Emil H. Richter

“ If we compare Italian and German graver-work of those days, a plate of Mantegna, for instance, and a plate of Schongauer, we shall readily perceive that in engraving the German master thinks in line. The Italian painter thinks, not in line, but in masses of light and shade, in terms of the antique marbles, which he has studied with such enthusiasm. His design goes on the copper as it would be jotted down on paper with the pen, without consideration of the graver, except that it seems a useful implement for multiplying his sketches, which are wanted in many studios and workshops. ”

“ Many regard this plate as the greatest engraving of the century. In a manner typical of those pomp-loving times, the eminent churchman is represented amidst columns and sweeping draperies. Here, indeed, we have the last word of technical resourcefulness in expanses of gorgeous silks and delicate laces, and many other textures and substances. If one should feel that all this elaboration of the setting distracts the attention from the portrait itself, he must blame the epoch and the painter whose design the engraver needs must follow. ”

“ If woodcut were dubbed the democrat among the graphic arts, certainly engraving must be called the aristocrat of the family. It originates in the goldsmith’s workshop, amidst a guild of skilled designers, who not unfrequently practice painting together with their craft. No wonder that in such hands engraving should shape itself along artistic lines from the start. ”

“ The outline swells and accents the form, the shading-strokes curve and bend to accent the rounding, the modeling of the figure; the quality, strength, tonality of the line varies with every texture which is to be expressed, such as the metal of the helmet, the feathers on the crest, the cloth, the leather, the wood, the hair. The modest means of black lines and white paper, which at first had seemed barely sufficient for suggestive outline and indications of the rounding of form, are now becoming a medium fit for the presentation of all the infinite phenomena of visible nature. ”

“ The graphic arts do not share with painting a development based upon a desire for æsthetic expression. Their origin is imitative, thoroughly democratic, and every process continues in that lowly sphere, until the genius of some powerful artist lifts it into realms of art. For the very reason of this utilitarian tendency, and because of a gamut of expression restricted to line and tone for15 the interpretation of a world of color and form, the graphic arts, even more than other forms of artistic expression, need the steady hand of the gifted artist to sustain them on a high plane of excellence. ”

“ They idealize a hollow, shamming society, which they carry into fairyland by an art true in its rendering of a play-acting world. The dimpled, rosy Venus, the shepherdess of well-rounded, shapely figure,—these ideals of beauty are not Greek, nor of the great Renaissance period. ”

“ From this versatile genius, delightful in his rendering of the human figure and likeness, who evokes with equal facility the shimmering vistas of Venetian lagoons or the quaintness of an old French street, who can fascinate with a fleeting glimpse of a fish-shop, or make a lovely vision of a foggy reach of the Thames, we must now turn to one who has forever fixed in his plates a truthful yet ideal likeness of old Paris. ”

“ What demand could there have been for the multiplying arts in that period of dense ignorance, of ceaseless struggle for life itself, for the bare necessities of life, for merely endurable conditions? The Church, the only institution of stability in this sea of unrest, became the repository of whatever remained of tradition and erudition,—mysteries, these, to be jealously guarded and held as a privilege of the clergy. ”

“ In Germany it rings in the culmination of artistic development under the leadership of Albrecht Dürer, whose towering personality lifts both engraving and woodcut to high levels of excellence. The cultivation of the technique of engraving has carried Germany far and away beyond the South, in a technical perfection duly appreciated in Italy; and when the demand for prints grows, when they become a marketable article, the Italian engraver copies German prints in order to gain the requisite technical knowledge. ”

“ Their prevalent breadth of treatment, devoid of small, niggling detail, their numerous women’s portraits, with soft, rounded forms, subtle transitions of tone, sparkling accents of light and blending depths of shadow, were admirably suited to the “black art.” Hence the rise, during the eighteenth century, of a large school of mezzotint engravers, who attained great perfection in their chosen medium, progressing from prints of a sooty, black appearance to plates of clear, fine texture, like the portrait of Mrs. Carnac here reproduced, an engraving by John Raphael113 Smith. ”

“ As the wood-engraver grew proficient in his technique, he widened his field by imitating the effect of etching or engraving on copper, in rivalry with this form of illustration. In this he succeeded so well that the other, more expensive modes of adornment were largely driven from the field of book illustration. With the advent of photography, the design could be fixed upon the wood block mechanically, accurately, without the trouble of a careful drawing. The values of tone in the photograph relieved the engraver from the work of translating color-values into black and white. ”

“ The time was at hand when the call for the multiplying arts would become imperative—compelling. Man looked about, and beheld a world full of beauty and abuses; he felt himself a unit, an individual, not merely part of the mass of mankind, and he was going to think for himself ”

“ Common to them all, despite their crudity, is a growing familiarity with woodcut, a realization of its possibilities and of its limitations. Artistic talent of a high order—compared with earlier productions—reveals itself, resulting from a division of labor. The artisan of the playing-cards and early saints’ pictures could never have risen to these heights of creative independence. ”

“ One personality stands out prominently in this period, a man with a message delivered by means of his prints, the painter-engraver William Hogarth, who, like Goya, uses the needle and graver as a medium for a powerful crusade against the social evils of his day. ”

“ The subtle continuity of thought, from the first conception to the finished plate, which we prize in original engraving, is necessarily destroyed in such collaboration, but the engraver, working exclusively on the copper plate, is able infinitely to vary and develop the resources of the process by dint of practice. ”

“ From a survey of prints in their varying national aspects, we have arrived now at that vast period of an art increasingly cosmopolitan, the nineteenth century. In these last hundred years nationality has blended together to a great extent; travel is not the serious matter of former times, a pastime rather than a venture; all races have intermingled in the great world-centers; students from far and near congregate in the centers of art. ”

“ The same Southern influence pervades the landscapes of Jan Both; they are very pleasing, technically fine, but the evil which creeps into Dutch art is quite evident here. The ideal landscape of Titian, Poussin, and Claude Lorrain gradually warps the former frank realistic rendering of nature; elegance, hollow display gradually take the place of the good, wholesome naturalness of Dutch art.
With the advent of the eighteenth century, painting and the graphic arts decline to levels which we may pass by in this rapid survey. ”

“ In the course of time, owing to an advantageous position or to intensity of commerce or industry, these one-time shelters grew into towns, rising in wealth, power, and independent spirit, girt about with strong walls and moats, each town a state within the state, protected by imperial grants and privileges, bound together by the common enmity of the feudal power, and within the walls by an ardent local patriotism. ”

“ Quite aside, however, from matters of composition and beauty of subject, the mere charm of intense shadow and brilliant high light, with transitions of breath-like delicacy, rendered with the velvety richness peculiar to mezzotint, will readily explain the vogue and costliness of such prints. No half-tone reproduction, however good, can convey an idea of the texture of mezzotinting. An examination of good, early impressions of mezzotint portraits by such men as McArdell, Watson, Ward, Green, Reynolds, or other notables of the scraper, will prove their merits much more convincingly than words. ”

“ Passing by numerous other delightful landscape etchers, Everdingen, Waterloo, Saftleven, likewise the gifted etcher of animals, Paul Potter, we must turn now to Nicolas Berghem, who combines animal life with landscape. In his masterpiece, known as the86 “Diamond,” there is apparent the close study of nature, characteristic of the period, also much clever mise en scène, but as we examine the plate more closely, we realize the admixture of Italian inspiration. The vigor of home influences is weakening, and the art of the South again asserts itself as we approach the eighteenth century. ”

“ As we follow engraving, it declines from a spontaneous exercise of the thinking, artistic mind into drudgery of systematized routine. Engraving becomes petrified into a thing of tradition, with elaborate systems of lines and dots, to be dutifully acquired during long years of apprenticeship. ”

“ Woodcut never was, in France, the important means of artistic expression which89 we have found it to have been in Germany. Its days sped by unheeded. The chief field of usefulness of the woodcut, the decoration and illustration of books and the sphere of the devotional print, were invaded by the intaglio processes. The woodcut lost ground everywhere in the seventeenth century; it had practically no share in solving the problems set to the graphic arts by the rising schools of Dutch, Flemish, and French painters. ”

“ Strong in their guilds and associations, in touch with each other and with the world by the constant travel of merchants and craftsmen, the towns became not only centers of wealth, but also the bearers of progressive thought, of art, of mental enlightenment. ”

“ We are apt not to appreciate the gravity of this Italian invasion, of this Southern supremacy in Northern art. Ideal perfection of form was a new language to the Germanic artists, accustomed to the realistic, faithful rendering of nature as they saw it, with all its facts, perfections, and imperfections alike. The change often meant that the artist forgot his native tongue, if the expression may be used—a harsh tongue, if you will, but sincere and expressive ”

“ They are overlooked, then seen, just as they would be in nature; they keep their subordinate places, and do not intrude and disturb the general effect of grand simplicity. Color is so well suggested by differentiations in handling and varying intensities of tone that one almost forgets the simple black and white presentation of the scene. As an example of Rembrandt’s mastery in etching applied to portraiture, no better print could be chosen than the “Janus Lutma,” especially if we can see it in the glorious richness exhibited by the first state of the plate. ”

“ In Germany engraving finds a ready welcome among other manifestations of an art essentially of the town, of the burgher, while the art of the Italian quattrocento celebrates its great triumphs in the erection or adornment of sumptuous edifices, under the fostering care of princes and prelates. The German naïvely depicts, with minute precision, the scenes and38 environments of his homely sphere; all subjects, whatever their time or country, are shifted into the familiar setting of his own time and his own surroundings. ”

“ It is a pleasure merely to look at their books. The material used is invariably parchment, the bindings in the Vatican and at Urbino, crimson velvet and silver. It could hardly be expected that these men, who spared neither pains nor expense to show their respect for the contents of a book, would view the advent of printing with anything like satisfaction. ”

“ This wave of Italian influence was felt in the immediate following of Dürer, in that group of painter-engravers, known to us as the “little masters,” though little only in the size of their plates. A high standard of technique is common to them all, with variations in their perfection. Variations there are also in the measure in which they yielded to Italian influence. Their graver was devoted to the rendering of a great variety of subjects; Northern characteristics are still evident in their portraits, in their Biblical scenes with German types of figures. ”

“ In the striking likeness of the painter Philippe de Champaigne, he has left us a splendid example of his powers. His plate after the “Madonna of Francis I,” by Raphael, is a model of interpretative engraving, and when he undertakes to reproduce the canvases of Lebrun, he produces98 prints admittedly more attractive and brilliant than the originals.
Another man whom we cannot afford to omit from even this hasty enumeration is Antoine Masson, were it only for that superb “gray-haired man,” the portrait of Guillaume de Brisacier, brilliant, powerful, revealing an absolute mastery of the graver. ”

“ Their churches were bare of any pictorial adornment; their art was forced, therefore, to develop mainly in the sphere of home life. If we term Rubens the leader of Flemish art, Rembrandt stands for the highest development of Dutch art. Between these two leaders lies a broad field with many blending, interweaving influences, many local characteristics, in this magnificent epoch. The only way to approach the subject in a few brief sentences is by considering as one vast unit the whole period of seventeenth-century art in the Netherlands, both Dutch and Flemish. ”

“ A stride toward the expression of color is to be perceived in this plate; great variety in the rendering of cloth, hair, lace, the face, the background and frame. The78 problem of expressing color, as well as form, now enters more and more into the sphere of engraving; a problem much more difficult than would appear at first thought. Here is the task which faces the engraver: he must keep true to the original he reproduces, true in form, true in color values, by a judicious gradation of tone. ”