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Rangefinder Magazine
June 2004

Inkjet Masterpieces:
Taking Home the Monet

Original digital file of Monet’s “Grainstack (Sunset),” 1891 taken by John Woolf of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Woolf is the technical wiz who heads up MFA, Boston’s Digital Department.

The gentle hues of Claude Monet’s signature water lilies. The swirling lines of a Japanese woodblock print. The play of light and shadow across a watercolor by John Singer Sargent. Many images linger with art enthusiasts long after visiting the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston.

Since the museum started using the Epson Stylus Pro 9600 inkjet printer to create digital fine art reproductions in-house, art enthusiasts can now enjoy these images even longer. The MFA’s digital imaging specialists are astounded at how seamlessly and affordably they can now produce long-lasting, certified fine art reproductions faithful to the original works of art. This is possible given their knowledge, experience and constant attention to industry trends and technological advances.

Today, patrons can take home favorite images as fine art prints, meticulously produced on Epson UltraSmooth Fine Art Paper with Epson UltraChrome Ink, from the Museum Bookstore & Shop and from the museum’s web site at www.mfa.org/.

The reproductions are also available for sale at galleries displaying MFA works on loan, through MFA traveling exhibitions to other venues, or via licensing agreements with corporate buyers or interior designers.

“ Digitizing works in the collection and actually seeing the result from our in-house specialists is an exciting step forward for museums like the MFA,” says Debra LaKind, MFA Head of Rights, Licensing and Visual Archives. “We’re amazed at how easy it is to create digital fine art reproductions that meet our requirements of color accuracy and longevity. The additional revenue stream generated by the sale of fine art prints allows us an opportunity to provide increased digital access to the collection.”

These images were taken during a special tour at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. The Monet exhibit was on loan from the MFA, Boston. Original works of art were displayed on the walls while the Epson museum-quality reproductions were displayed on easels.

The MFA’s Epson prints are also delighting visitors to the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art in Las Vegas, where many have purchased fine art prints of French Impressionist Claude Monet’s masterpieces at the Gallery Store. The Bellagio Gallery is offering the prints to complement its exhibition, “Claude Monet: Masterworks” from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, running until Sept. 13, 2004. The MFA agreed to loan 21 paintings from its world famous Monet collection.

“ The Bellagio venture has been another vehicle for the MFA to reach diverse art enthusiasts, those who are thrilled to stand in front of these masterpiece paintings and then take home reproductions of the original art they’ve just seen,” says LaKind.

The MFA is recognized for the quality and scope of its encyclopedic collections, which include an estimated 400,000 objects. As one of the country’s finest art museums, the MFA is famed for its Impressionist paintings, Asian and Egyptian collections, and early American art. One of the museum’s educational missions is to share its collections with as many individuals as possible. The Epson digital fine art prints have provided another means towards fulfilling that goal.

The amazing likeness starts with a high-resolution digital photograph of the museum’s original work of art, from which the fine art print is made. Rather than assigning the task to an outside vendor, digital imaging specialists within the museum then work on the digital image and painstakingly color match the printed reproduction against the original.

	Original and Epson digital print side by side. “The Water Lily Pond, 1900” by Claude Monet.

“ Who better to create the print than the museum staff itself?” says LaKind. “We have direct access to the work of art, so we can color correct against the original, not just the transparency or digital file. Further, we can draw from our vast archive of images and offer thousands of reproduction possibilities.”

John Woolf, the director of MFA’s Digital Services, is in charge of creating the digital files, which are photographed with a Sinarback 23 in 16-shot mode. With the Sinarback 23’s micro-scanning capability, the sensor is shifted with great precision by only half the size of a pixel for each of 16 exposures, so that spaces between individual pixels are also filled with information. The lens used in the process is also unique. It’s actually an enlarging lens, which has been adapted to this purpose—a Schneider APO-Componon HM, a lens Woolf considers one of the sharpest in the world.

The museum then produces the final print with the Epson Stylus Pro 9600 printer at true 1440x720dpi resolution. To meet the criteria of the MFA and its devotees, the printer, ink and paper must work as one system to recreate the work of art down to the finest detail. Before the print passes the museum’s quality-control inspection, the demure young woman’s fair skin tone in a reproduction of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s “Dance at Bougival” must flawlessly mimic the original masterpiece.

“ One reason the prints look so real is our proven photo lighting technique, which treats the painting as a 3D object with surface dimension,” says Woolf. The lighting, which uses multiple strobes, rakes across the surface of the original, revealing textural details. Since light in a studio environment falls off in intensity, the camera’s software is employed to even the overall density to within 1/10 stop across the entire surface of the painting. Woolf continues, “But the final key piece of the puzzle is the combination of Epson printer, inks and paper.”

	Detail of Grainstack (Sunset), 1891

The high standards of authenticity and longevity are achieved through the collaboration of the printer’s advanced Micro Piezo inkjet technology, Epson UltraChrome pigment inks and UltraSmooth Fine Art Paper. The MFA reproduces original works of art with exceptional accuracy.

An MFA treasure like Winslow Homer’s “The Blue Boat” doesn’t simply depict a blue boat; it creates a precise shade of blue as counterpoint to the color of the surrounding water and sky. The MFA has learned to pinpoint the slightest minutiae of a piece, or it couldn’t sell the fine art print to the discerning buyer.

Unlike dye-based inks and the inks used for printing posters, the Epson UltraChrome pigmented inking system is also one of the most archival ink sets currently available. Wilhelm Imaging Research, the leading independent testing lab for the longevity of color printing materials, estimates that with the Epson Stylus Pro 9600 and Epson UltraChrome pigment inks, prints framed under glass under normal indoor lighting conditions, will last over 100 years on Epson’s UltraSmooth Fine Art paper.

The MFA’s fine art prints are reproduced on Epson UltraSmooth Fine Art paper, a 100 percent cotton, acid-free, optical brightener free, buffered archival inkjet paper. The paper has an inkjet coating engineered for the highest resolution and color saturation possible with current digital printing technology.

“This could never have happened without UltraSmooth Fine Art paper,” says Woolf. “Its archival quality is a prerequisite for us to sell to the public, while the lack of optical brighteners, natural white base and smooth surface are essential for fine art reproduction.”

With exchangeable black ink modes, plus a new Light Black ink, the Stylus Pro 9600 also turns out excellent black and white prints from the museum’s photographic display—”Pyramids and Temples of the Nile,” originally recorded on 11x14-inch glass plate negatives.

Taking Home A Piece of History
“ The buyer who chooses our affordable MFA fine art prints is the same individual who would buy a high-quality lithograph for their home or office,” says LaKind. Unlike low-cost posters created by the thousands on offset presses, MFA fine art prints come with a certificate of authenticity. Unmatted, unframed reproductions can be made to order in various sizes.

The Epson Stylus Pro 9600 printer.

Art enthusiasts can browse through a selection of the MFA fine art prints at www.mfa-publications.org/. Along with offset posters, the museum also sells the fine art prints either unframed or framed in its Museum Bookstore & Shop. While the Stylus Pro 9600 can handle virtually any media type up to 44 inches wide, the MFA currently offers three sizes from 16x20 inches to 24x30 inches. The museum can also process custom orders and has plans to offer even larger sizes in the future.

The Epson printer has completely transformed the museum’s perception of what it can achieve through digital printing. “Only two years ago, we were relying on an outside vendor to produce our fine art prints,” says LaKind. “Now that we have complete control over the whole process, we find we’re doing a much better job overall.

“ We now have the tools to create outstanding, faithful reproductions of original works in our collections, and that kind of quality and consistency reflects well on the museum. I’m looking forward to where our in-house fine art digital printmaking will take us in the years to come.”