Visual art reviews: Masterworks in Black and White | Katie Horsman | Heather Ross

Collecting etchings used to be big business – and a source of comedy – but since the market's collapse we have forgotten their intricate beauty

Masterworks in Black and White ***

Katie Horsman: Centenary Exhibition ****

Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh

Heather Ross ***

Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh

COME up and see my etchings! A comedy chat-up line from another era, it probably never did score, but beyond a general sense of sinister intention, it would be pretty well incomprehensible now. It is worth a moment of deconstruction though. How, for instance, do we know without gloss that the implicit situation is of a probably elderly and certainly wealthy man for whom aesthetics slide effortlessly into lechery and a young female ingenue of artistic inclinations?

It all hinges on the fact that 100 years ago contemporary etchings were much sought-after. If you had a collection, you were a connoisseur. The latest prints were the subject of excited arty conversations, too. Hence the idea that the ingnue might be expected to imagine they would interest her. They could also be very expensive. Hence in turn the implication that their owner was rich. Nobody would have a collection of etchings who was not wealthy. Finally, if the would-be seducer really was a connoisseur, because the surface texture of an etching is important, his etchings would probably not be framed on the wall, but kept in portfolios, carefully layered with tissue. Looking at them would be very cosy.

It all changed with the great crash of 1929. Artists went on working, but the bottom had dropped out of the market. Nor do art values always rise. Even now, and even for the stars, prices have not returned to the equivalent value they had then.

DY Cameron's Ben Ledi, an accepted masterpiece, which sold for 150 in 1919, roughly equivalent to 6,500, might only fetch 4,500 now, and even that price has only been reached after a long, slow climb back into favour. Cameron was the leader among a group of Scottish artists who achieved fame from their etchings in the late 19th century and first decades of the 20th. It was Whistler who had been the principal instigator of the etching revival of which they were part. Such was the fashion that he made a good part of his living from his suites of etchings. Others followed suit.

The Scottish Gallery has several prime examples of Cameron's etchings in a small show called Masterworks in Black and White. Etching is a method of burning with acid a line drawn onto a metal surface and then printing from it.

Its appeal lies in the way it combines sharpness of drawing with a wide range of tone and intensity and, of course, the ability to produce multiples – although in numbers strictly controlled to maintain both quality and price, hence the much abused phrase "limited edition".

The range of pure etching is further enlarged by drypoint, scratching the surface of the plate directly to create a richer line, and aquatint – where the acid burns not line but area, creating a deep velvety black.

Looking at this little group, however, it is the drawing that is immediately striking. There is a print by Cameron of group of medieval houses in Beauvais, for instance, where he combines etching and drypoint to give an almost tangible quality to the structure of the houses. You can see here the influence of the great French artist Charles Meryon, whose etchings of Paris were much admired by Baudelaire.

Cameron brought the same intensity of vision to his views of the Scottish Highlands. In both Glen Strae, Argyll, and Elcho on the Tay, he contrasts the deep shadow of trees lining the banks of loch or river with lightly drawn mountains beyond. Because of its intensity and concentration, etching can also be effective on a very small scale and Cameron's Paps of Glencoe presents real Highland drama in a tiny compass.

James McBey was another Scottish master etcher. Self-taught and from Aberdeen, like Cameron he was celebrated far beyond Scotland. Old Torry, Aberdeen is a beautifully intricate image of fishing boats moored against the pier in Aberdeen harbour. If Aberdeen has taken on a little of the look of Venice, that is not surprising, as McBey was much influenced by Whistler and in September Sunset, Venice, he pays direct homage to Whistler's famous Venetian scenes.

There are also impressive prints by English artists too, like Edward Blampied and, most strikingly, Gerald Brockhurst whose highly finished portraits, here of a boy called Caspar and of an unnamed ballet dancer, have an almost uncanny sense of the sitter's presence.

After 1929, there was little to encourage younger artists to take up printmaking, but here in Scotland, ES Lumsden, a passionate champion of the art and a brilliant practitioner, played a central role keeping it alive. He himself is represented here, not by an etching, but by a characteristic drawing, an uncompromising view of the tall backs of the houses beneath Calton Hill in Edinburgh that were swept away long ago to leave the vast hole that is now part car park and part Omni Centre.

It was Lumsden who, in the 1930s, encouraged young artists like William Wilson and Ian Fleming to take etching seriously again.

The brilliant results are seen here in Wilson's magnificent St Martin's Bridge, Toledo. Gone are the dancing lights of Whistler, or even the atmospheric contrasts of Cameron. Instead there is a rugged vision of piled-up masses of rocks and buildings where geology and ancient architecture seem interchangeably part of the same long story. It's a masterpiece and Wilson's prices have risen, too. he was working at the market's nadir and if he sold it all, the print probably went for a few pounds. Now it is almost 2,000.

There was a direct link between this generation and the revival of print making in Scotland after the war. Elizabeth Blackadder was one of the first of the younger generation to take it up and has gone on to become a major printmaker. There is one small etching of Roman ruins by her here, but her prints are the subject of a major retrospective in Glasgow Print Studios opening this week to parallel her retrospective at the Scottish National Gallery.

Before you leave the Scottish Gallery, alongside a stock show in the main gallery is a retrospective to mark the centenary of Katie Horsman. She came to Edinburgh to teach ceramics at the College of Art during the Second World War. There are a few of her charming pots here, but the show is mainly of her less familiar work as a painter. Views of Edinburgh, the Highlands, or places she visited further afield in Europe and America, they are all in gouache or watercolour, but are richly painted, lively and informal and have a close affinity with Anne Redpath.

Finally a bit of sad news. For 22 years Alastair Salvesen has funded the Salvesen Scholarships at the Royal Scottish Academy, but this year's show by scholarship winner Heather Ross will be the last. The scholarship has given young graduates a chance to travel to a destination of their choice and bring back work for an exhibition in the RSA. It has been a big success. Ross has been to Japan and her exhibition explores her reaction to Japanese culture, all the more disorienting because superficially it bears so much similarity to our own, yet is really very different indeed.

Some of her notes and records are more revealing of her baffled reaction to all this – not least the emotional shock of visiting Hiroshima – than the more finished works, but overall the impression is of a lively mind racing to make sense from confusion. The scholarship is now coming to an end, however, not because Alastair Salvesen has withdrawn his funding, but because the RSA feels it has to move on. It does seem a shame that something of such proven value should end apparently for no very good reason.

• Masterworks in Black and White and Katie Horsman run until 30 July; Heather Ross until 26 July