Philip Hamerton and Marion Spielmann

“ The disappearance of the art is due not so much to the artistic objection that the personality of the line-engraver stands obtrusively between the painter and the public; it is rather that the public refuse to wait for several years for the proofs for which they have subscribed, when by another method they can obtain their plates more quickly. An important line plate may occupy a prodigious time in the engraving ”

“ In Germany, as might be expected, line-engraving retains not a little of its popularity in its more orthodox form. The novel Stauffer-Bern method, in which freedom and lightness are obtained with such delicacy that the fine lines, employed in great numbers, run into tone, and yield a supposed advantage in modelling, has not been without appreciation. But the more usual virtue of the graver has been best supported, and many have worked in the old-fashioned manner. ”

“ From Dürer we come to Italy again, through Marcantonio, who copied Dürer, translating more than sixty of his woodcuts upon metal. It is one of the most remarkable things in the history of art, that a man who had trained himself by copying northern work, little removed from pure Gothicism, should have become soon afterwards the great engraver of Raphael, who was much pleased with his work and aided him by personal advice. Yet, although Raphael was a painter, and Marcantonio his interpreter, the reader is not to infer that engraving had as yet subordinated itself to painting. ”

“ In this early metal engraving the lines are often crossed in the shading, whereas in the earliest woodcuts they are not; the reason being that when lines are incised they can as easily be crossed as not, whereas, when they are reserved, the crossing involves much labour of a non-artistic kind. Here, then, we have pure line-engraving with the burin, that is, the engraving of the pure line patiently studied for its own beauty, and exhibited in an abstract manner, with care for natural form combined with inattention to the effects of nature. ”

“ The most important of the tools used in line-engraving is the burin, which is a bar of steel with one end fixed in a handle rather like a mushroom with one side cut away, the burin itself being shaped so that the cutting end when sharpened takes the form of a lozenge, point downwards. The burin acts exactly like a plough; it makes a furrow and turns out a shaving of metal as the plough turns the soil of a field. ”

“ Line engraving in Europe does not owe its origin to the woodcut, but to the chasing on goldsmiths’ work. The goldsmiths of Florence in the middle of the 15th century were in the habit of ornamenting their works by means of engraving, after which they filled up the hollows produced by the burin with a black enamel made of silver, lead and sulphur, the result being that the design was rendered much more visible by the opposition of the enamel and the metal. ”

“ Modern painting pays more attention to texture and chiaroscuro than classical painting did, and engraving necessarily followed in the same directions. But there is a certain sameness in pure line-engraving more favourable to some forms and textures than to others. This sameness of line-engraving, and its costliness, led to the adoption of mixed methods, extremely prevalent in commercial prints from popular artists. ”

“ The influence of Claude Lorrain on the engraving of landscape was exercised less through his etchings than his pictures, which compelled the engravers to study delicate distinctions in the values of light and dark. Through Woollett and Vivarès, Claude exercised an influence on landscape engraving almost equal to that of Raphael and Rubens on the engraving of the figure, though he did not direct his engravers personally. ”

“ The first influence on English line-engraving was Flemish, and came from Rubens through Vandyck, Vorsterman, and others; but the English engravers soon underwent French and Italian influences, for although Payne learned from a Fleming, Faithorne studied in France under Philippe de Champagne the painter and Robert Nanteuil the engraver. Sir Robert Strange studied in France under Philippe Lebas, and then five years in Italy, where he saturated his mind with Italian art. French engravers came to England as they went to Italy, so that the art of engraving became in the 18th century cosmopolitan. ”

“ When the surface of a metal plate is sufficiently polished to be used for engraving, the slightest scratch upon it will print as a black line, the degree of blackness being proportioned to the depth of the scratch. ”

“ The impulse came from the growth of public wealth, the increasing interest in art and the increase in the commerce of art, which, by means of engraving, fostered in England mainly by John Boydell, penetrated into the homes of the middle classes, as well as from the growing demand for illustrated books, which gave employment to engravers of first-rate ability. ”

“ The sky behind the figures is represented by white paper, and the foreground is sometimes occupied by flat decorative engraving, much nearer in feeling to calligraphy than to modern painting. Sometimes there is a cast shadow, but it is not studied, and is only used to give relief. ”

“ It contains thin lines and thick ones, and a considerable variety of curves. An elaborate line engraving, if it is a pure line engraving and nothing else, will contain only these simple elements in different combinations. The real line engraver is always engraving a line more or less broad and deep in one direction or another; he has no other business than this.
In the early Italian and early German prints, the line is used with such perfect simplicity of purpose that the methods of the artists are as obvious as if we saw them actually at work. ”

“ A. M. Danse executed plates after leading painters, and elaborated an effective “mixed method” of graver-work and dry-point; and de Meerman has engraved a number of good plates; but private patronage is hardly sufficient in Belgium to maintain the school in a state of prosperous efficiency. ”