ENGRAVING IN FRANCE AND IN OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. NEW PROCESSES: STIPPLE, CRAYON, COLOUR, AND
AQUATINT.
Morin, Nanteuil, Masson, and the other portrait engravers of the
period, in spite of the variety of their talent, left their immediate
successors a similar body of doctrine and a common tradition. Now
the works of the painter Rigaud, whose importance had considerably
increased towards the end of the reign of Louis XIV., made certain
modifications of this severe tradition necessary on the part of the
artists employed to engrave them. Portraits, for the most part bust
portraits, relieved against an almost naked background, were no longer
in fashion. To render a crowd of accessories which, while enriching
the composition, frequently encumbered it beyond measure, became the
problem in engraving. It was successfully solved by Pierre Drevet, his
son Pierre Imbert, and his nephew Claude Drevet, this last the author,
amongst other plates now much prized, of a "Guillaume de Vintimille"
and a "Count Zinzendorff."
The first of these three engravers--at Lyons the pupil of Germain
Audran, and at Paris of Antoine Masson--engraved, with some few
exceptions, only portraits, the best known of which are a full-length
"Louis XIV.," "Louis XV. as a Child," "Cardinal Fleury," and "Count
Toulouse;" they attest an extreme skill of hand, and a keen perception
of the special characteristics of the originals. The second, the
similarity of whose Christian name has often caused him to be mistaken
for his father, showed himself from the first still more skilful and
more certain of his own powers. He was only twenty-six when he finished
his full-length "Bossuet," in which the precision of the handling,
the exactness and brilliancy of the burin work, seem to indicate a
talent already arrived at maturity. In this plate, indeed, and in some
others by the same engraver--as the "Cardinal Dubois," the "Adrienne
Lecouvreur," and others--there are parts, perhaps, that seem almost
worthy of Nanteuil himself. It is impossible to imitate with greater
nicety the richness of ermine, the delicacy of lace, and the polish
and brilliancy of gilding; but the subtle delicacy of physiognomy, the
elasticity of living flesh which animated the portraits of the earlier
masters, will here be looked for in vain. Such work is the outcome of
an art no longer supreme, albeit of a very high order still.
As much may be said of the best historical plates engraved in France
under the Regency, and in the first years of Louis XV. The older
manner, it is true, was still perceptible, but it was beginning to
change, and was soon to be concealed more and more under a parade of
craftsmanship amusingly self-conscious, and an elegance refined to the
point of affectation.
[Illustration: FIG. 87.--LAURENT CARS.
"L'Avare." From Boucher's "Molière."]
The French engravers of the time of Louis XV. may be divided into two
distinct groups: the one submitting to the authority of Rigaud, and
partially preserving the tradition of the last century; the other, of
greater numerical importance, and in some respects of greater ability,
but, in imitation of Watteau and his followers, seeking success in
attractiveness of subject, grace of handling, and the expression of a
general prettiness, rather than in the faithful rendering of truth.
As we know, the manners of the time were not calculated to discourage
a like tendency, which, indeed, grew more and more general amongst
artists during the whole course of the eighteenth century, until it
ended in a revolution, as radical in its way as the great political
one: namely, the exclusive worship of a somewhat barren simplicity and
of the antique narrowly understood.
In 1750 (that is to say, almost at the very time of the birth of David,
the future reformer of the school) the public asked nothing more of
art than a passing amusement. The immediate successors of Lebrun
had brought the historical style into great disrepute. People had
wearied of the pompous parade of allegory, the tyranny of splendour,
the monotony of luxury; they took refuge in another extreme--in the
exaggeration of grace and all the coquetries of sentiment. Pastorals,
or would-be pastorals, and subjects for the most part mythological,
took the place of heroic actions and academical apotheoses. They had
not a whit more nature than these others, but they had at any rate
more interest for the mind, and greater charm for the eye.
[Illustration: FIG. 88.--LAURENT CARS.
"Le Dépit Amoureux." From Boucher's "Molière."]
From the point of view of engraving alone, the prints published
in France at this time are for the most part models of spirit and
delicacy, as those of the Louis XIV. masters are of learned execution
and vigorous conception. Moreover, under the frivolous forms affected
by French engraving in the eighteenth century, something not
unfrequently survives of the masterly skill and science of the older
men. It is to be supposed that Laurent Cars remembered the example
of Gérard Audran, and, in his own way, succeeded in perpetuating it
when he engraved Lemoyne's "Hercule et Omphale," and "Délivrance
d'Andromède." Even when he was reproducing such fantasies as the "Fête
vénitienne" of Watteau, or scenes of plain family life, like Chardin's
"Amusements de la Vie privée," and "La Serinette," he had the art of
supplementing from his own taste whatever strength and dignity his
originals might lack. Was it not, too, by appropriating the doctrine,
or at least the method, of Audran--his free alliance of the burin with
the needle--that Nicolas de Larmessin, Lebas, Lépicié, Aveline, Duflos,
Dupuis, and others, produced their charming transcripts of Pater,
Lancret, Boucher himself--in spite of his impertinences of manner and
his unpleasant falseness of colour--and, above all, Watteau, of all
the masters of the eighteenth century the best understood and the most
brilliantly interpretated by the engravers? A while later, Greuze had
the honour to occupy them most; and some among them, as Levasseur
and Flipart, did not fail to acquit themselves with ability of a task
rendered peculiarly difficult by the flaccid and laboured execution of
the originals.
[Illustration: FIG. 89.--CHEDEL.
"Arlequin Jaloux." After Watteau.]
However summary our description of the progress of French engraving
during the whole of the reign of Louis XV., or the early years of
Louis XVI., it is scarcely possible not to mention, side by side
with historical and genre engraving, the countless illustrations--of
novels, fables, songs, and publications of every description--the
general aspect of which so strongly bears witness to the fertility and
grace of French art at that time. It is difficult to omit the names of
those agreeable engravers of dainty subjects, not seldom of their own
design: those _poetæ minores_, the vaudevillists of the burin, who,
from the interpreters of Gravelot, Eisen, and Gabriel de St. Aubin to
Choffard, from Cochin to Moreau, have left us so much work steeped in
the richest, the most varied imagination, or informed by an exquisite
natural perception. Ready and ingenious above all others, delicate even
in their most capricious flights, witty before everything, they are
artists whose accomplishment, in spite of its appearance of frivolity,
is not to be matched for delicacy and science in the work of any other
epoch, or the school of any other country.
[Illustration: FIG. 90.--COCHIN.
"La Main Chaude." After De Troy.]
Placed, in some sort, at an equal distance from the contemporary
historical engravers and the engravers of illustrations, and divided,
as it were, between the recollections of the past and the examples of
the present, Ficquet, and some years later, Augustin de St. Aubin,
produced the little portraits which are as popular now as then. The
portraits of Ficquet are prized above all; though those of St. Aubin,
in spite of their small size, exhibit a largeness and firmness of
modelling not to be found in work that is sometimes preferred to
them. What is more, Ficquet's plates are generally only reductions of
prints already published by other engravers, Nanteuil, Edelinck, and
the rest; whilst the portraits of St. Aubin have the merit of being
directly taken from original pictures or drawings. As a rule, however,
these portraits are relieved on a dead black ground, without gradation
or variety of effect; and it is probably to the somewhat harsh and
monotonous aspect thus produced that we must attribute the comparative
disfavour with which they are regarded.
It is also permissible to suppose that Ficquet's almost microscopic
prints, like those of his imitators, Savart and Grateloup, owe much
of their popularity to their extreme finish. When the mind is not
exercised in discerning the essential parts of an art, the eye is apt
to look upon excessive neatness of workmanship as the certain evidence
of perfection. As people insensible to the charm of painting fall
confidingly into raptures over the pictures of Carlo Dolci, Gerard
Dow, and Denner, so, it maybe, certain admirers of Ficquet esteem his
talent in proportion to the exaggerated cleanness and carefulness of
his plates. Yet his real merit does not entirely rest on such secondary
considerations. Many of his small portraits, most of them intended as
illustrations, are remarkable for firm drawing and delicate facial
expression; and if the work were generally simpler and less crowded
with half-tints, it might be classed, as miniature in line, with
Petitot's enamels.
[Illustration: FIG. 91.--AUGUSTIN DE ST. AUBIN.
Rameau. After Caffieri.]
The analogy, however, can only be supported with regard to their
talent; their dispositions differ in every point. The painter Petitot,
a fervent Calvinist, whose life presents a curious contrast with
the worldly character of his work, had the honour to attract the
attention of Bossuet, who, it is said, attempted to convert him. He was
imprisoned at For-l'Evêque after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
and only quitted it to devote himself to solitude and study. Ficquet,
for his part, took no interest whatever in religious questions, and
gave up every spare moment to the pursuit of pleasure; he was, besides,
for ever short of money, and was perpetually hunted by his creditors,
who, weary of struggling, usually ended by installing him in their own
houses to finish a plate for them.
It was in this way that he came to spend nearly two months at St.
Cyr, in the very heart of which community he engraved his "Mme. de
Maintenon," after Mignard. This portrait, paid for long previously to
the last farthing, made no progress whatever; and the Mother Superior,
having exhausted prayers and reproaches, and despairing of seeing it
finished, addressed herself to the metropolitan. From him she obtained
permission to introduce the artist into the convent, and to keep him
there till the accomplishment of his task. But things went on no
better. Ficquet, bored to death in his seclusion, simply slept out the
time, and never touched his graver. One day he sent for the Superior,
and told her that if he stayed at St. Cyr to all eternity, he could
not work in the solitude they had made for him; amusement he must and
would have, and in default of better, it must be the conversation of
the nuns; he added, in a word, that he refused to finish the portrait
unless some of them came every day to keep him company. His conditions
were accepted; and to encourage him still further, some of the pupils
accompanied the nuns, and played and sang to him in his room. At
length the long-expected plate was ready; but Ficquet, disgusted
with the work, destroyed it, and would only consent to begin again
on the promise of instant liberty and a still larger sum. By these
means the nuns of St. Cyr at last became possessed of the likeness of
their foundress, and the little "Mme. de Maintenon"--which is perhaps
Ficquet's masterpiece--made up to them for the strange exactions with
which they had had to comply.
As the habit of employing etching in the execution of their works had
gained ground among artists, the temptation to have recourse to this
speedy process had vanquished one person after another, even those
who seemed least likely to yield, whether from their position in
society, or their former methods. There were soon as many amateur as
professional engravers; and learning the use of the needle well enough
to sketch a pastoral was soon as fashionable as turning a madrigal.
Among the first to set the example was the Regent; he engraved a set of
illustrations for an edition of "Daphnis et Chloe," and his initiative
was followed by crowds of all ranks: great lords like the Duc de
Chevreuse and the Marquis de Coigny; gentlemen of the gown, like the
Président de Gravelle; financiers, scholars, and men of letters, like
Watelet, Count Caylus, and D'Argenville.[44] Court ladies and the wives
of plain citizens joined the throng; from the Duchesse de Luynes and
the Queen herself, to Mme. de Pompadour and Mme. Reboul (who afterwards
married the painter Vien), there were scores of women who amused
themselves by engraving, to say nothing of the many who made it a
profession.
The drawback of such pastimes, innocent enough in themselves, was
that they degraded art into a frivolous amusement, and promulgated
a false view of its capabilities and real object. This is what very
generally happens when, on the strength of a certain degree of taste,
mistaken for talent, people aspire to compass, without reflection or
study, results only to be attained by knowledge and experience. The
authors of such hasty work think art easy, because they are ignorant
of its essentials; and the public, in its turn mistaken as to these,
accepts appearances for reality, becomes accustomed to the pretence of
merit, and loses all taste for true superiority. Every art may be thus
perverted; and in our own days, amateur water colours, statuettes, and
waltzes are as injurious to painting, sculpture, and music, as, in
former days, the amusement of print-making was to engraving.
Moreover, it was not art only that these prints began to injure.
Prompted by gallantry, as understood by the younger Crébillon and
Voisenon when they wrote their experiences, they often presented to
the eyes of women scenes to the description of which they would not
have listened: as a certain lady is reported to have asked Baron de
Besenval, during the relation of an embarrassing adventure, to "draw
a picture-puzzle of what he couldn't tell her." Often, however,
engraving, as practised in the salons, appealed to quite another
order of passions and ideas. In support of the great cause of the
day--philosophy--all weapons seemed fair, and the needle was used to
disseminate the new evangel. When Mme. de Pompadour, in her little
engraving, the proofs of which were fought for by her courtiers,
attempted to show "The Genius of the Arts Protecting France," she set
no very dangerous example, and only proved one thing--that the said
Genius did not so carefully protect the kingdom as to exclude the
possibility of platitude. But when the _habitués_ of Mme. d'Épinay
and D'Holbach set themselves in their little prints to attack certain
so-called mental superstitions, they unconsciously opened the door to
people of a more radical turn of mind. Before the end of the century
prints a good deal more crudely energetic appeared on the same subject;
and the pothouse engravers, in their turn, illustrated the _Père
Duchêne_, as the drawing-room engravers had illustrated the "Essai sur
les Mœurs" and the "Encyclopédie."
Although the engraving of illustrations, or at least "light" subjects,
was, in the eighteenth century, almost the only sort practised in
France, even by the most eminent artists, some of these imparted to
their productions a severer significance, and an appearance more in
harmony with that of former work. Several--pupils of Nicolas Henri
Tardieu, or of Dupuis--resisted with much constancy the encroachment of
the fashionable style, and passed on to their scholars of all nations
those teachings they had received in their youth. The Germans, Joseph
Wagner, Martin Preisler, Schmidt, John George Wille; the Italian,
Porporati; the Spaniards, Carmona and Pascal Molés; the Englishmen,
Strange, Ingram, Ryland, and others, came, at close intervals, for
instruction or improvement in this school. In Paris they published
plates of various degrees of excellence; but, in the greater part of
these, the nationality and personal sentiment of their authors are
obliterated in acquired habits of taste and handling.
Wille's prints, for instance--those even which have most contributed
to his fame, "Paternal Instruction," after Terburg, or the "Dutchwoman
Knitting," after Mieris--might just as well, for anything one sees
to the contrary, have been the work of a French engraver of the same
period. They only differ from plates bearing the name of Beauvarlet or
of Daullé in a certain Teutonic excess of coldness in the handling; in
a somewhat staid, and, as it were, metallic stiffness of arrangement.
Carmona's "François Boucher," and his "Colin de Vermont," after Roslin,
and Porporati's "Tancrède et Clorinde," after Carle Vanloo, have
still less of the stamp of originality.
[Illustration: FIG. 92.--PORPORATI.
Susannah. After Santerre.]
Finally, with the exception of Ryland, by reason of the particular
process he employed, and of which we shall presently have to
speak--and especially of Strange, who has his own peculiar mode of
feeling, and a sort of merit peculiar to himself--none of the English
engravers trained in the French school fail to show the signs of close
relationship. Engravers of more original talent must be looked for
neither amongst historical nor portrait engravers, nor even amongst
engravers of genre. For information as to the state of the art outside
of France, and apart from the French school, we must rather turn to
the illustrations of books and almanacs engraved by Chodowiecki at
Dantzic or Berlin, or to the vast plates from ancient Roman monuments
etched--not without a certain rhetorical emphasis--by Piranesi.
As for other second or third rate foreign engravers of the period,
as for those _ragionevoli_ (as Vasari would have called them) whose
work, if undeserving of oblivion, is likewise undeserving of attentive
examination, we shall have done our part if we mention certain amongst
them: as J. Houbraken, who worked at Dordrecht; Domenichino Cunego, of
Rome; Weirotter, of Vienna; and Fernando Selma, of Madrid.
Meanwhile, in France and other countries, by royal command, or at
the expense of rich amateurs, important series of prints were being
published in commemoration of public events, or in illustration of
famous collections of painting and sculpture. The first of the latter
order was the "Galerie de Versailles," begun by Charles Simoneau,
continued by Massé, and only finished in 1752 after twenty-eight
consecutive years of labour. It was speedily succeeded by the "Cabinet
de Crozat" and the "Peintures de l'Hôtel Lambert;" and a little later
the example of France was followed by other countries, and one after
the other there appeared, in Italy, Germany, and England, the "Museo
Pio Clementino," the "Dresden Gallery," the catalogue of the Bruhl
collection, and the publications of Boydell--all such magnificent works
as do honour to the second half of the eighteenth century. Finally,
thanks to Vivarès and Balechou, the engraving of landscape began to
rival historical engraving, to which it had before been considered
as merely accessory. The honour of having created it belongs to the
French. It is too often forgotten that they were the first to excel
in it, and that but for the practice of Vivarès, England to whom the
merit of initiative is usually attributed might never have boasted of
Woollett and his pupils.
Since Claude Lorraine and Gaspard Dughet, the French school had
produced few painters of pure landscape--none of first-rate ability.
The first to restore to the neglected art a something of its pristine
brilliance was Joseph Vernet. An observer, but one rather clever than
sincere, he is certainly wanting in the strength and gravity which
are characteristics of the great masters. In his work there is more
intelligence than deep feeling, and more elegance than true beauty.
Like the descriptive poetry of the time, it shows us Nature a trifle
too sleek and shiny, and a little over-emphasised; she is rather a
theme for discourse than a model to be lovingly studied as a source
of inspiration. Yet even where the truth is thus arbitrarily treated,
it retains under Vernet's brush sufficient charm, if not to move, at
least to interest and to please; so that the success of this brilliant
artist, and the influence he exerted on the French school and on public
taste, are easily understood.
In the lofty position which his talent had won him, Joseph Vernet was
more capable than any other painter of giving a happy impulse to the
art of engraving; and, indeed, the landscape engravers formed by him
were masters of the genre. We have mentioned Balechou and Vivarès. The
former, at first a pupil of Lépicié, began by engraving portraits, the
best known of which, a full-length of Augustus III., King of Poland,
brought upon its author the shame of a fitting punishment. Convicted
of having detained a certain number of the first proofs for his own
profit; Balechou was struck off the list of the Académie, and obliged
to retire to Arles, his native town, and thence to Avignon, where
he took to landscape engraving. There it was that he executed after
Joseph Vernet his "Baigneuses," his "Calme," and his "La Tempête."
In his latter years he returned to history, and executed after Carle
Vanloo his tiresome "Sainte Geneviève," which was once so loudly
vaunted, which even now is not unadmired, and which really might be a
masterpiece, if technical skill and excessive ease of handling were
all the art. Though, unlike Vivarès, he did not teach the practice of
landscape in England, Balechou contributed enormously by his works
to the education of the English engravers; and the best of them,
Woollett, confessed that he produced his "Fishing" with a proof of the
Frenchman's "La Tempête" always before his eyes.
As for Vivarès, he engraved in Paris a number of plates after Joseph
Vernet and the Old Masters, and then, preceding De Loutherbourg and
many others of his nation, he migrated to London. He took with him a
new art, as Hollar had done a century before, and founded that school
of landscape engravers whose talents were destined to constitute, even
to our own time, the chief glory of English engraving.
But before his pupils and imitators could take possession after him of
this vast domain, engraving in England had developed considerably, in
another direction, under the influence of two distinguished artists,
Hogarth and Reynolds, born at an interval of twenty-five years from
one another. The son of a printer's reader, who apprenticed him to a
goldsmith, William Hogarth spent almost all his youth in obscurity
and poverty. At twenty he was engraving business cards for London
tradesmen; some years later he was sign-painting, and was wearing
himself out in work entirely unworthy of him, when he forced the
attention of the public by the publication of a satirical print, the
heroes of which were well known and easily recognised. His success
being presently confirmed by other compositions of the same sort, he
profited by the fact to apply his talent to more serious work. He soon
acquired a reputation, enriched himself by marrying the daughter of Sir
James Thornhill, the king's painter, and remained till his death (1764)
one of the most eminent men of his country.
Both as painter and engraver Hogarth was a deep student of art, on
which he has left some commendable writings; but he never succeeded
in fulfilling all its conditions. Extravagantly pre-occupied with the
philosophical significance with which he purposes to endow his work,
he does not always see when he has gone far enough in the exposition
of his idea: he darkens it with commentary; he becomes unintelligible
by sheer insistence on intelligibility. There are allegories of his in
which, still striving after ingenuity, he has piled detail upon detail
till the result is confusion worse confounded.
But when no excess of analysis has decomposed his primary idea to
nothingness, by directing the attention elsewhere, Hogarth strikes
home, and compasses most powerful effects. His series of prints, in
which are storied the actions of one or more persons--his "Marriage à
la Mode," his "Rake's Progress," his "Harlot's Progress," his "Industry
and Idleness"--the last a sort of double biography representing the
different lives of two apprentices, one of whom becomes Lord Mayor of
London, whilst the other dies at Tyburn--all these engraved by himself,
partly in etching and partly in line, are, as regards the execution, by
no means irreproachable; are frequently, indeed, not even good: but in
expression and gesture they are nearly always of startling truth, while
the moral meaning, the innermost spirit of every scene, is felt and
rendered with the keenest sagacity. At the very time when the genius of
Richardson was working a like revolution in literature, Hogarth--and
herein lies his chief merit--was introducing domestic drama into
art. In England and elsewhere the painter-engraver and the novelist,
both creators of the style in which they worked, have had a crowd of
imitators; but they cannot be said to have met with rivals anywhere.
The genius of Sir Joshua Reynolds is of a totally different order. In
the sense of consisting in the sentiment of effect and the masterly
arrangement of tones it is essentially _picturesque_, and presents
such a boldness of character as engravers could easily appreciate and
reproduce. There is no far-fetched significance, no accessories tending
to destroy the unity of the whole. On the contrary, the work proceeds
by synthesis; it is all largely schemed, and built up in masses where
the details are scarcely indicated. The expression lies not so much in
niceties of physiognomy as in the whole attitude of the sitters and the
characteristic pose and contour of the faces represented. The painter's
imagination is brilliant rather than delicate; sometimes, indeed, it
degenerates into bad taste and eccentricity. But far more frequently
it gives his attitudes an air of ease and originality, and the general
aspect of his portraits breathes a perfect dignity. The vigorous
contrasts, the freedom and wealth of colour which are their primary
characteristics, as they are those of Gainsborough's work likewise,
are qualities to whose translation the free and flowing stroke of the
graver is hardly fitted, but which mezzotint would naturally render
with ease and success. And, as we have said before, it is to the
influence of the famous painter that must be attributed the immense
extension of the latter process in England during the latter part of
the eighteenth century.
The landscape and mezzotint engravers began, therefore, to vitalise
the English school: the former especially lent it real importance
by their talent. From 1760 or thereabouts Woollett published, after
Richard Wilson or after Claude, those admirable works which, on account
of their suave harmony of effect, their transparency of atmosphere,
and their variableness of colour, are less like engravings than
pictures.[45] Shortly afterwards he completed his fame by work of
another sort: the reproduction, first, of West's "Death of Wolfe," and
then of his "Battle of La Hogue," the American's best picture, and
the finest historical plate ever engraved in England. Lastly about
the same time, Robert Strange, a pupil of Philippe Le Bas, engraved
in line, after Correggio and Van Dyck, the "Saint Jerome" and the
"Charles I.;" as well as other prints after these masters, which are
quite as charming, and should, indeed, be unreservedly admired if the
correctness of their drawing were only equal to their elegance of
modelling and flexibility of tone.
[Illustration: FIG. 93.--WOOLLETT.
Landscape. After G. Smith.]
So much progress accomplished in so few years attracted the attention
of statesmen and of the English Government. They saw it was time to
cease from paying tribute to the superiority of French engravers, and
to allow those talents to develop in London which had till then been
sent to school in Paris. George III. had just founded the Royal Academy
(Jan., 1769), with Reynolds for its first President. He determined
still further to strengthen the impulse of art by countenancing great
undertakings in engraving; and as he wished the country to reap as much
commercial benefit as honour in the matter, he granted bounties on the
exportation of English engravings, while the importation of French work
was taxed with enormous duties.
In this way the progress of national art became a political question,
and every one hastened to second the king's views. Woollett's plates
had been largely subscribed for before publication, and the illustrated
editions of the travels of Cook and Sir Joseph Banks were taken up in
a few days. Finally, when it was proposed to engrave Copley's "Death
of Chatham," the subscription at once ran up to £3,600; and when, the
first proofs having been taken, the plate was returned to the engraver,
he made almost as much more in less than two years. Nor did the fever
of protection in any wise abate for that. On the contrary, it called
a number of talents into being, and attracted to London a crowd of
foreigners, all sure of the encouragement which began to fail them
elsewhere. Cipriani, Angelica Kauffmann, Catherine Prestel, the Swiss
Moser and his daughter, and a hundred other painters or engravers, came
in one after another to contribute to the success of the school and the
spread of English trade.[46]
Amongst these adventurers there was one--the Florentine
Bartolozzi--whose works at once became the fashion, less, perhaps,
for any intrinsic merit than because of the novelty of his method.
The process called "stipple engraving" excluded the use of lines and
cross hatchings, and consisted in the arrangement of masses of dots
more or less delicate in themselves, and more or less close in order,
and designed in proportion to their relative distance or nearness, to
render nice gradations of tone, depth of shadow, and even completeness
of outline.
Speaking exactly, this was but an application to the general execution
of a work of a process adopted long before by etchers and line
engravers as a means of partial execution. Jean Morin, Boulanger,
Gérard Audran himself, and many others, had habitually made use of
dots to supplement the work of the burin or the needle, or to effect
transitions between their lights and shadows, or the larger of their
outlines and subtler details of their modelling. Moreover, before their
time, Jan Lutma, a Dutch goldsmith, invented a method of "engraving in
dots," which, produced by means of his etching needle and aquafortis,
were deepened and enlarged with chisel and hammer: whence the name of
_opus mallei_ bestowed on his results. Bartolozzi, therefore, and the
English engravers who, like Ryland, made use of stippling, did but
revive and extend in their own way the boundaries of a method already
known. They displayed remarkable skill, it is true, but their work,
like the rest of its kind, displays a feebleness of form that is almost
inevitable, and is touched with a coldness inherent in the very nature
of the process.
In stipple engraving, the burin and the dry point are used alternately,
according to the degree of vigour or delicacy required. The parts that
are to come light in proof are done with the dry-point; while those to
come dark are covered with dots ploughed deeper with the burin. Round
the edge of these, by the mere act of ploughing, there is raised a rim,
or rampart--technically called a "burr"--which the engraver, to regain
the ground thus lost, has to rub down with the burnisher. In this way
he goes on dotting and burnishing till he gets a close enough grain.
Immensely successful during the last years of the eighteenth century,
stipple engraving soon went out of fashion, not only in France, where
it scarce survived the first attempts of Copia, but even in England,
where the example of Bartolozzi and Ryland had been followed with such
eager diligence. Such, too, somewhat later, was the fate of a somewhat
similar process--the "crayon engraving," of which Gilles Demarteau,
born in Liège, but bred and trained in Paris, may be considered, if
not the inventor, at least the most active, skilful, and popular
practitioner.[47]
The object of crayon engraving is to imitate the effect of red or black
chalk on a coarse-grained paper, which, by the very roughness of its
surface, retains no more than an uneven, and as it were a disconnected,
impression of the strokes or hatchings laid upon it. In common with
stipple engraving, it renders the loose and broken lines of the
originals by substituting a mass of dots for the ordinary work of the
burin or the needle. It differs, however, from stipple engraving in
the method of working, and even in the nature of the tools employed.
The outlines are traced on the varnished copper with a toothed or
multi-pointed needle, while the inner hatchings are made either with
the needle in question, or with what is called a roulette, which is
a steel cylinder bristling with small, jagged teeth, and running on
a fixed axis. The roulette, which is provided with a handle, is so
directed that the teeth are brought to bear directly, and with more
or less effect, on the varnished copper. Then the plate is bitten in;
and when the aquafortis has done its part, the work, if necessary, is
resumed with the same tools on the bare metal.
The first specimens of crayon engraving were presented in 1757 to
the Académie Royale de Peinture, which, an official document informs
us,[48] "highly approved of the method, as being well fitted to
perpetuate the designs of good masters, and multiply copies of the best
styles of drawings." For the reproduction of drawings, the new process
was certainly better than etching, at least as practised to that end
by the Count de Caylus and the Abbé de Saint-Non. The misfortune was,
that in the eighteenth century as in the first years of the nineteenth,
the crayon engravers appear to have thought far less of "perpetuating
the designs of good masters" than of suiting their choice of originals
to the prevailing fashion. As a matter of fact, however skilful they
were in execution, the only cause served by Demarteau's innumerable
fac-similes was that of the Bouchers and Fragonards, and of kindred
experts in "the most distinguished school of drawing." Reproduced by
engraving, the crayon studies of these persons became the ordinary
means of instruction in academies and public schools; and from the
first the popularity of these wretched models was such that, even after
the revolution effected in art by David, on through the Empire, and as
late as the Restoration, art students generally remained subject to the
regimen adopted for their predecessors in the days of Louis XV. and XVI.
Then lithography made its appearance, and in no great while was
applied to the production of drawing-copies, once the monopoly of
crayon engraving. Nor was this the only quarter from which the method
of François and Demarteau was assailed. By degrees it fell out of use
for the production not only of drawing-copies, but of fac-similes of
drawings by the masters for artists and amateurs; or, if occasionally
practised, it was--as in the subjects engraved some thirty years
back from drawings in the Louvre and the Musée de Lille--with so
many modifications, and in combination with such a number of other
processes, as reduced it from supremacy to the rank, till worse should
befall, of a mere auxiliary. In our own time it has had its death-blow
in the advance of photography; and as, after all, its one object was
the presentation of an exact likeness, the absolute effigy, of its
original, the preference of a purely mechanical process of reproduction
is, if we consider the certainty of the results, no more than natural.
In proportion as, by its very nature, photography is powerless to take
the place of engraving, when the work to be reproduced, be it picture
or mural decoration, presupposes in the interpreter, in whatsoever
degree, the power of translating what is before him, just so far is it
capable of fulfilling the one condition imposed upon the copyist of a
drawing or an engraving--that of perfect fidelity in imitation.
The object attempted by François, Demarteau, Bonnet, and others--the
production by engraving of a sort of optical illusion, the exact
fac-simile of a drawing--had been started before them by Jean
Christophe Leblond, an artist born of French parents at Frankfort,
who, moreover, had sought to extend to the imitation of colour
what his successors were content to restrict to the imitation of
monochrome. Very early in the eighteenth century, Leblond succeeded
in producing prints in several tints, by a method which he called
"pastel engraving," and to which custom has given the more general
name of "colour engraving." For the second half of this title, it
might, perhaps, have been better to use the word "printing." What is
called "colour engraving" is not really a special engraving process.
Its whole originality consists in the production of a single proof
from several plates (generally four), in the preparation of which the
rocker, the roulette, and sometimes even the burin, have been used.
From these plates, each inked with a single colour, the effect of which
is relieved or modified by the subsequent addition of those tints with
which the other three are covered, there results in the proof, by the
use of points of correspondence, an _ensemble_ in colour which is
similar in appearance to that of painting in pastel, in water-colour,
or in gouache. This was pretty much the process, and the results were
in some sort comparable with those obtained by chromo-lithography. The
older method had, however, the advantage of the other in that, by the
very variety of the preparation to which the plate was subjected, its
results were not so liable to present the appearance, either coarse or
dull, of common hand-tinted work.
Some of Leblond's engravings, particularly a large, half-length
"Louis XV.," enable us to estimate to the full the capacities of his
invention. Leblond, indeed, must be counted an inventor, inasmuch as
it was his to discover a secret which, before him, had been only dimly
foreseen, or at most half-guessed. Still, the essays in the first years
of the seventeenth century of the Dutchman Lastmann, and a little later
of Seghers the Fleming, should not be completely overlooked; nor would
it be just to refuse recognition to the practical improvements made
in colour engraving, after Leblond, by Gautier Dagoty, in Paris, and
by Taylor, in London. In proportion to the relative importance of the
two discoveries, Leblond played the same part in the history of the
colour process as Daguerre in the history of heliography. They each
effected so great an advance as to close the period of groping and
darkness, and to some extent determine the course of progress. But it
does not follow, therefore, that they owed nothing to the attempts of
their predecessors; and if their claim to inventors' honours is fairly
established, it is because they solved a problem they were by no means
the first to attack.
Leblond, indeed, got nothing from his discovery but the honour of
making it. He sought in vain to turn it to account in London, and
succeeded no better in Paris. In the latter city he lived for some
years in great distress, and in 1741 he died there, in the hospital.
Some years after the invention of colour engraving, another sort of
engraving, or rather another sort of pictorial reproduction, the method
called "au lavis," was invented, and very skilfully used from the
outset, by Jean Baptiste Leprince; and in no great while the series of
innovations in the practice of the art, from the end of the seventeenth
century, was completed by the invention of aquatint.
The first of these two processes is apparently of extreme simplicity.
The line once engraved and bitten in, as in ordinary etching, it
only consisted in brushing the plate with acid, as a draughtsman
washes in on paper with sepia or Indian ink. The preliminary work,
however, required a great deal of care and skill, and even a certain
amount of scientific knowledge. The particular quality of the
copper, the composition of the varnishes and acids, and many other
conditions impossible to discuss in detail, made the new process
somewhat difficult of employment; and before long the ardour of those
practitioners who had essayed to imitate Leprince's results was very
sensibly diminished.
In spite of the value of these results, and the personal skill of the
inventor; in spite, too, of the technical explanations contained in
the "Plan du Traité de la Gravure au Lavis" presented by him (1750) to
the Académie Royale, it was evident that the French engravers thought
lightly of Leprince's discovery, and did not care to investigate
its capabilities. It only got a fresh start in France when, notably
modified and improved by the initiative of foreign engravers, it had
been transformed in London into what is known as aquatint engraving.
Then, however, in the hands of Debucourt,[49] and of Jazet later on,
it acquired a popularity all the greater that its productions, by
their very nature and quality, were more intimately in harmony with
the inspiration and style of fashionable art. Jazet, for instance,
contributed greatly to the triumph of aquatint in France, by applying
it, from the first years of the Restoration, to the interpretation
of the works of Horace Vernet. Such plates as "Le Bivouac du Colonel
Moncey," the "Barrière de Clichy," the "Soldat Laboureur," and many
others, were tolerated among Frenchmen for the sake of the associations
they awakened at least as much as for their artistic merit.
It is possible that since then the engraver has reckoned a little too
much on the world-wide reputation of his painter; or it may be that he
has been somewhat too conscious of the advantages of a rapid and facile
method, and has sacrificed the ideal of delicacy and correctness to the
enhancement of a reputation for fertility. Certain it is that Jazet,
as is proved by his early engravings, and especially the "Barrière de
Clichy," was more capable than any one else of raising work in aquatint
to the level of art; and it is much to be regretted that his somewhat
careless ease should have hindered the full development of his talent.
It is still more to be regretted that, in spite of the laudable efforts
of Messrs. Prévost, Girard, and others to maintain the process in the
better way, it should have been dishonoured and deprived of all but a
purely commercial importance by the production of multitudes of plates,
whose only merit is their cheapness. If we consider the so-called
Biblical scenes done in aquatint for exportation, the heroines of
romance, the half-naked women described (by way of commentary) as
"Love," "Souvenir," "Pleasure," "Desire," and all the terms of the
erotic vocabulary, it is hard to say whether the intention or the
execution is the more unpleasant. What is certain is that such things
have nothing to do with art except as examples of its degradation and
destruction. That section of the public sensible of their charm is
certainly not that which is impressed by beauty, and it is useless to
care about winning its approbation; but when ugliness is everywhere
it is to be feared that everybody may grow used to the sight, and
forget to look elsewhere. The danger to which pure line engraving is
thus exposed by the deplorable exigencies of competition is not the
only one which threatens the art. A glance at its several phases since
1800 and at its present state is enough to show that the line of
talents has never once been interrupted; that those of to-day are every
whit as vigorous and accomplished as those of the past; but that for
opportunities of displaying their full power, and being appreciated at
their true worth they have not seldom to wait in vain.