color and the print is generated by overlapping color after color as the paper passes through the press.

Each of those single color images of the original art is a transparency (that's my understanding - if it's wrong, then all following is wrong). Because they are transparencies, the printing plates can be produced using either side of each transparency. If you use side "a" you get a properly oriented reproduction. If you use side "b" the image will be mirrored.

In this instance, for whatever reason, I think they made the printing plates using the wrong side of each transparency.

I don't think that an error of this type adds to the value - it may detract.

It is possible that, for some purposes, the printer simply doesn't care.

 

I showed this image before:


It's from La Fontaine's Fables. The original drawing, which I've never seen, was by Jean Baptiste Oudry. The plate was enrgaved by Louis-Claude Legrand. But between Oudry and Legrand was a third artist: Charles Nicolas Cochin. Cochin re-drew Oudry's drawing so that Legrand could engrave it. I haven't seen Cochin's drawing either, but I imagine it would have been a mirror image of Oudry's and en grisaille (monochrome) to facilitate the engraving.

If the maker of an intaglio print was to copy art verbatim onto a plate, then the image would be mirrored when printed. With an intaglio print, for the image orientation to be correct, the plate must be worked with its reverse. Makes it a lot easier for the engraver if he has an image at hand that is oriented to the plate and rendered in a gray scale.

It's my understanding that the Victorian Gustave Dore mostly produced monochromatic pen and ink and ink wash drawings that were farmed out to firms like the Brothers Dalziel for engraving.

 

Fair Warning: this is too much work.

 

And very informative, thanks!

 

I read it all, but I can't say I understand the process(es).

That's not to say MOS, that's it's because of your explanation. Not at all.

I have to see it to understand it, unfortunately for me.