‘Darker Side of Light’ at National Gallery of Art

The influential 19th-century French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire opined in pair of essays published in the 1860s that etching, above all other visual media, demanded complete honesty from the artist. Perhaps that’s why it’s the etchings, particularly those by the German symbolist Max Klinger, that are the most haunting of the 100-plus pieces featured in “The Darker Side of Light: Arts of Privacy 1850-1900.”

Klinger’s “Abduction” is part of a multi-print series he created, starring himself and inspired by a dream he had in 1878 of pursing a woman’s elbow-length glove. When the glove is snatched away by a dragon-like creature — well, better if you just go see it.

Mournful and psychologically intense, the “The Darker Side” reminds us that concurrent to the Impressionists’ veneration of the out-of-doors, other artists — well, sometimes the same artists, in the case of Mary Cassat or Edgar Degas — probed the landscape of the psychological with equal ardor and sensitivity. Cassat’s etching “Before the Fireplace (No. 1)” depicts a woman adrift in contemplation. Her’s is a solitude almost never seen in Impressionist works.

Indeed, most of these pieces were not shown publicly in the era of their creation. The prints and drawings, especially, would have been seen in collectors’ homes rather than salons or galleries, and most likely kept in portfolios rather than hung on the walls. Taking these pieces in, you understand why. Their surreal, occasionally unsettling, imagery would have been lousy as wallpaper; but as bold, even confrontational art, it rewards our contemplation — and demands it.