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DRAWING AND ENGRAVING 
 
PELEUS AND THETIS 
 
 Lithograph from the Camirus Vase 
 
 The amphora from which this drawing was taken was found 
 in the necropolis of Camirus, in Rhodes, by Salzmann and 
 Biliotti in 1862, and is i foot S^ inches in height. The subject 
 is the story of the surprise and seizure of Thetis by Peleus. 
 
 The original is an admirable example of Greek design, and 
 is fairly represented in this copy. 
 
DRAWING & ENGRAVING 
 
 A BRIEF EXPOSITION 
 
 Ol- 
 
 TECHNICAL PRINCIPLES & PRACTICE 
 
 PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON'. VJ^y^-^rUJ'A 
 
 FFXLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF PAINTER-ETCHERS; HONORARY MEMBER 
 OF THE BURLINGTON FINE ARTS CLUB 
 AUTHOR OF 'etching AND ETCHERS,' 'tHE GRAPHIC AR TS ' 
 ETC. ETC. ETC. 
 
 WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS 
 SELECTED OR COMMISSIONED BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 ^r^^ OF THE ^'?P^ 
 
 ^UNIVERSITY 
 
 LONDON AND EDINBURGH 
 ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 
 
 I 892 
 
fiC'/io 
 
 1-13 
 
 7/^ 8"i- 
 
Sir GEORGE REID, LL.D., 
 
 PRESIDENT OF 'I'HE ROYAL SCOTTISH ACADEMY, 
 ETC. ETC. ETC. 
 
 Dear Sir George, 
 
 An old correspondent ot yours wishes to inscribe 
 this little book to you, as a tribute of respect to rare accom- 
 plishments and sincerity in various arts, but particularly (having 
 reierence to the subject of the little book) in that of drawing. 
 
 And he remains, sincerely yours, 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
[ UNIVERoITY 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The publishers of the Encyclopcedia Britannica 
 having thought that the articles in the ninth edition 
 on Drawing and Engraving might be acceptable in 
 a separate volume, I have revised them and made 
 certain additions, whilst preserving the style and 
 treatment originally adopted. 
 
 There was very little choice about the method 
 of treatment, as the subjects were vast and the 
 space rigorously limited. I could only say what 
 was most important and say even that laconically. 
 The style of the papers had to be simply didactic. 
 As a rule, I am unwilling* to assume an authoritative 
 tone, but may have as much right to it as anybody 
 else, after giving the best part of forty years to the 
 study of these or cognate subjects. 
 
 The first knowledge that ought to be acquired 
 
about drawing and engraving whether by artists, or 
 critics, or simple lovers of art, concerns technical 
 conditions and necessities. Some critics profess a 
 contempt for this practical knowledge, as if it were 
 unworthy of a cultivated man's attention, and al- 
 though artists cannot do without it they too often 
 limit their technical curiosity to their own speciality 
 in art. Yet it is easy to demonstrate that technical 
 conditions govern even genius itself. The whole 
 nature and inspiration of Rembrandt's production on 
 copper would have been changed if some authority 
 had compelled him to employ the slow and severe 
 burin instead of the free and rapid etching-needle. 
 If the criticism of Diirer's day had been learned 
 enough to impose upon him a demand for truth of 
 tone, that simple exigency would have forbidden the 
 existence of his art ; he would have had to learn 
 an entirely different kind of engraving which would 
 have required another condition of mind. If Marc- 
 antonio had been forced to imitate texture and ' 
 translate local colour into black and white he could 
 never have occupied the position of a great classical 
 master, the mere addition of these inferior ■ truths 
 would have sacrificed the dignity and nobility of his 
 
style. The genius of Turner, whose originaHty lay 
 in the expression of mystery and infinity, could 
 never have found utterance in the compulsory clear- 
 ness and simplicity of fresco, nor could he have 
 engraved his own ideas with a burin as he did in 
 etching and mezzotint. 
 
 My own belief in the closeness of the connection 
 between technic and mind in the fine arts is so abso- 
 lute that I do not see how it is possible to separate 
 them if an artist is to express his ideas completely. 
 He may express a part of himself in an art suitable 
 as far as it goes (Millet did so when he drew with 
 the pen) or he may assume a character that does 
 not properly belong to him and express what other 
 people ask for in an art foreign to his nature, like a 
 schoolboy writing compulsory Latin, but if he has 
 any strength of artistic idiosyncrasy it must find its 
 own technical conditions. 
 
 There is another matter that I desire to insist 
 upon, in a few words, as ot extreme importance in 
 all fine art whatever. That is the necessity for 
 respecting individual liberty in the technical use of 
 materials. Eviery master must be permitted to 
 work in his own way. I have a dread of fashions 
 
in execution imposed by clever experts and of their 
 evil retro-active effect on the modern criticism of 
 masters who were not clever, but only thoughtful, 
 serious, and great. Another deplorable effect of 
 the modern display of cleverness is its power over 
 the younger contemporary artists. In quieter times, 
 art was an expression of individual sentiment, it has 
 now become a struggle in which manual dexterity 
 wins. The dexterity, too, is of one kind, so that if 
 all attained it there would be a tiresome absence of 
 variety. The effects of modern cleverness (not in 
 itself an evidence of much knowledge, still less of 
 any depth of feeling) would be to exclude some of 
 the greatest masters if they could reappear amongst 
 us. Marcantonio would starve as an engraver 
 because he had neither texture, nor tone, nor local 
 colour, and Titian as a pen-draftsman would fail for 
 similar reasons, and also for the lack of sparkle in 
 his way of drawing. The last great painter who 
 was habitually a pen-draftsman and occasionally an 
 etcher was Millet. Happily for the dignity and 
 sincerity of his art, he worked a few years before 
 modern dexterity became predominant. 
 
 Whilst preparing these sheets for the press I 
 
received a letter from a drawing- master in an im- 
 portant college who complained that the educational 
 value of drawing was so little appreciated, and he 
 asked me if I could not wTite some plain statement 
 of the reasons why drawing is desirable as a part of 
 general education. The present opportunity seems 
 a good one, as prefaces are often read when the text 
 of books is passed over hastily, especially if there are 
 illustrations. Drawing is known to be valuable as 
 a training for the eye, nobody disputes that, the 
 doubt concerns its value to the mind. 
 
 Mental education consists chiefly in exercising 
 the faculties of memory and observation, in learning 
 to be accurate, and in acquiring the power of co- 
 ordination. Drawing, if rightly pursued, is a constant 
 training in all these. It teaches us to observe, to 
 be accurate, to remember, to analyse by dividing 
 complex material into its component parts, and to co- 
 ordinate by putting material together so that it shall 
 form a consistent whole. Besides this it opens the 
 mind to ideas of relation by compelling us to take 
 account of the laws of harmony and contrast which 
 are more conspicuously visible in the graphic arts 
 than they are in literature and in life, though they 
 
concern, in reality, everything that is human. The 
 habit of looking upon drawing as a small accomplish- 
 ment may be explained in some measure by the 
 idle way in which it is often followed. The graphic 
 arts only become valuable as a part ot education 
 when they are pursued seriously as a discipline 
 in accuracy of observation. When the object of the 
 drawing-master is to enable pupils to seem " clever " 
 by producing a feeble imitation of art that displays 
 consummate manual skill, his labour and theirs are 
 equally vain and nugatory, he and they are wasting 
 their time together, as it is not in the nature of 
 things that great executive talent can ever be 
 mimicked satisfactorily by those who have not really 
 attained it in their own persons. But drawing as a 
 study (not as a display) is always valuable if well- 
 directed. The analogies between learning to see 
 with the eye, and learning to see with the mind are 
 so close that one cannot fail to help the other, 
 
 I should say that the study of drawing, as it 
 may be most wisely followed by those who have no 
 intention of using the art professionally, would 
 cultivate rather the scientific or observant intellect 
 than the artistic or creative. And if it is objected 
 
that the habit of exact drawing leads the mind 
 away from poetical sentiment to a matter-of-fact 
 hardness and precision it may be answered that a 
 training in observation makes even feeling and 
 imagination more intelligible to us. No one can be 
 so well qualified to appreciate the action of the 
 imagination in Turner as a careful draftsman who 
 has made accurate topographical drawings of the 
 localities that he illustrated. No one is better pre- 
 pared to enjoy poetry than a writer of sound and 
 well-constructed prose. Besides, it is not proposed 
 to give to drawing a first place in general education, 
 it is not proposed to occupy the pupil's time with it 
 to the exclusion of literature, all that we contend 
 for is the utility of drawing as one instrument of 
 education, and we say that it cannot be replaced by 
 anything else. It would be better to learn two 
 languages and drawing than to learn three languages 
 without it, because although drawing may exercise 
 the same faculties of memory, observation, and co- 
 ordination that are exercised in acquiring a language 
 it employs them in a different way, and so gives a 
 certain refreshment to a mind occupied with other 
 studies, besides which it has a value peculiar to 
 
itself in educating the eye to finer perception, and 
 the hand to operations more delicate than the 
 handling of dictionaries or the scribbling of free 
 manuscript. 
 
 The discipline afforded by engraving is too 
 severe for all but professional students, except in 
 the case of picturesque etching which in a very few 
 instances has been successfully practised by amateurs. 
 An engraver has to train himself in patience and to 
 acquire by firmness of resolution an equality of 
 temper beyond what is generally either natural or 
 desirable. Engraving is no doubt a culture, but it 
 is a culture for a specialist. There are a few little 
 exercises in burin engraving on a single small plate 
 in this volume which look very simple, but are 
 really difficult, and they are only the rudiments of 
 the art. All that we need ever hope to do about 
 line-engraving is simply to appreciate it. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 DRAWING 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Etymology of the Word 
 
 CHAPTER H 
 Primitive Drawing 6 
 
 CHAPTER in 
 
 Linear Drawing in Ancient Greece . . . .19 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Drawing in the Middle Ages 30 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 The Renaissance . . . . . . . .40 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Picturesque 47 
 
 b 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Landscape Design 52 
 
 CHAPTER Vni 
 The Law of Progress in Drawing 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Drawing for Photographic Processes 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Books on Drawing . . . , . 
 
 ENGRAVING 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 Etymology of the Word 71 
 
 CHAPTER H 
 
 Principal Varieties OF Engraving . . . -75 
 
 CHAPTER HI 
 
 Wood-engraving 79 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Copper and Steel Plate-engraving . . . .104 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Etching 129 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 Mezzotint 148 
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 Photographic Processes of Engraving . . .151 
 
 CHAPTER Vni 
 Books on Engraving 155 
 
 b2 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PRINTED IN THE TEXT 
 
 Geese (Ancient Egyptian) 
 
 Japanese Drawing (angular) . 
 
 Japanese Drawing (in gentle curves) 
 
 An Egyptian Queen 
 
 An Assyrian King 
 
 A Foot Ra,ce (archaic Greek) 
 
 Peleus leading Thetis home . 
 
 Athena and Poseidon (from an amphora by Exekias) 
 
 Penelope's Loom (from a Greek vase of the fifth century B.C.) . 
 
 William the Conqueror and his Knights (from the Bayeu.x 
 tapestry) ......... 
 
 The Arming of a Knight (from a manuscript in the British 
 Museum, thirteenth century) ...... 
 
 Messenger bringing a Letter to the Royal Army (from a manu- 
 script in the National Library, Paris, thirteenth century) . 
 
 Mowers (from a manuscript in the National Library, Paris, 
 twelfth century) ........ 
 
 Ornamental Writing (from a manuscript of the fourteenth 
 century) ......... 
 
 ^^^F^ 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 St. John the Evangehst (from an English mural painting of the 
 fifteenth century) . . . . . . . 
 
 The Antiquary in his Sanctum (pen-drawing by Hugh Thomson) 
 
 Virgin and Child (facsimile of a woodcut of the fifteenth 
 century) ...... 
 
 Christ after the Flagellation (woodcut executed in Flanders 
 before 1440) ..... 
 
 Star Drift 
 
 The Old Woman (from Holbein's Dance of Death) 
 
 Weaving (woodcut by J. Amman) . 
 
 Roderick Uhu's Fleet of Boats (drawn by Eirket Foster ; en- 
 graved on wood by Edmund Evans) .... 
 
 Loch Achray (drawn by Birket Foster ; engraved on wood by 
 J. W. Whymper) 
 
 The Capture of Cle\eland (from The Pirate). Drawn by Frank 
 Dadd 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PRINTED SEPARATELY FROM THE TEXT 
 
 The Cainirus Vase (Lithograph) .... Frontispiece 
 
 TO FACE PAGE 
 
 Landscape with a Square Tower (Etching by Rembrandt, re- 
 produced in Hehogravure by Amand-Durand) . . 52 
 
 A Head in Wax (in the Wicar Museum at Lille, engraved by 
 
 F. Gaillard) 59 
 
 A Religious Procession (Pen Sketch by Vierge, Heliogravure 
 
 by P. Dujardin) 65 
 
 An Ornamental Design (Line Engraving by Lucas of Leyden, 
 
 Heliogravure by Amand-Durand) . . . 70 
 
 Strength (Line Engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi) . . 75 
 
 St. Martin and the Beggar (Line Engraving by Martin Schon- 
 
 gauer) . . . . . • • • • 1 1 7 
 
 Christ before Pilate (Line Engraving by Albert Diirer, Heho- 
 gravure by Amand-Durand) . . . . . .118 
 
 Man Sleeping near a Wood (Line Engraving by Marcantonio 
 
 Raimondi, Heliogravure by Amand-Durand) . . .120 
 
 The Simplon (Engraving by W. Miller after Turner) . .126 
 
 Verona (Engraving by W. Miller after Turner) . . .126 
 
 Portrait of Meissonier (Line Engraving by T. C. Regnault after 
 
 Meissonier) . . . . • ■ • .128 
 
xxii LIS r OF ILL USTRA TIONS 
 
 TO FACE PAGE 
 
 A Head with a Ruff, in three Stages (Etching by Henri Manesse) 130 
 An Old Man wearing a rich Velvet Cap (Etching by 
 
 Rembrandt, Heliogravure by Amand-Durand) . .138 
 
 A Beggar and His Dog (Etching by Rembrandt, Heliogravure 
 
 by Amand-Durand) . . . . . . .142 
 
 The Elements of Mezzotint (Engraving in Mezzotint by Frank 
 
 Short) 148 
 
 Lady at a Piano (Engraving in Mezzotint by Henri Manesse) 150 
 St. Cloud, Turnerian Topograph)- (Pen Sketch by the Author 
 
 after Turner, Heliogravure by P. Dujardin) . . .162 
 
 St. Cloud from the Ri\er, Simple Topography (Pen Sketch by 
 
 the Author, Heliogravure by P. Dujardin) . . .162 
 
 St. (iermain, Turnerian Topography (Pen Sketch by the 
 
 Author after Turner, Heliogravure by P. Dujardin) . .164 
 
 St. Germain from the Terrace, Simple Topography (Pen Sketch 
 
 by the Author, Heliogravure by P. Dujardin) . .166 
 
 The Seine from St. Germain, Simple Topography (Pen Sketch 
 
 by the Author, Heliogravure by P. Dujardin) . .166 
 
 The Elements of Line Engraving (Engraving by Leopold 
 
 Flameng) . . . . . . . . .170 
 
^ OF THR ^'Tp^ 
 
 ^ UNIVERSITY^ 
 
 DRAWING 
 
 ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD . • , 
 
 Although the verb to draw has various meanings, Deriva- 
 tion. 
 the substantive drawing is confined by usage to 
 
 that of design, and is treated as if it were a synonym 
 
 of design. The word comes from the Latin trahere, 
 
 or from a kindred Gothic word, so that traction and 
 
 drawing are nearly related, and preserve still the 
 
 same meaning when applied to the work of animals 
 
 or machines, as we say that a traction engine draws 
 
 so many tons. Another form of the same word is 
 
 dray, the strong low vehicle used by brewers and 
 
 carriers. It may be worth while to inquire what is 
 
 the connection between the idea of a dray horse 
 
 and that of a drawing-master. 
 
 The primitive idea, which is the common origin Theprimi- 
 
 , tive idea. 
 
 of both senses of the word to draw, is that of 
 
 k I 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 moving something in one's own direction. Thus, a 
 horse draws a plough ; but a carpenter does not 
 draw his plane — he pushes it ; and we should say 
 that a locomotive drew a train when the locomotive 
 was in front, but not when it was behind. The 
 same idea is preserved in the fine arts. We do not 
 usually say, or think, that a sculptor is drawing 
 when. -he ^ is using his chisel, although he may be 
 expressing or defining forms, nor that an engraver 
 is drawing when he is pushing the burin with the 
 palm of the hand, although the result may be the 
 rendering of a design. But we do say that an 
 artist is drawing when he uses the lead pencil, and 
 here we have a motion bearing some resemblance 
 to that of the horse or engine. The fingers of the 
 artist draw the pencil point along the paper. The 
 analogy may be clearly seen in certain circum- 
 stances. When the North American Indians shift 
 their camps they frequently tie a tent-pole on each 
 side of the horse, like a shaft, leaving the ends to 
 drag along the ground, whilst their baggage is laid 
 on cross pieces. Here we have a very close ana- 
 logy with artistic drawing. The poles are drawn 
 on the ground as a pencil is on paper, and they 
 leave marks behind them corresponding to the lines 
 of the pencil. 
 
The same analogy may be observed between The 
 
 French 
 
 two of the senses in which the French verb tirer is verb Hrer. 
 frequently employed. This verb is not derived from 
 trahere, but may be ultimately traced, like our own 
 verb to tear, to the Ionic lelpw. It was formerly used 
 by good writers in the two senses of our verb to draw. 
 Thus Lafontaine says, "Six forts chevaux tiraient 
 un coche ;" and Caillieres wrote, " II n'y a pas long- 
 temps que je me suis fait tirer par Rigaud," mean- 
 ing that Rigaud had drawn or painted his portrait. 
 At the present day the verb tirer has fallen into 
 disuse amongst cultivated Frenchmen with regard 
 to drawing and painting, but it is still universally 
 used for all kinds of design and even for photo- 
 graphy by the common people. The cultivated use 
 it still for printing, as, for example, " cette gravure 
 sera tiree a cent exemplaires," but here rather in the 
 sense of pulling than of drawing. 
 
 A verb much more nearly related to the English The 
 verb to draw is traire, which has trait for its past verb 
 participle. It comes from trahere, and is so little 
 altered as to be scarcely even a corruption of the 
 original Latin form. Traire is now used exclusively 
 for milking cows and other animals, and the analogy 
 between this and artistic drawing is not obvious at 
 first ; nevertheless there is a certain analogy of 
 
4 DRA WING A ND ENGRA VING 
 
 motion, the hand passing down the teat draws the 
 milk downwards. The word trait is much more 
 famihar in connection with art as " les traits du 
 visage," the natural markings of the face, and it is 
 very often used in a figurative sense, as we say 
 " traits of character." It is quite familiar m portrait, 
 derived from pi^otrahere. 
 
 Deiinea- The aucient Romans used words which ex- 
 
 pressed more clearly the conception that drawing 
 was done in line {delineare) or in shade {adumbrare) , 
 though there are reasons for believing that the 
 words were often indiscriminately applied. Al- 
 though the modern Italians have both traire and 
 trarre, they use delineare still in the sense of artistic 
 drawing, and also adombrare. 
 
 The Greek The Greek verb ypdcjjecv is familiar to the English 
 reader in "graphic," and in many compounds, such 
 as photograph, etc. It is worth observing that the 
 Greeks seem to have considered drawing and writ- 
 ing as essentially the same process, since they used 
 the same word for both. This points to the early 
 identity of the two arts when drawing was a kind 
 of writing, and when such writing as men had 
 learned to practise was essentially what we should 
 call drawing, though of a rude and simple kind. 
 " The origin of the hieroglyphics of Egypt," says 
 
Dr. Wilson [Prehistoric Man, chap, xviii.), " is 
 
 clearly traceable to the simplest form of picture- Picture- 
 writing. 
 writing, the literal figuring of the objects designed 
 
 to be expressed. Through a natural series of 
 progressive stages this infantile art developed itself 
 into a phonetic alphabet, the arbitrary symbols of 
 sounds of the human voice." Even in the present 
 day picture-writing is not unfrequently resorted to 
 by travellers as a means of making themselves in- 
 telligible. There is also a kind of art which is 
 writing in the modern sense and drawing at the 
 same time, such as the work of the mediaeval 
 illuminators in their manuscripts. 
 
PRIMITIVE DRAWING 
 
 The mental processes by which man has gradually 
 become able to draw, in our modern sense of the 
 word, may be followed, like the development of a 
 chicken in the egg, by examining specimens at 
 Abstract various Stages of formation. His first efforts are 
 
 charcicter 
 
 of earliest remarkable for their highly abstract character, 
 because the undeveloped intellect has few and 
 simple ideas, and takes what it perceives in nature 
 without being embarrassed by the rest. It seizes 
 upon facts rather than appearances, and the primi- 
 tive artist is satisfied when the fact has been clearly 
 stated or conveyed by him. The study of appear- 
 ances, and the effort to render them, come much 
 later ; and the complete knowledge of appearances 
 is the sign of a very high state of civilisation, im- 
 plying most advanced artistic culture both in the 
 artist and in the public to whom he addresses him- 
 
self. The work of the primitive artist is an affirma- 
 tion of the reahties that he knew without mystery 
 or confusion. In all early Egyptian work you see 
 at once what the artist intended to draw, whereas 
 the finest modern drawing is often so mysterious as 
 to be most obscure to those who have not made a 
 special study of the fine arts. The primitive artist 
 knew that his work was really that of a writer, and 
 as the sign-painter of the present day takes care to 
 make his letters plain in order that they may be 
 read, so the early Egyptian draftsman had no 
 thought of any more delicate truth of appearance 
 than that which sufficed to let people clearly under- 
 stand what his figures and symbols were intended 
 for. There was no conception of what artists call 
 "effect," which enters into the greater part of 
 modern drawing, until a very much later period. 
 
 We may mention briefly two survivals of primi- 
 tive art in our own day, which have for their 
 purpose a high degree of legibility. These are 
 coats-of-arms and trade-marks. Heraldic drawing, 
 when properly done, is executed on primitive prin- 
 ciples, and is a survival of the earliest uses of graphic 
 art, being really a kind of writing intended to be 
 recognisable by the illiterate when they saw it on 
 shield or banner. Modern trade-marks, of which 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 the use has greatly extended of late years, are of 
 the same class, and are often designed with a 
 simplicity of intention like that of remote antiquity. 
 
 Archaic forms of drawing are thus not all extinct 
 even in our own day, and certain arts are practised 
 among us which compel the modern mind to re- 
 cover by effort and study something of that sim- 
 plicity and decision which were instinctive in earlier 
 ages. Bookbinding, illuminating, and designing for 
 pottery are often rightly practised in these days in 
 an archaic spirit. In some of the best modern caric- 
 atures there are peculiarities which belong to early 
 symbolic drawing, in which, as Dr. Wilson says, " the 
 figures are for the most part grotesque and monstrous 
 from the very necessity of giving predominance to 
 the special feature in which the symbol is embodied." 
 The first idea of drawing is always delineation, 
 the marking out of the subject by lines, the notion 
 of drawing without lines being of later development. 
 In primitive work the outline is hard and firm, but 
 interior markings are given also. When the outline 
 was complete, the primitive artist would proceed at 
 once in many cases to fill up the space inclosed by 
 it with flat colour, but he did not understand light 
 and shade and gradation. The historical develop- 
 ment of drawing may always be seen in the practice 
 
C>(UFOR»iA^ 
 
 of children when left to draw for their amusement. 
 They begin, as the human race began, with firm 
 outlines, representing men and animals, usually in 
 profile. The next thing they do, if left to their own 
 instincts, is to fill up the spaces so marked out with 
 colours, the brightest they can get. This is genuine 
 primitive art, and it may be carried to a high degree 
 of perfection in its own way without ceasing to be 
 
 Geese (Ancient Egyptian). 
 
 in complete subordination to the strictest primitive 
 principles. For example, here is a decorative re- 
 presentation of geese from an Egyptian wall-paint- 
 ing of the ancient empire in the Bulak Museum. It 
 is admirably drawn, and seems at first sight very 
 advanced art, but there is no attempt at effect or 
 perspective, and the birds are in profile. The 
 markings of the feathers are beautifully given, but 
 there is no modelling. 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 By referring in this way to very early art we 
 perceive how drawing may exist without certain 
 elements which in modern times are usually asso- 
 ciated with it. We generally conceive of drawing 
 in close association with perspective, and at least 
 with some degree of light and shade, but it may 
 exist independently of both. This may perhaps 
 Difficulties help us to a definition of drawing. Such a definition 
 
 of a defini- 
 
 lion. would need to be exceedingly comprehensive, or 
 
 else it would certainly exclude some of the many 
 arts into which drawing more or less visibly enters. 
 A modern critic would be very likely to say that a 
 figure was deficient in drawing if it was deficient in 
 perspective, and yet the two are easily separable, as, 
 for example, in the work of the mechanical drafts- 
 man ; or drawing may be associated with a kind 
 of perspective which is visually false, as isometric 
 perspective. We might say that drawing was the 
 imitation of form, but a moment's reflection would 
 enable us to perceive that it may create forms with- 
 out imitating, as it does in many fanciful conceptions 
 of ornamental designers. It might be suggested 
 that drawing was the representation on a flat surface 
 of forms which are not flat, but the most variously 
 curved surfaces, as in vases, are frequently drawn 
 upon, and flat objects are sometimes represented on 
 
DRA WING 
 
 rounded surfaces. The Greeks were so logical in 
 
 their use of ypdcfjeiv for both drawing and writing 
 
 that it is not possible to construct a definition 
 
 comprehensive enough to include all the varieties 
 
 of drawing without including writing also. If we 
 
 say that drawing is a motion which leaves signi- Definition. 
 
 ficant marks, we are as precise as the numerous 
 
 varieties of the art will permit us to be. 
 
 The first step in the arts of design is a resolute Conven- 
 tionalism. 
 and decided conventionalism. Drawing always 
 
 begins with line, and there are no lines in nature. 
 The natural world presents itself to the eye as an 
 assemblage of variously-coloured patches or spaces, 
 always full of gradation both in shade and colour, 
 but in all this there is no such thing as a real line. 
 Even the sea-horizon, which is commonly spoken of 
 as a line, is not so in reality : it is only the ending of 
 a coloured space. The conventionalism of the line 
 being once admitted, it may be considered as neither 
 good nor bad in itself, but a simple necessity. Be- 
 yond this, however, in the use of the line when it 
 has once been adopted, there may be artistic merit 
 or demerit. 
 
 All primitive line-drawing gives a version of 
 natural truth which is idealised in one way or the 
 other, and it is always conventional not only in 
 
Japanese Drawing (angular 
 
Japanese Drawing (in gentle curves). 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 the sense of using conventional means, but also in 
 that of interpreting natural forms with conven- 
 tional amplifications or omissions. The temper of 
 a primitive civilisation always led its artists to the 
 expression of certain customary ways of seeing 
 things which were transmitted traditionally by art, 
 so that the artists in their turn became the means 
 of imposing the authority of public sentiment upon 
 their successors. The liberty of individual artists, 
 even to draw what may seem such a simple thing 
 as the outline of a human figure, is dependent upon 
 the degree in which the civilisation under which 
 they live is or is not traditional. 
 
 To understand the effect of customary ways of 
 seeing things on the use of pure line in drawing, 
 the reader is recommended to study some specimens 
 of early design as it was practised in China, in Japan, 
 in Egypt, in Assyria, and in Greece. It is easy, in 
 these days, to procure photographic reproductions 
 of ancient design for students who do not live 
 near a museum. They will perceive at once in the 
 five countries four entirely different ways of seeing 
 and designing the curvature of lines, although the 
 Chinese and Japanese ways are nearer to each other 
 than they are to the Egyptian or the Greek ; whilst 
 on the other hand, different as the two latter may 
 
be, they are nearer to each other than to the art of 
 China or Japan. 
 
 A certain kind of curvature is dominant in Chinese 
 
 and 
 
 Chinese art, along with the preference for certaui Japanese 
 
 design. 
 
 easily recognisable forms. In Japanese drawmgs 
 the curves are wilder, bolder, more unexpected, 
 more audacious ; and when the Japanese designer 
 chose to make use of angles he was, from the same 
 tendency to vivacity and exaggeration, disposed to 
 prefer acute angles. In both Chinese and Japanese 
 work, when at its best, there is often the most 
 exquisite beauty and delicacy of line, especially in 
 the contours of female faces ; and there is frequently 
 a masterly power in the interpretation of natural 
 truth, or certain portions of natural truth, by means 
 of the utmost simplicity. 
 
 In ancient Egypt the line was quieter and less Egyptian 
 "tormented " than in China or Japan, the curvature 
 more restrained, and the artistic expression generally 
 rather that of calm dignity than of vigorous action. 
 Egyptian art was kept within the strictest limits by 
 the most powerful conventionalism that ever existed, 
 but the student of drawing will find much in it that 
 is well worth his attention. The Egyptian drafts- 
 men attained to a most noble use of line, combining 
 a serious and disciplined reserve with much delicacy 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 of modulation. The true grandeur of Egyptian 
 work has only been apprehended of late years, 
 because it was formerly supposed that its conven- 
 tionalism was due to simple ignorance of nature 
 and want of skill in art. It is of various degrees 
 of excellence, and there were inferior artists in the 
 early Egyptian schools, as in 
 others ; but we are often 
 startled by magnificent power 
 in conventionalising natural 
 material, and by a peculiar 
 sense of beauty. There is in 
 Egyptian design a singular 
 combinationof tranquil strength 
 with refinement. The ex- 
 ample given herewith, an 
 Egyptian Queen, is not with- 
 out decorative elegance, but 
 at the same time it betrays the 
 difficulty felt by the early artist 
 in giving a front view of the person. He had 
 evidently wished to do this, as we see by the 
 shoulders and cape, but when he came to the face 
 and legs and feet he fell back into the old habit of 
 profile. The girdle is fastened in front according 
 to the breast and sideways according to the 
 
 All Egyptian Queen. 
 
thigh. The thumb of the left hand is on the 
 wrong side. 
 
 Assyrian design is very famihar to us through Assyrian 
 
 tlesign, 
 
 the ancient wall-sculptures, where the line is often 
 rather engraved than carved, so that we can see 
 quite plainly what were the qualities of drawing 
 which the Assyrian artists 
 valued. They, too, con- 
 ventionalised nature, but 
 sought for those curves 
 and accents of line which 
 express manly beauty 
 rather than feminine. 
 They drew, in their own 
 way, admirably well, with 
 great firmness and self- 
 command, knowing always 
 exactly what equivalents 
 or representatives to give 
 for the lines and mark- 
 ings of nature, in accordance with the spirit 
 of their artistic system. Their art is much 
 
 An Assyrian King. 
 
 with the 
 Their art is 
 more strongly accentuated than the Egyptian, 
 and we might even say that it is more pictur- 
 esque while it is less tranquil. Assyrian design 
 has more of the spirit of painting in it than 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 Egyptian, and less of the spirit of sculpture. 
 The Assyrian line tends to the expression of 
 energy in action, the Egyptian to strength and 
 beauty in repose. 
 
Ill 
 
 LINEAR DRAWING IN ANCIENT GREECE 
 
 Notwithstanding the high degree of power and 
 skill attained in linear design by nations which 
 existed before the artistic development of Greece, Greece. 
 it must ever remain an inexplicable marvel that the 
 Greek designers should have attained, apparently 
 without effort and simply by the gift of nature, to a 
 degree of perfection in the use of line which had 
 never been approached before and has never been 
 equalled since. The manly beauty of an Assyrian 
 king at a lion hunt, with his curly beard and his 
 muscular legs, and his arm mighty to bend the bow, 
 is grand indeed, but with a purely barbaric grand- 
 eur ; the half-feminine beauty of an Egyptian deity 
 lives chiefly in the serene face — the body is often 
 frankly architectural, and has always rather the 
 qualities of a column than those of the living flesh. 
 But in Greece the curves of the line were for the 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 first time made to express the fulness and grace of 
 life, with an ideal perfection coming from the 
 exquisite innate taste and refinement of the artists, 
 and never to be found in any single model. How 
 much knowledge and taste may be expressed by a 
 
 A Foot Race (archaic Greek). 
 
 simple line may be seen in any Greek vase of the 
 best time, especially if there are both draped and 
 naked figures, of both sexes, in the composition. 
 
 It is a mistake to suppose that the Greeks 
 reached their unrivalled excellence without having 
 first passed through a barbaric stage. In archaic 
 
Greek design the proportions of the body are not 
 yet well discerned ; the arms are usually too thin, 
 the thighs too thick relatively to the waists and the 
 lower part of the legs, the noses sharply pointed 
 and inelegant, as if with an intention of caricature. 
 
 Peleus leading Thetis home. 
 
 These characteristics will be observed in the 
 Runners, and also in the profiles of Athena and 
 Poseidon, from Panathenaic amphorae produced in 
 the pottery works of Exekias about the end of the 
 sixth century or the beginning of the fifth century 
 B.C. An archaic tradition remained in Greek vase 
 
[Athena and Poseidon (trom an amphora by Exekias). 
 
painting even in the best time of art, when great 
 painters were drawing as beautifully as the con- 
 temporary sculptors carved. For example, this 
 beautiful design of Peleus leading Thetis home 
 belongs to the best period of Greek design (about 
 the middle of the fifth century B.C.), and still it 
 bears traces of archaic imperfection, as in the lower 
 part of the leg and the foot of Peleus. In the vase 
 of Camirus, on the contrary, we have Greek design 
 in a condition of complete development, entirely 
 delivered from archaic tradition and influences 
 except so far as the early stages of Greek art may 
 have been a necessary preparation for the later. 
 
 The following example from a vase of the fifth 
 century p,.c. is also a good illustration of the 
 progress in Greek art which delivered it from 
 archaism. Let the reader compare especially the 
 feet of Thetis and Peleus with those of Telemachus 
 and Penelope. In the Peleus vase the feet are 
 strictly in profile, in the Penelope the artist has 
 been indifferent whether they were in profile or not. 
 So with the heads. The attitudes are beautiful in 
 both, but the condition of graphic art is much more 
 advanced in the Penelope. 
 
 The leading principle of Greek design on vases Greek 
 was the expression of form by pure, firm, and on vase'^s. 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 accurate line. Spaces were distinguished by flat 
 tints of red, black, and white, but there was no 
 shading to indicate modelHng. When local colour 
 could be easily hinted at by markings of black 
 thicker than a simple outline, it was frequently 
 done, as it was continually in Japanese art, but care 
 
 Penelope's Loom (fr 
 
 of the fifth century r.c.) 
 
 was taken that these broader black markings should 
 never be important enough to alter the true 
 character of the design, as essentially a work in 
 simple line. Thus, a woman's hair might be drawn 
 with broad touches to make us see that it was 
 darker than her flesh, and the dark band round the 
 
edges of her dress would be given in pure black 
 of its own width. Nor was this the only device by 
 which a certain degree of local colour was suggested 
 to the eye, though it was not really imitated. The 
 red did for ordinary flesh colour, and white for flesh 
 colour intended to be of more than ordinary fair- 
 ness. Great spaces of black were reserved for the 
 background, by which a striking relief was given to 
 the figures. This is the regular principle of Greek 
 vase decoration, though the artists did not strictly 
 confine themselves to it, but would also work in 
 simple black and white, as in the Portland vase, or 
 introduce brighter colour sparingly, like the tur- 
 quoise of the mantle of Thetis and in the wings of 
 Eros in the vase of Camirus. This use of colour, 
 however, did not in the least interfere with the 
 unflinching system of Greek drawing, which was, in 
 the strictest sense of the word, delineation. In this 
 it differs absolutely from many modern kinds of 
 drawing, which avoid the line as much as the 
 Greeks delighted in it. This is not intended as an 
 expression either of praise or blame ; it is simply a 
 statement of fact. 
 
 The truth is that Greek line-drawino^ is simply Character 
 
 ^. . . 1 r of Greek 
 
 the most perfect condition of a very early form of deiinea- 
 art. It is the child's idea of drawing, carried out 
 
 ^L^^^ 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 with the knowledge and taste of men who lived in 
 the early youth of the human race and were not 
 disturbed and distracted by the discoveries and 
 experiments of modern Europeans. Amongst its 
 other peculiarities may be mentioned its beautiful 
 independence of anatomy. No anatomical mark- 
 ings are ever given simply as such. The figures 
 are living men and women with their skins on, 
 not dcorcht^s in a dissecting-room. There is less of 
 the anatomical tendency in Greek art than in 
 Assyrian. When the Assyrian artist wishes to 
 make you feel that a man's leg is very strong he 
 maps out every muscle and tendon as far as his 
 knowledge will allow, but the Greek contents him- 
 self with showing the vigour and ease of the strong 
 man's action. It is, however, in the representation 
 of the female form that the grace of the Greek 
 line drawing is most conspicuous and most unpre- 
 cedented. There had been before some lithe 
 feminine grace of motion even in Egyptian art, but 
 it is stiffness and awkwardness themselves in com- 
 parison with the Greek, 
 Natuiai The right progress of art education in modern 
 
 nit e.iuca- times could not be better assured than by following 
 in the case of each individual student that course 
 of development which humanity itself has followed. 
 
True and careful lines, in combination with the 
 colouring of spaces in a few flat tints, are the 
 natural beginning. What a child does with infantile 
 unsuccess for its amusement the beginner in serious 
 art should be taught to do carefully and well for his 
 instruction. The accurate use of line is the first 
 thing to be learned with the pencil point, and the 
 equal laying of a flat tint is the first thing to be 
 learned with the brush. 
 
 Even at so early a stage in art as the use of the 
 simple line, we find ourselves face to face with one 
 of the most remarkable peculiarities of the fine as 
 distinguished from the mechanical arts. It does 
 not require much critical acumen to discover that 
 accuracy is one thing in a line and beauty another. 
 The student ought to work at first for accuracy, 
 but from beautiful works of art which are not in 
 themselves accurate copies of nature, but copies 
 idealised at least in some degree by the taste and 
 feeling of the artist. All works of art that are 
 worth studying are ideal in one way or another. 
 We have spoken of the Greek line, which is one of 
 the most highly idealised of all artistic expressions. 
 The Greek artists when they outlined an object 
 always greatly simplified the outline by omitting 
 many minor accidents of angle and curvature which 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 a modern picturesque artist would seek for because 
 of their variety. But simplification does not explain 
 all that the Greek mind did to alter nature in 
 design. Its sense of beauty and elegance was so 
 exquisite that it continually amplified what was 
 meagre in the model, reduced what was super- 
 abundant, and corrected what was awkward. All 
 this could be done, and was done, with the simple 
 line alone without any help from chiaroscuro, and 
 it is one of the most remarkable proofs of the 
 expressional power of the line that it even suggests 
 modelling in the blank spaces which are inclosed 
 by it. 
 
 Notwithstanding the excellence of Greek linear 
 design, it would be well that the student's attention 
 should not be confined to it too exclusively. For, 
 in the first place, we may remember that the vase- 
 paintings which remain to us were not executed by 
 the most eminent painters living at that time, but 
 were only done by clever workmen in the artistic 
 spirit which the eminent painters had rendered 
 prevalent and fashionable ; whereas in modern art 
 Advan- we cau Study the ipsissimcB linecB of truly great 
 
 tages of 
 
 studying men. both in their drawings and in many cases 
 
 modern ..,.,. , . a • i 
 
 design, more accessibly still in their etchings. Again, the 
 Greek desicrners had certain excellencies, but not 
 
DRA WING 29 
 
 all excellencies, the remarkably harmonious char- 
 acter of their work being, in fact, quite as much due 
 to its absolute neglect of certain qualities of line 
 as to its possession of other qualities. It is a 
 narrow and limited kind of art, the singular perfec- 
 tion of it having been made possible by that narrow- 
 ness. Modern art, on the contrary, is infinitely 
 vast and varied, full of imperfection, abounding in 
 all conceivable kinds of error and failure, but also 
 rich beyond all that a Greek could possibly have 
 imagined in knowledge and sentiment of many 
 kinds. 
 
 The Greek spirit passed through its first decad- 
 ence in Roman art, and was at last degraded past 
 recognition at Byzantium. 
 
IV 
 
 DRAWING IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 The Middle Ages may be said to include a space 
 of about 750 years, from a.d. 700 to a.d. 1450. 
 This estimate is, of course, only an approxima- 
 tion, as it is impossible to fix a precise date either 
 for the beginning or the end of a state of artistic 
 cultivation. In the graphic arts mediaeval influence 
 continued through the fifteenth century. 
 
 The art of drawing had preserved the ancient 
 
 classical spirit for some centuries after the Christian 
 
 Extinction era. Finally, classical design spent itself in a de- 
 
 of classical , . . ■r^ • 
 
 design. caymg tradition and became extinct. Drawing was 
 then learned over again, starting on the most primi- 
 tive principles. The distinction between classic and 
 mediaeval art is that the first was founded on the 
 Drawing study of the naked figure, whilst the second de- 
 anlwTom velopcd itself from ornament. Even in the latest 
 decline of classic art, so long as traditions of an- 
 
DRA WING 31 
 
 tiquity lingered, some knowledge of the naked figure 
 still survived, whilst mediaival art began with orna- 
 mental dress and only just so much of figure design 
 as was necessary to convey the idea of a human 
 being within the dress. ^ The reader will have a 
 clear conception of mediaeval principles in drawing Medizevai 
 
 T 1 • 1 -1 • 1 • principles 
 
 II he associates them with ornament in architecture, in draw- 
 furniture, patterns of all kinds, and decorative writ- 
 ing in precious manuscripts. In ancient Irish 
 manuscripts (seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries) 
 the figures themselves are conceived as parts of an 
 ornamental pattern, as even in our own day writing- 
 masters sometimes include a sort of rude figure- 
 drawing amongst their involved flourishes with the 
 pen, displaying, like their mediaeval predecessors, 
 great manual dexterity with little knowledge. Al- 
 though the mediaeval artists were ignorant of the 
 figure, they had that instinctive appreciation of the Mediavai 
 
 appiecia- 
 
 true nature of ornament which belongs to simple and tion of 
 
 ornament. 
 
 early stages of civilisation. They drew the figure 
 
 as ornamentists whose knowledge came only from 
 
 practice in ornament might be expected to draw it. 
 
 In the Bayeux tapestry William of Normandy 
 
 1 Sometimes not even so much as that. In Byzantine drawing 
 the costume is represented as if standing by its own stiffness, with a 
 human head and hands somehow fastened to it. 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 and his knights are represented with much attention 
 to their chain armour, every ring of which is drawn 
 as if it were a circular pane in a glass window, with- 
 out reference to the shape of the body except as an 
 
 bICEST/, 
 
 William the Conqueror and his Knights (from the Bayeux tapestry). 
 
 outline enclosing the rings, which are drawn purely 
 on the principles of ornament. 
 
 In the long centuries of mediaeval design there 
 was great improvement in grace and elegance of 
 line (compare good designs of the thirteenth century 
 with those of the ninth or tenth), but never any 
 
DRA WING 33 
 
 figure-science worth comparing with that of the Progress 
 
 in medise- 
 
 Renaissance ; in fact, such knowledge was not vai draw- 
 attainable by mediaeval methods. 
 
 Landscape backgrounds occur frequently in Land- 
 scape. 
 mediaeval manuscripts, and prove that the artists 
 
 were by no means indifferent to material landscape ; 
 that is to say, that they noticed the existence of hills, 
 trees, and rivers, whilst they seem to have taken 
 great pleasure in human work as affecting natural 
 landscape by converting its open spaces into fields, 
 parks, and gardens. Mediaeval artists, however, 
 were not good landscape draftsmen in the modern 
 sense, because they only drew material objects, and 
 took little or no account of effects. All the com- 
 ponent parts of a mediaeval landscape can be 
 counted ; there may be a hundred trees, but never 
 a forest ; there may be twenty houses and five 
 towers, but never a city. 
 
 Although the artists of the Middle Ages were 
 ignorant of two most important qualities, namely, 
 the form of the naked figure and the effects that 
 lend significance and unity to landscape, they gave 
 new openings to the art of drawing, by which it 
 continues to profit even in the present day. Not- Superiori- 
 withstanding the rudeness and ignorance of medi- meditevai 
 aeval art, it excelled classical art in expression, in 
 3 
 
The Arming of a Knight (from a manuscript in the British Museum, thirteenth 
 century). 
 
 Messenger bringing a Letter to the Royal Army (from a manuscript in tlie National Library, 
 Paris, thirteenth century). 
 
pathos, in variety of action, and in the significance 
 of groups. Its childishness was that of a very 
 observant child with its eyes well open to all that 
 was going on around it, and with a lively interest 
 in religious and secular legend. If the mediaeval 
 draftsman knew little or nothing of the naked figure, 
 he took a great interest in dress, and our modern 
 
 Mowers (from a manuscript in the National Library, Paris, twelfth century). 
 
 costume -painters are his descendants. It would be 
 a great mistake to suppose that the ignorance of 
 the mediaeval draftsmen deprived them of lasting 
 influence. German design and engraving of the 
 sixteenth century is perfectly mediaeval in principle, Persistent 
 only with added knowledge, and its influence has ofmediEe- 
 been wide and enduring. Much modern drawing dpiS." 
 
36 DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 (e.g. that of D. G. Rossetti and Mr. Burne Jones) 
 looks back directly to the Middle Ages. The 
 modern revival of Gothic architecture for ecclesi- 
 astical purposes has formed modern schools of orna- 
 mental design on mediaeval principles. When the 
 architecture of a new church is Gothic, its stained 
 glass, its mural decoration, and all its furniture have 
 to be Gothic also. 
 
 The art of illuminating manuscripts, which has 
 been revived in the nineteenth century, and is now 
 in constant requisition for addresses and other com- 
 memorative documents, is chiefly practised in imita- 
 tion of the ornamental writing of the Middle Ages. 
 The following specimen is from a manuscript of the 
 fourteenth century (a Roman History paraphrased 
 from Valerius Maximus). The capital letter is an 
 example of elegance and good taste in the invention 
 of linear curvature for its own sake as pure ornament 
 without reference to any natural object. It shows 
 great manual dexterity and a very delicate sense of 
 proportion. Its qualities of line and curve are much 
 the same as those of the best mediaeval iron-work. 
 
 The principles of mediaeval mural design do not 
 call for much separate comment, as they are the 
 same old principles which prevailed in Egypt and 
 Greece. Outlines are clear and decided, and orna- 
 
ment is willingly introduced in dresses and back- 
 grounds in order that the wall itself may be orna- 
 mented. In the accompanying illustration, a mural 
 painting of St. John the Evangelist, the designs 
 
 11 
 
 ifelVoirc^toricl^WHvu^ 
 ^...^^^Jlou qmntr Umr. y^>oviY(^y 
 tl eftSfllinoiirqttc on tempjsr qne 
 le$ g(ds atioimt f^xCc ^mmc . c-p, 
 riCCxs Te mpvtoTe^i ^iivc il eft M^ 
 t^uattt il^ aumt ^cMis U rapv 
 toXcl)ntmtte1f)mtie q^a^ioCtiton 
 cf^ns -^bnxB (\\iicCtoit tciixV^ 
 tiietc^febimsl <IFt ^pnti/ attairii 
 am^ftti^iCrmueue a?rtelti(ynie^ eft 
 aiTavtcnir mCCx que ill y ot alTe^-^ 
 '<)ne$ lei^mc ialns btt^ cite (\m 
 cftott affelee $ftbinia . X a qtiele 
 ate a|nc5 nunUt tc nxconxum 
 ens <c raxbv ti ram^ <pitrtel coit 
 nman^ qu^ vX Cmnent rttm^5 
 
 of the dress, the pavement, and the background are 
 made to serve as decorations for the wall on which 
 the subject is painted. The most judicious mural 
 design is therefore a continuation or survival of 
 the early mediaeval preference for hard outlines 
 
John the Evangehst (from an luiglish mural painting of the fifieenth century). 
 
and ornament. When mural design attempts the 
 modern pictorial qualities of mystery and effect 
 it becomes unsuitable and out of place. 
 
 It may be added that almost all modern grot- 
 esque illustration, such as that of Dore, is a con- 
 tinuation of the grotesque invention in mediaeval 
 sculpture and design. Of late years much of the 
 best French caricature, that of Caran d'Ache and 
 Guillaume, for example, is more classical in senti- 
 ment and technical qualities; it comes from Greek 
 design with a strong additional influence from Japan. 
 
THE RENAISSANCE 
 
 If the student wishes to learn the figure, and has 
 not to concern himself with ecclesiastical architec- 
 ture or decoration, he may pass at once from the 
 period of decline in Greek art to the Renaissance 
 without pausing to investigate the more or less 
 successful attempts of the intervening ages, in which, 
 indeed, may be found examples of quaintly rendered 
 human character, but hardly any of well-studied 
 human form. The best way is to go from antiquity 
 to Hans Holbein the younger at once. He had 
 remarkable power and skill in the use of line, many 
 of his best portraits being hardly anything more 
 than a delicately true outline, with just enough 
 shading to make us understand the modelling, but 
 nothing of what is commonly understood by chiar- 
 oscuro. As Holbein was much more of a realist 
 than the Greeks were, his lines have more variety 
 
DRAWING 41 
 
 of curvature than theirs, and the forms inclosed by 
 them are more individual. All that is best in the 
 peculiar spirit of northern drawing at that time is to 
 be found in Holbein's art, which is full of close 
 observation, of calm sobriety, and unflinching truth- 
 fulness. In the south of Europe the Renaissance led 
 to that artistic development of which the modern 
 schools of figure design have inherited the ideas and 
 principles. A certain period in the life of Raphael 
 marks the transition from the old spirit to the new, 
 and his great success in the application of the new 
 principles led to their authoritative establishment in 
 the schools of Europe. The Renaissance made The Re- 
 drawing at the same time more scientific and more 
 ideal. The artists studied anatomy more than it had 
 ever been studied before, and they gave a degree of 
 attention to the whole of the human body which a 
 mediaeval draftsman would have concentrated almost 
 exclusively on the face. But they did not rest 
 satisfied with copying the facts of nature and in- 
 vestigating the laws of construction and of action, — 
 they took that farther step which the Greeks had 
 taken before them, and drew the figure not merely 
 as it appeared to their bodily eyes, but with that 
 more perfect beauty which was suggested to the eye 
 in the artist's mind. Raphael openly affirmed this 
 
 naissance. 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 principle by declaring that he drew men and women, 
 not as they were, but as they ought to be, and the 
 process of idealisation may be actually seen in what 
 he did by comparing his studies with his completed 
 works. 
 
 We have hitherto spoken simply of the use of 
 line, that being essentially drawing in the strict 
 sense of delineation ; but when the European mind 
 had reached the period of the Renaissance a new 
 
 chiar- study took its rise — chiaroscuro — which became so 
 inextricably mingled with that of drawing that it is 
 impossible to speak adequately of the one without 
 giving some account of the other. The increased 
 knowledge of the muscular structure of the body led 
 the artists to pay more attention to modelling than 
 had ever been paid to it before, so that good model- 
 ling got to be considered an essential part of draw- 
 ing. It may be necessary for the uninstructed 
 in artistic matters to explain in this place that 
 
 Modelling, modelling in design is the art of shading in such 
 a manner as to give everything its due degree of 
 projection or relief, and the practical difficulty of 
 it lies in the necessity for making the degree of 
 projection in any object or part of an object not 
 what it is in nature, taken by itself, but what it 
 ought to be relatively to other projecting masses 
 
or details in the same drawing, so as to be important 
 only in the right degree, or subordinate, and always 
 to form part of a consistent whole. The simple 
 line-work of the early stages of art was therefore 
 abandoned by the greatest artists of the Renaissance 
 as a general means of study. Even when using 
 the most rapid means of expression for themselves 
 alone, they were accustomed to treat the outline 
 with little respect, and always to indicate shading 
 in some way, often by the very rudest means, as, 
 for example, by a few hasty diagonal strokes of the 
 pen. Leonardo da Vinci retained to the last a l. 
 good deal of that care about the outline which 
 characterises the earlier stage of art, but even in 
 his case it was accompanied by an equal degree 
 of care in modelling. In the sketches and studies 
 of Michelangelo the care and time given to the 
 outline are always in exact proportion to the pains 
 taken with the modelling, and this employment of 
 the time at the artist's disposal is a clear proof that 
 he considered modelling as much a part of drawing 
 as the outline itself. When he had time to do the 
 modelling thoroughly, as in his finished studies, he 
 made the outlines very carefully also ; but when 
 the time at his disposal was limited he did not 
 economise it by making, as an earlier artist would 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 angelo. 
 
 probably have done, a careful outline without model- 
 ling, — he still gave both together, but in a rougher 
 and readier way. The student can find no better 
 examples of this treatment than any three sketches 
 
 Michel- and studies of Michelangelo which may have cost 
 him respectively five minutes, half an hour, and 
 three or four hours of labour. The work in each 
 instance is economised, not by rejection of one 
 portion of his art, but by summarising the whole, 
 more or less, with the strictest reference to the time 
 at his disposal. The studies of Raphael are done 
 on the same principle. 
 
 The spirit of the Renaissance was caught from 
 the study of antiquity, but it gave more latitude 
 to original genius by allowing a freer play to per- 
 
 Exaggeia- sonal qualities in art. This led to bold exaggera- 
 tions, which became a part of artistic expression, 
 and were to it what emphasis is to the orator. 
 Michelangelo himself set the example of this, and 
 it may be observed that, whereas when the works 
 of the ancients seem to lose their spirit on reduction 
 to a smaller scale, and require to be accentuated by 
 the copyist who reduces them, those of Michelangelo 
 bear reduction easily by reason of their own strong 
 accents and exaggerations. Leonardo da Vinci, being 
 of a calmer temper, put little exaggeration into his 
 
 tion, 
 
finished works, which are distinguished by great 
 suavity and sobriety of manner ; but he gave it free 
 play in his caricatures, which served as an outlet for 
 the more violent side of his genius. 
 
 A kind of exaggeration almost universal during 
 and since the Renaissance has been a more than 
 natural marking of the muscles, which is opposed 
 to the spirit of the best Greek design, and was 
 directly due to anatomical studies, especially to the 
 habit of dissection. This has continued down to 
 our own day in all the learned schools of Europe. 
 For example, in the St. Symphorien of Ingres the 
 figures of the Roman lictors are drawn as if they 
 were without skins, and every muscle is enormously 
 exaggerated. 
 
 A better result of the scientific spirit of the 
 Renaissance was the degree of care and attention 
 which artists began to pay to the measurement Measure- 
 of the human body, so as to determine its true 
 proportions. Albert Diirer made and recorded very 
 numerous and careful measurements both of man 
 and the horse, declaring that " no one could be 
 a good workman without measuring," and that *' it 
 was the true foundation of all painting." Leonardo 
 affirmed in words of equal plainness that "a young 
 man ought to begin to learn perspective by measur- 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 ing everything." This habit of measurement has 
 been continued down to our own day by the more 
 careful artists. Whenever an animal died in the 
 Jardin des Plantes, at Paris, Barye the sculptor 
 went at once to take all its measurements, and drew 
 or modelled it besides ; but he measured animals 
 all his life, notwithstanding his great skill in drawing 
 by the eye. 
 
VI 
 
 THE PICTURESQUE 
 
 It is necessary to say a few words in this place 
 about the rise of what we now call "picturesque" Pictur- 
 drawing, which in the present century has been drawing. 
 more prevalent than any other throughout Europe. 
 Although the true nature of the picturesque is not 
 generally understood, all know what they mean by 
 it when they apply the word to real objects ; for 
 example, we all consider that a feudal castle or 
 abbey, when it has become an ivied ruin, is a pic- 
 turesque object, but that a Greek temple in perfect 
 repair is not. Even amongst things in equally good 
 repair the distinction is recognised ; thus we say 
 that the costume worn by Charles II. was more 
 picturesque than that worn by William Pitt. The 
 nature of the quality may be most conveniently 
 studied in drawings, and the technical analysis of 
 all drawings reputed to be picturesque shows that 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 The the quality is inseparable from irregularity whether 
 
 quality 
 
 called of line or shade. The regular outline of a Greek 
 
 "pictur- 
 esque." column is not picturesque ; the irregular outline of 
 
 a gnarled oak branch is so in a high degree. The 
 regular gradation of the open sky is not picturesque, 
 but the varied and uncertain shades of broken 
 storm-clouds are picturesque material, especially 
 available for water-colour. We find, too, on analys- 
 ing all works reputed to be picturesque, whether 
 executed with the pen, the etching-needle, or the 
 brush, that the quality is closely connected with the 
 elaboration, or at least the suggestion, of detail, and 
 that simplification kills it. The rugged outline of a 
 Cumberland hill is picturesque, but not a smooth 
 dome of snow, like the summit of Mont Blanc 
 without the neighbouring aigitilles.^ There is con- 
 sequently in all picturesque drawing a tendency 
 The rather to accentuate detail than to overlook it, 
 
 just as the picturesque writing of the English 
 newspaper reporter contains a multitude of details 
 that are scarcely worth telegraphing or print- 
 ing. This holds good for architecture and 
 costume. The age of Elizabeth was a pictur- 
 esque age, and there was much elaboration of 
 detail in architecture, furniture, and dress ; the 
 age of Napoleon I. was eminently unpictur- 
 
 pictur- 
 esque in 
 detail. 
 
esque, and it was an age of severity and simpli- 
 fication. 
 
 As to veracity in art, a dispassionate investigation Veracity 
 of the subject soon brings positive proof that the pictur- 
 
 r 1 1' • 1 • . esque. 
 
 picturesque way of deahng with nature is sometimes 
 favourable to veracity of representation and some- 
 times much the reverse. An artist with a strong 
 sense of the picturesque is sure to notice a great 
 quantity and variety of truths that would escape the 
 attention of a severer student of form, or that would 
 appear trifling to him and unworthy of record. 
 Artists who have the classical spirit, and have gone classical 
 
 1 1 • 1 • • /- 1 1 contempt 
 
 through a classical training, often look upon the for the 
 
 . , . 1 pictur- 
 
 picturesque in nature with aversion, and even con- esque. 
 tempt, and purposely avoid it in their art, simplify- 
 ing what they see before them so as to get lines 
 without interruption in a pure kind of straightness 
 or a continuous sweep of curve. In shading, the 
 artist, hostile to the picturesque, is careful to have 
 broad spaces of quiet tone, flat or with gradation, 
 but always without too great variety or intricacy of 
 colour. To obtain this quiet simplicity the classic 
 artist has to discard much that is visible in nature ; 
 but it is a mistake to suppose that the modern 
 picturesque draftsman is, on the whole, more truth- 
 ful. He turns severe forms into picturesque ones 
 4 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 esque 
 
 by intentional looseness and inaccuracy, often gross 
 
 pictur- 
 esque 
 drawing. 
 
 looseness inaccuracy, of treatment ; he exaggerates ruggedness 
 
 and inac- . . , . . . , , 
 
 curacy. or invents It when it is not in nature, so that when 
 we really understand what picturesque drawing 
 means, and how much of purer and nobler truth is 
 sacrificed to it, we are likely to differ in opinion 
 from the general public, which now prefers it to 
 any other, and is careless of its cost in truth. 
 
 History of The general history of picturesque drawing may 
 be outlined in a paragraph. There is little of it in 
 European antiquity. It was foreign to the genius 
 of Greece, but began to be perceptible in the decline 
 of classic art, and came again in the northern revival 
 of drawing at the close of the Middle Ages, when 
 it was especially of German origin, passing from 
 Germany to Holland, and reaching full develop- 
 ment in the kind of drawing practised by Dutch 
 etchers. Through their influence (principally that 
 of Rembrandt) the picturesque principle of work 
 has become disseminated over other countries, 
 especially France, England, and the United States 
 of America. The picturesque tendency has gained 
 new vigour from American etchers and pen-drafts- 
 men, who in their turn have influenced both English 
 and French work. (We find the tendency also in 
 the quaint and superabundant detail of American 
 
DRAWING 51 
 
 literature, especially that of the humorists.) Italian 
 art has been much less inclined to the picturesque 
 than the arts of the northern and western nations, 
 but quite the most recent Italian school accepts it. 
 Spain long ago (in the time of Velasquez and earlier) 
 developed a grave and sober kind of picturesque, 
 and a much lighter, livelier, and more brilliant kind 
 in the modern times of Fortuny. A good deal of 
 the modern American picturesque may be traced to 
 a Spanish origin. Spaniards like Casanova and 
 Rico, who have lived in France and Italy, have 
 also influenced the art of drawing as practised in 
 those countries. 
 
 The only artist gifted with a very strong sense of 
 the picturesque who was never carried away by it 
 was Meryon. If he had to represent picturesque 
 buildings and a cleanly-built edifice in the same 
 plate, he was careful to give the true character to 
 each, whereas our contemporary picturesque drafts- 
 men are praised and rewarded for their loose and 
 untidy treatment of naturally unbending material, 
 such as classical buildings in excellent repair. 
 
VII 
 
 LANDSCAPE DESIGN 
 
 Land- The kind of drawing which is best for landscape 
 
 scape. 
 
 differs in some important respects from that which 
 is best for the figure. To perceive the full truth 
 of this, the reader has only to draw a landscape with 
 the simplicity of the line in a Greek figure, when 
 he will see that the more complicated character 
 of landscape material requires a more varied inter- 
 pretation. Good landscape draftsmen are seldom 
 very accurate as to form, and it is not necessary 
 that they should be ; but they are always careful to 
 preserve truth of character, and have great diffi- 
 culties of their own to contend against, which are 
 generally much under-estimated. The inaccuracy 
 of landscape design comes from the necessity for 
 composition. When the figure painter composes, 
 he can move his models about, and place them 
 in different attitudes, and draw them faithfully after 
 
LANDSCAPE, WITH A SQUARE TOWER 
 
 Etching by Rembrandt 
 Reproduced in Heliogravure by Amand-Durand 
 
 This is one of Rembrandt's simple landscapes, good for 
 elementary study because the execution is everywhere so 
 clearly seen. Many of the difficulties of landscape are, how- 
 ever, avoided, or have not presented themselves in this case. 
 There is neither sky, nor distance, nor any water except a 
 little in the left-hand corner. The effect, too, is one of the 
 most ordinary light. Still, this is a precious little plate. 
 
all ; but when a landscape painter does the same 
 thing, by an effort of imagination, with his moun- 
 tains, trees, or towers, he unavoidably violates topo- 
 graphic accuracy. The habit of inaccuracy soon 
 forms itself, for this reason, in all landscape drafts- 
 men who compose ; and all artists by profession 
 are compelled to compose in order to make their 
 works attractive in appearance and saleable/ Simple 
 studies of landscape may, however, be made with 
 perfect accuracy, and are so done occasionally for 
 special purposes. The best examples of such 
 accurate landscape design to which we are able 
 to refer the reader are the engraved studies of 
 Mr. Ruskin. Fine examples of artistic landscape 
 design, in which natural scenery is well interpreted 
 but not literally copied, are infinitely more numer- 
 ous. The Liber Veritatis of Claude, and the Liber 
 Studiorum of Turner, abound in fine examples 
 of composed landscape, and a great number of 
 
 1 This was true when the passage was first written, but of late 
 years there has been a tendency amongst the younger French artists 
 to emancipate themselves from composition, which they condemn as 
 too obviously artificial. Still, there is often a less obvious kind of 
 composition in the works of men who affect not to compose, but 
 who, in reality, compose in a manner unlike that of their pre- 
 decessors. As the desire for composition is almost universal in 
 the human mind, the thing is likely to remain, though the fashions 
 of it may change. Even a rebellion against it acknowledges its 
 power. 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 illustrated works have been published during the 
 present century, in which the student may find 
 endless instruction. 
 
 Landscape design is usually taught to amateurs 
 by drawing masters, because it is thought to be 
 easier than that of the figure ; but the choice of 
 landscape for elementary instruction is unfortunate, 
 because a beginner requires simpler and more de- 
 finite material than is to be found in landscape 
 Courses of nature. It is wiser for all begfinners in art to 
 
 stiKly in _ ^ 
 
 drawing, study for a long time the most simple and definite 
 objects which can easily be entirely detached from 
 other objects and measured by themselves. This 
 was the true early classic manner of drawing, and 
 the student who follows it in the present day will 
 always be rewarded by an earlier insight into the 
 qualities of form than can be attained by any other 
 method. The truth of this is more fully recognised 
 wherever drawing is taught seriously ; but those 
 who teach water-colour to amateurs too often en- 
 courage them in a confused way of looking at 
 nature which, at the best, only results in a feeble 
 imitation of fifth-rate water-colour landscapes, in 
 which there is nothing worthy to be called drawing 
 at all, nor any real rendering of form. It is of 
 the utmost importance to amateurs that they should 
 
not misapply the little time which they can usually 
 give to practical art, and yet they often do misapply 
 it in many ways. A very common cause of loss 
 of time, in their case, is false finish, and labour 
 thrown away by the employment of methods which 
 take more time than other methods for an inferior 
 result, as, for example, when painful pen hatching 
 is employed for shading where the chalk and stump, 
 or charcoal, or the brush, would give a shade of far 
 better quality in a twentieth part of the time. All 
 truly great artists, though prodigal of labour when 
 their purposes required it, have economised it when- 
 ever the economy was not artistically an evil, and 
 this is often best seen in their sketches, which give 
 rapidity, not by hurrying the hand, but by using 
 the most summary means of expression. This art 
 of summary expression in drawing is of great use 
 to figure painters, but it is still more important in 
 landscape, because the effects of nature pass so 
 rapidly that they do not permit any slow method 
 of interpretation. Many of the fine sketches by 
 great men have been done, without hurry, in a 
 few minutes. 
 
 For landscape painters the most favourable in- 
 struments of study are those which permit the 
 greatest rapidity. The lead pencil is swift for line 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 and for light indications of shade, but is not good 
 for complete shading. The pen is rapid for line 
 but not for shade, therefore it may be rejected for 
 study unless the drawing is to be reproduced. 
 Chalk on tinted paper is rapid both for line and 
 shade. Of all processes, charcoal is the most rapid 
 for shading, whilst such lines as are used in it may 
 be applied with the same speed as in chalk. Sepia 
 or Indian ink applied with the water-colour brush 
 may be used quickly when the artist has acquired 
 the necessary dexterity, but they are not so quick 
 as charcoal for two reasons. They require one to 
 pause for drying, and they do not permit instant- 
 aneous alterations. 
 
 We ought not to forget that a painter draws 
 with the brush whilst painting, even though he may 
 have 'made no previous outline. A clever painter 
 making a rough sketch in oil from nature that is 
 to take, say, half an hour, may still get his masses 
 right in ' proportionate size, an4'' therefore put more 
 drawing into his work, in the true sense, than a bad 
 but laborious draftsman spending days over a pen- 
 drawing of which the proportions were originally 
 wrong. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE LAW OF PROGRESS IN DRAWING 
 
 To understand the nature of progress in draw- 
 ing which invariably follows the same law, we 
 may begin by observing the characteristics of 
 primitive drawing. They are, universally, as 
 follows : — 
 
 1. The primitive draftsman is careful of his 
 outline, and not careful to get the areas of his 
 masses in right proportion to each other. He 
 is like a boy land - surveyor who should minutely 
 map out the sinuosities of hedges without paying 
 due attention to the relative areas of fields. 
 
 2. The primitive draftsman seeks beauty, not 
 in form, but in ornament. He delights in the 
 laborious copying of jewellery, furniture, and the 
 patterns of rich stuffs. 
 
 3. The work of the primitive draftsman is always 
 clear and definite. He never hints at, or suggests 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 anything. Consequently, though he can draiv (in 
 his own way), he cannot sketch. 
 
 4. No primitive draftsman ever attained com- 
 plete modelling in his drawing of the human figure. 
 
 5. No primitive draftsman ever studied tonic 
 values (the relative degrees of light and dark) 
 closely enough to interpret effect in landscape. The 
 tonic values are all wrong even in the comparatively 
 advanced work of Albert Dtirer, an artist supremely 
 skilful in linear design. 
 
 6. In all things it is characteristic of primitive 
 drawing to be in a hurry to get to details without 
 having previously made sure of masses, either in 
 form or in light-and-shade. 
 
 (A few words may be added about colour, 
 because it is connected with drawing. In primitive 
 art the colours are bright and separated by definite 
 boundaries, which boundaries are, of course, drawn. 
 In advanced art colour is rarely bright, and it is 
 often difficult to say where one hue ends and another 
 begins.) 
 
 These characteristics of primitive drawing are 
 universal. They belong to it in all ages and in all 
 countries. 
 
 Children, even in the most advanced societies, 
 invariably begin to draw on the most ancient prin- 
 

 A HEAD IN WAX 
 
 ENGRAVED BYF.GAILLARD FROM THE BUST IN THE WCAR COLLECTION AT LILLE 
 
A HEAD IN WAX 
 In the Wicar Museum at Lille 
 
 Engraved by F. Gaillard 
 
 This is given is an example of modelling in drawing. 
 
 A secondaiy intention is to show an exceptional method of 
 engraving which Gaillard carried to unprecedented perfection 
 if he did not invent it. The reader will understand the nature 
 of it better after examination with a magnify ing-glass. He 
 will then see that the lines are unobtrusive in themselves, but 
 that they come together with a wonderful completeness of 
 effect when the work is seen as a whole. 
 
ciples of primitive work, and if they were never 
 interfered with by teachers those principles would 
 re-establish themselves, and we should soon be back 
 again, artistically, in the Middle Ages. In fact, 
 primitive design is never wholly extinct ; it is con- 
 stantly reappearing. 
 
 Progress in drawing shows itself by a gradual 
 advance towards the following qualities : — - 
 
 1. Definition, instead of being universally clear 
 and hard, is used in the most various degrees 
 from the sharp and clear to the entirely vague and 
 undefined. Consequently the hard, persistent out- 
 line is abandoned. 
 
 2. Masses are seen in their correct proportions, 
 and more attention is paid to the area of the mass 
 than to its boundaries. 
 
 3. Modelling is carefully studied, and more time 
 is devoted to it than to linear design. 
 
 4. Detail is represented only when it is artistic- 
 ally significant. Ornament is introduced for its 
 poetic interest, and usually in small quantities, not 
 to make the drawing itself decorative. 
 
 5. Suggestion is preferred to the hard statement 
 of fact. Hence sketching, for its power of hinting 
 and suggesting much more than what it states 
 explicitly, is not only valued in itself, but carried 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 into engraving (in the form of etching), into water- 
 colour painting, and even into oil pictures, many 
 of which, in an advanced condition of the fine arts, 
 are sketches on a large scale. 
 
 6. Tonic values are carefully studied, especially 
 for landscape, in which they come to be considered 
 of supreme importance. It is especially character- 
 istic of advanced art to observe delicate distinctions 
 between pale tones. Another strong characteristic 
 in very advanced art is that it holds the powers 
 of darkness much in reserve so as not to lose the 
 bass notes too much in black. In a few words, 
 advanced art subdivides the scale between its ex- 
 treme light and its extreme dark, but this depends 
 on the technical means at its disposal. 
 
IX 
 
 DRAWING FOR PHOTOGRAPHIC PROCESSES 
 
 The greater part of professional drawing executed 
 at the present day is done for reproduction either 
 in permanent photographs or in the form of plates 
 engraved in intaglio like etchings, or as blocks to 
 be printed like woodcuts. A few brief notes on the 
 kinds of drawing best adapted to reproduction may 
 be of practical use to some readers. 
 
 It is always much more difficult to obtain per- 
 fect reproductions of shade drawings (whether the 
 shading is done in charcoal or wash) than of linear 
 drawings. 
 
 In reproductions of shade drawings the most 
 common defects are these two :— 
 
 1. A confusion of dark tones in mere opacity, 
 whereas, though dark, they ought to be separable 
 from each other and still have light within them. 
 
 2. The loss of firmness and of clear distinctions 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 in pale tones. In good painting these are both 
 delicate and decided at the same time ; in photo- 
 graphic reproduction they often seem half washed 
 out when they are not lost altogether. 
 
 To give satisfactory results, a drawing ought to 
 be made on purpose for photographing. Oil mono- 
 chromes should be perfectly dull, as the slightest 
 shine gives false lights, and the brushwork should 
 be scarcely visible, as photography exaggerates all 
 inequalities of surface. It is prudent to avoid too 
 fine distinctions between the dark and darkest 
 tones, and also between the light and the lightest. 
 In a word, in working for process -reproduction it is 
 wise to simplify the scale of shades and divide the 
 interval from white to black, say, into two octaves 
 rather than eight. 
 
 Shade-drawings, whether in wash or done by a 
 dry process, are rarely quite satisfactory in repro- 
 duction ; but an artist who makes careful experi- 
 ments may ascertain in a short time the capabilities 
 of the existing processes and conform himself to 
 their exigencies. Without such conformity he has a 
 poor chance of success. 
 
 Linear drawing for photographic reproduction 
 is far surer and more simple. The artist draws his 
 lines in Indian ink, never diluted, on perfectly white 
 
DRA WING 
 
 63 
 
 paper or Bristol board. As all the lines, though 
 not of equal thickness, are equally black, they afford 
 the same facilities for reproduction, which cannot be 
 said of pale and dark washes. The following is an 
 
 The Antiquary in his Sane 
 
 1 (pen-drawing). 
 
 analysis of the most effective modern pen-drawing 
 for printing with the text, that is, typographically. 
 It is equally applicable to pen-drawing for intaglio 
 heliogravure (in which the drawing is etched on 
 a copper-plate), except that in shading for intaglio 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 engraving the blacks should never be blotted (in 
 flat patches), but always done in clearly separated 
 lines. The reason is that blotted blacks in a 
 copper-plate are heavy in the printing, and some- 
 times even unsound, showing unwelcome gray in 
 the middle. 
 
 The analysis of the most brilliant modern 
 picturesque pen - drawing gives the following re- 
 sults : — 
 
 1. All very light shades are left white, and 
 light objects are separated from each other by an 
 outline. 
 
 2. When anything is dark, though not really 
 black in nature, it is represented by black, either 
 flat and dense or slightly broken. 
 
 3. The intermediate shades between white and 
 black are summarised by a very few shades of gray, 
 rarely exceeding three, often only two. 
 
 4. When objects can be detached from each 
 other by shade instead of line, the shade is pre- 
 ferred and the line suppressed. 
 
 5. Reserves of small spaces of white are fre- 
 quent, resembling in principle the white lines in 
 woodcut. When the drawing is done for repro- 
 duction these reserves are easily made with Chinese 
 white applied with a brush, but in the most accom- 
 
HEAD OF A RELIGIOUS PROCESSION 
 
 A Pen Sketch by Vierge 
 Reproduced in Heliogravure by Dujardin 
 
 A fragment of a larger work, but detached as the reader 
 sees it with the approval of the artist. 
 
 It is given here as an example of a peculiar kind of draw- 
 ing now frequently practised in illustration. It includes three 
 elements : — 
 
 1. Pure line. 
 
 2. Linear shading, not universal, but employed at the 
 artist's discretion. 
 
 3. Black blots which in the original are in Indian ink. 
 These last are borrowed from woodcut. 
 
 The reader will observe that the whole system is an abstract 
 from nature, not at all a complete representation of nature, as 
 most of the tones are omitted. 
 
DRA WING 65 
 
 plished execution they are usually left in the 
 drawing itself. 
 
 6. Whenever lines can be made to do duty 
 as darks and for the expression of character or 
 the explanation of structure at the same time, they 
 are employed for both at once to economise 
 labour. 
 
 7. The direction of lines used for shading is 
 always made explanatory of surfaces. It is never 
 treated as a matter of indifference. The strength 
 of lines varies with the distance of object^ repre- 
 sented. 
 
 The accompanying reproduction of a sketch 
 by Vierge, representing the head of a religious 
 procession in Spain, is an example of pen-drawing 
 reinforced in the blacks with a brush charged with 
 undiluted Indian ink and reproduced by Dujardin's 
 heliogravure, which is an intaglio process like 
 etching. I mean that the lines are bitten in 
 whilst in the typographic processes, e.g. the 
 Antiquary, they are in relief. This drawing was 
 difficult to reproduce, and an attempt by the typo- 
 graphic process was a failure. It was, however, 
 originally intended for that process, as blotted 
 blacks are objectionable in plates. 
 
X 
 
 BOOKS ON DRAWING 
 
 The student should thoroughly master and remem- 
 ber Burnet's Essay on the Education of the Eye, 
 which is most concise and contains nothing doubtful 
 or disputable. During the second quarter of the 
 nineteenth century the most popular works on 
 drawing were those of Mr. J. D. Harding who 
 exercised an immense influence over English ama- 
 teurship. Two of his works, Elementary Art and 
 The Principles and Practice of Ai't, are still much 
 consulted, both by amateurs and professional land- 
 scape painters. The principle of Mr. Harding's 
 teaching was not the imitation of nature but the 
 interpretation of it by the reasoning intelligence. 
 His teaching was much enforced by his own great 
 manual power, amounting, in its own way, to 
 mastery. The defect of it was that he believed too 
 absolutely in his own personal methods of inter- 
 
preting nature and imposed them on others, 
 whereas the variety and individuality of interpret- 
 ations assure the perennial freshness of the fine arts. 
 Mr. Harding's method produced in his own hands 
 a striking and brilliant abridgment of nature, but 
 ignored on principle both many truths and many 
 beauties. (For example, he cut off the light sprays 
 from trees to get more manageable masses.) A 
 book of quite an opposite character is Mr. Ruskin's 
 Elements of Drawing, which may be taken as an 
 antidote ; but for a landscape draftsman there is 
 a peculiar danger in Mr. Ruskin's teaching, his 
 interest in minute beauties, such as the curvature 
 of leaves, of which the mind is unable to take 
 cognisance if it has to comprehend the landscape as 
 a whole. The kind of execution in pen and brush 
 drawing recommended by Mr. Ruskin, which pro- 
 ceeds by a multitude of minute touches, was 
 frequently used for drawing on wood in the third 
 quarter of the nineteenth century, but is not the 
 most rapid or effective. The best technical infor- 
 mation about pen -drawing may be found in Mr. 
 Joseph Pennell's work on the subject, but unfortun- 
 ately the author, as a professional specialist in an 
 art that has recently become a speciality, despises 
 all the great artists of the past who used the pen 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 freely and innocently as an auxiliary instrument 
 without any idea that they were trespassing on 
 ground that did not belong to them. The different 
 kinds of drawing with silver-point, chalk, lead- 
 pencil, charcoal, etc., have been described at length 
 and compared in the present writer's volume on 
 TJie Graphic Arts. There are also various little 
 treatises on elementary technical practice, usually 
 written by artists, from which good practical hints 
 may be obtained as to the use of instruments and 
 materials. It is of the utmost importance to the 
 student that he should have access to good and 
 numerous examples of drawings by great masters. 
 The public is not generally aware that there is a 
 magnificent collection of drawings by the old 
 masters in the British Museum, to which access 
 may be easily obtained on compliance with a simple 
 formality. Students ought to avail themselves of 
 these treasures which are generally strangely neg- 
 lected. A handbook to the Department of Prints 
 and Drawings, with an introduction and notices 
 of the various schools (Italian, German, Dutch and 
 Flemish, Spanish, French, and English), has been 
 compiled by Mr. Fagan, of the Museum, and 
 published by Messrs. Bell & Sons. A selection of 
 drawings by the Italian masters in the British 
 
DRA WING 69 
 
 Museum has been published in autotype by Messrs. 
 Chatto & Windus, with notes by Mr. Comyns Carr. 
 The Autotype Company in England and Braun of 
 Dornach on the Continent have published many 
 reproductions of drawings by great masters, and are 
 constantly adding to their number. These repro- 
 ductions are often very near to the originals and are 
 valuable in their absence. An autotype is usually 
 incomparably better than any process reproduction 
 that can be printed with typographic text. The 
 commonest defect of autotypes is a certain heavi- 
 ness, but this varies in degree with the facility 
 of the subject, and any one accustomed to it may 
 easily make the necessary allowances. Collections 
 of drawings (or good reproductions, in their ab- 
 sence) ought to be made accessible to the public in 
 all towns.^ The student may look upon all original 
 etchings as original drawings and study them as 
 such. Rembrandt left many etchings and many 
 drawings, — all equally his own. We cannot place 
 
 1 Whilst revising these papers I receive a Manchester newspaper, 
 in which it is stated that Rembrandt's etchings are not accessible to 
 the public in that town, either in the originals or in reproductions. 
 Yet Manchester is one of the most important provincial centres for 
 the fine arts. A good set of photographs from Rembrandt's 
 etchings, the size of the originals, was accessible in the public 
 library of the little city of Autun long before the processes of photo- 
 gravure came into general use. 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 the same confidence in engravings or etchings done 
 from pictures. In these, both the drawing and the 
 chiaroscuro of the original work are often altered 
 with the same unscrupulousness that a translator 
 permits himself with a book. 
 
AN ORNAMENTAL DESIGN 
 
 Original Engraving by Lucas of Leyden 
 Reproduced in Heliogravure by Amand-Durand 
 
 All the chief elements of early Hne engraving are to be found 
 in this little work. 
 
 1. The pure significant line in all the outlines of ornaments. 
 
 2. Straight lines in shading, not crossed. 
 
 3. Straight lines in " shading, crossed, principally in the 
 background. 
 
 4. Curved lines in shading, not crossed. 
 
 5. Curved lines in shading, crossed. 
 
 The whole makes an excellent technical lesson of an ele- 
 mentary kind, and severe engraving need not go much further 
 except in nobility of subject. 
 
ENGRAVING 
 
 ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD 
 
 The verb engrave is an old French word adopted Etym( 
 by the English language, in which it bears at the 
 present day but one signification, that of marking 
 by incision. In old English the word was used in 
 other senses, with which we need not now trouble 
 the reader, and the verb engraver in modern French, 
 used for a boat when she runs her keel into the 
 beach, or for a cart when its wheels stick in the 
 mud of a road or the sand of a river, is a different 
 word, being derived from greve, the sands of sea 
 or river, which comes from the Proven9al grava, the 
 bed of a torrent, and is nearly related to the English 
 gravel. Our English verb to engrave belongs to a 
 large family of words in many Western languages, 
 the Anglo-Saxon form grafan being remarkable for 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 its similarity to the Greek '■^pdj>eiv. Littre affirms 
 that the Latin words scribere and scrobs are also 
 etymologically related to the verb graver, and it is 
 evident that there is a close connection between 
 scrobs, a furrow, and the hollow cuttings produced 
 by an engraver with his tools. The grave in which 
 the dead are buried is also connected with these 
 words both by its meaning and its etymology. The 
 idea of a furrow or cutting is essential to engraving, 
 much more essential than any artistic idea. The 
 rudest mark which is cut into the substance of any- 
 thing is really an engraving, whilst the most admir- 
 able drawing which does not cut into the surface 
 is not engraving at all. When Old Mortality 
 deepened the inscriptions on the tombstones of the 
 Covenanters he was strictly doing engravers' work, 
 though of a coarse kind. In like manner the peoples 
 of remote antiquity who chiselled their writing and 
 drawing on slabs of stone, were in the strictest sense 
 engravers, though the connection between their rude 
 performance and the refined workmanship which is 
 bestowed on a modern vignette may not at first 
 sight be very obvious. The earliest known draw- 
 ings are linear engravings of animals and even the 
 human figure in dry point on bone or horn, executed 
 by pre-historic men at a period of time so remote 
 
ENGRA VI NG 73 
 
 from US that it cannot be fixed in a date, even 
 approximately. Of course these engravings were 
 done merely as drawings. No one knew that an 
 incised line would print before the middle of the 
 fifteenth century. On the other hand, a lithograph 
 is not an engraving, though it will yield many copies, 
 neither is a photograph, nor a photographic auto- 
 type ; but the applications of photography which are 
 known as heliogravure and photogravure are really 
 engraving,^ because in these processes the surface 
 of the metal plate is eaten into or lowered. For 
 the same reason etching may be correctly included 
 under the generic term engraving, and an etcher is 
 called in French a gi'aveur a I'eaiLforte, an engraver 
 by means of acid. 
 
 ^ Engraving may then be defined as writing or Definit 
 drawing in which the marks are produced by re- 
 moving a portion of the substance on which the 
 writing or drawing is made, instead of by simply 
 staining or discolouring it as ink and lead pencil do, 
 or covering it with an opaque or transparent pigment 
 as in oil-painting. /\ 
 
 The idea of multiplication by printing, or by 
 
 1 Except the Goupil process of photogravure now (1892) worked 
 by MM. Boussod and Valadon, which is not engraving, but casting 
 by electrotype. 
 
 X^ OF THE '^ ^ 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 casting (as in taking impressions from seals), is a 
 mere accidental suggestion and not an essential part 
 of the art. Engraving is still much used without 
 any connection with printing, as in the chased 
 ornamentation of silver plate, firearms, jewellery, 
 and other objects of luxury. Engraving on marble 
 has been revived in modern times for monumental 
 
 purposes. 
 
STRENGTH 
 
 Line Engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi 
 Reproduced in Heliogravure by Amand-Durand 
 
 " Strength " is here personified by a woman acting as if she 
 would break a column. 
 
 The brilliancy of this engraving is due in great part to the 
 absence of local colour. The flesh, the draperies, the column, 
 and the ground are equally left white in the lights. The 
 artist has been not less independent of natural chiaroscuro. 
 There are no reflected lights ; even the column, which would 
 have been an elementary study in reflections, is represented 
 without them. The right arm is merely black, and the shad- 
 ing, considered as modelling, is very defective, particularly in 
 the left arm. Still, there is much noble style in this engraving. 
 
PRINCIPAL VARIETIES OF ENGRAVING 
 
 It is our intention, in the present little treatise, to 
 confine ourselves strictly to engraving as one of the 
 fine arts. Its modern position is almost universally- 
 secondary to painting. The engraver, in the fine 
 arts, is almost invariably occupied in translating the 
 works of painters, as by his intervention they can 
 afterwards, at least in translation, be widely dis- 
 seminated by the press. 
 
 There are several different varieties of engrav- Principal 
 
 varieties of 
 
 ing, the chief of which are — (i) Line engraving engraving, 
 on metal plates, usually of copper or steel, in 
 which the line is always incised ; (2) Etching, 
 usually on metal, in which the lines are corroded 
 by means of acid ; (3) Mezzotint, in which there 
 are no lines whatever, but only shades produced 
 by roughening the surface of the metal ; and (4) 
 Woodcut, in which the lines which print black 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 have to be left in relief, whilst the surface round 
 them is cut away. 
 
 These primary technical conditions have an irre- 
 sistible influence even upon the mental qualities 
 exhibited in the different kinds of engraving. Each 
 kind is favourable to certain mental states, and un- 
 favourable to others, each being in itself an artistic as 
 well as a technical discipline. A line-engraver will 
 not see or think like an etcher, nor an etcher like 
 an engraver in mezzotint ; and the consequence of 
 this difference is that the manner in which a line 
 has to be cut has a great influence in determining 
 the direction of artistic taste and feeling. Nor is 
 this influence confined to the engravers themselves. 
 The enormous multiplication of their works by 
 printing makes engravers only second to writers in 
 their power over public taste, which they can refine 
 or vitiate by spreading refined or vulgar interpreta- 
 tions of pictures. 
 Engraving There is no inherent reason why engraving 
 ent of should be used only to translate painting. The 
 
 painting. ...,., 
 
 early engravers were oiten origmal artists who 
 worked out designs of their own, but in course 
 of time a commercial reason prevailed over origin- 
 ality. It was found that a well-known picture 
 assured the sale of an engraving from it beforehand, 
 
ENGRA VI NG 77 
 
 whereas an engraving which stood entirely on its 
 own merits came into the world without advantages, 
 and had its own way to make. Besides this, the 
 engraver who copied a picture saved himself all the 
 trouble of thinking out and composing the design, 
 which he found ready to his hand. The same 
 reasons have prevailed against original etching in 
 our own day. There has been a great revival of 
 etching in the second half of the nineteenth century, 
 especially on the Continent, and many artists have 
 acquired very great skill in this mode of engraving. 
 It was hoped, at first, that they would employ their 
 skill upon original works, but the convenience, both 
 of publishers and etchers, soon led them to employ 
 etching, as engraving had been employed before, 
 almost exclusively in translating pictures. We 
 cannot but deplore this subordination of engraving 
 to painting ; and when we recur to the great 
 engravers of past times who composed and invented 
 their own works, it is with a feeling of regret that 
 they have left so very few successors. 
 
 Although we mentioned the four chief kinds of 
 engraving in the order of what is usually considered 
 to be their relative importance, putting line engrav- 
 ing in the first place and woodcut in the last, this 
 is not the chronological order of their discovery. 
 
78 DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 Woodcut is the oldest kind of engraving from 
 which impressions were printed, and must there- 
 fore be taken first in a treatise of this kind, which 
 proposes to deal only with engraving for the 
 press. 
 
Ill 
 
 WOOD-ENGRAVING 
 
 It is natural that wood - engraving should have 
 occurred first to the primitive mind, because the 
 manner in which woodcuts are printed is the most 
 obvious of all the kinds of printing. If a block of 
 wood is inked with a greasy ink arid then pressed 
 on a piece of paper, the ink from the block will be 
 transferred at once to the paper, on which we shall 
 have a black patch exactly the size and shape of 
 the inked surface. Now, suppose that the simple 
 Chinese who first discovered this was ingenious 
 enough to go a step further, it would evidently 
 occur to him that if one of the elaborate signs, each 
 of which in his own language stood for a word, 
 were drawn upon the block of wood, in reverse, and 
 then the whole of the white wood sufficiently cut 
 away to leave the sign in relief, an image of it Origin ot 
 might be taken on the paper much more quickly graving. 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 than the sign could be copied with a camel-hair 
 brush and Indian ink. No sooner had this experi- 
 ment been tried and found to answer than block- 
 printing was discovered, and from the printing of 
 signs to the printing of rude images of things, 
 exactly in the same manner, the step was so easy 
 that it must have been made insensibly. Wood- 
 engraving, then, is really nothing but that primitive 
 block- cutting which prepared for the printer the 
 letters in relief now replaced by movable types, 
 and the only difference between a delicate modern 
 woodcut and the rude letters in the first printed 
 books is a difference of artistic skill and knowledge. 
 In Chinese and Japanese woodcuts we can still 
 recognise traditions of treatment which come from 
 the designing of their written characters. The 
 main elements of a Chinese or a Japanese woodcut, 
 uninfluenced by European example, are dashing or 
 delicate outlines and markings of various thickness, 
 exactly such as a clever writer with the brush would 
 make with his Indian ink or vermilion. Often we 
 get a perfectly black blot, exquisitely shaped and 
 full of careful purpose, and these broad vigorous 
 blacks are quite in harmony with the kind of 
 printing for which wood-engraving is intended. 
 
 It has not hitherto been satisfactorily ascer- 
 
ENGRA VI NG 
 
 tained whether wood - engraving came to Europe The 
 
 earliest 
 
 from the East or was rediscovered by some European 
 European artificer. The precise date of the first graving. 
 European woodcut Is also a matter of doubt, but 
 here we have certain data which at least set limits 
 to the possibility of error. European wood-engrav- 
 ing dates certainly from the first quarter of the 
 fifteenth century. It used to be believed that a cut 
 of St. Christopher, very rudely executed, and dated 
 1423, was the Adam of all our woodcuts, but sub- 
 sequent investigations have shaken this theory. 
 There Is a cut in the Brussels library, of the Virgin 
 and Child surrounded by four saints, which is 
 dated 141 8, but the composition Is sufficiently 
 elegant and the drawing refined enough to make 
 the early date surprising, though It is received as 
 authentic. The Virgin and Child of the Paris 
 library is without date, but is supposed, apparently 
 with reason, to be earlier than either of the two 
 we have mentioned ; and M. Delaborde has proved 
 that two cuts were printed In 1406. The Virgin 
 and Child at Paris may be taken as a good 
 representative specimen of very early European 
 wood - engraving. It Is simple art, but not bad 
 art. The forms are drawn in bold thick lines, 
 and the black blot Is used with much effect In the 
 6 
 
Virgin and Child (facsimilu of a woodcut of the fifteenth century). 
 The earliest wood-engraving known. 
 
ENGRA VING 83 
 
 hollows and recesses of the design. Beyond this 
 there is no shading. Rude as the work is, the 
 artist has expressed exquisite maternal tenderness 
 in the pressure of the Virgin's cheek to that of 
 the Child, whilst the attitude of the Child itself, 
 with its foot in its hand and its arm round the 
 mother's neck, is most true to nature, as is the 
 pose of the other foot against the mother's arm, 
 and also the baby-like bending and twisting of the 
 legs. The Virgin is crowned, and stands against a 
 niche-like decoration with pinnacles as often seen in 
 illuminated manuscripts. In the woodcut this archi- 
 tectural decoration is boldly but effectively drawn. 
 Here, then, we have real art already, art in which ap- 
 peared both vigour of style and tenderness of feeling. 
 The very earliest wood-engraving consisted of 
 outlines and white spaces with smaller black spaces, 
 but shading is rare or absent. Before passing to 
 shaded woodcuts we may mention a kind of wood- 
 engraving practised in the middle of the fifteenth 
 century by a French engraver, often called Bernard 
 Milnet, though his name is a matter of doubt, and 
 by other engravers nearer the beginning of that 
 century. This method is called the cribld, a word Theciii)i6. 
 for which there is no convenient translation in Eng- 
 lish. It means, riddled with small holes, as a target 
 
^ 
 
 Christ after the Flagellation (woodcut executed in Flanders before 1440). 
 
 Strong and pure outline with the addition of a little shading for local colour in the 
 
 sky, and for modelling in the body and pillar. 
 
ENGRA VING 85 
 
 may be riddled with small shot. The effect of light 
 and dark is produced in this kind of engraving by 
 sinking a great number of round holes of different 
 diameters in the substance of the wood, which, of 
 course, all come white in the printing ; it is, in short, 
 a sort of stippling in white. When a more advanced 
 
 Star Drift. 
 This modern astronomical illustration shows the elements of wood-engraving in 
 the white line, carried to great artistic perfection by Bewick and Linton, and 
 in the round hole which by repetition gave the crihli. 
 
 kind of wood-engraving had become prevalent the 
 cribU was no longer used for general purposes, but 
 it was retained for the grounds of decorative wood- 
 engraving, being used occasionally in borders for 
 pages, in printers' marks, and other designs, which 
 were survivals in black and white of the ancient art 
 
DRAWING AND ENGRAVING 
 
 of illuminating. Curiously enough, this kind of wood- 
 engraving, though long disused for purposes of art, 
 has of late years been revived with excellent effect 
 for scientific purposes. It is now the accepted 
 method of illustration for astronomical books. The 
 black given by the untouched wooden blocks repre- 
 sents the night sky, and the holes, smaller or larger, 
 represent in white the stars and planets of lesser or 
 greater magnitude. The process is so perfectly 
 adapted to this purpose, being so cheap, rapid, and 
 simple, that it will probably never be superseded. 
 The objections to it for artistic purposes are, how- 
 ever, so obvious that they were soon perceived even 
 by the untrained critical faculty of the earlier work- 
 men, who turned their attention to woodcut in simple 
 black lines, including outline and shading. In early 
 Technical work the outllnc is firm and very distinct, being 
 istics of thicker in line than the shading, and in the shading 
 engrarins*. the Hncs are simple, without cross-hatchings, as the 
 workmen found it easier and more natural to take 
 out a white line-like space between two parallel or 
 nearly parallel black lines than to cut out the twenty 
 or thirty small white lozenges into which the same 
 space would have been divided by cross-hatchings. 
 The early work would also sometimes retain the 
 simple black patch which we find in Japanese wood- 
 
ENGRAVING 8; 
 
 cuts ; for example, in the Christmas Dancers of 
 Wohlgemuth all the shoes are black patches, though 
 there is no discrimination of local colour in anything 
 else. A precise parallel to this treatment is to be 
 found in a Japanese woodcut of the Wild Boar and 
 Hare given by Aime Humbert in his book on Japan, 
 in which the boar has a cap which is a perfectly black 
 patch though all other local colour is omitted. The 
 similarity of method between Wohlgemuth and the 
 Japanese artist is so close that they both take pleas- 
 ure in drawing thin black lines at a little distance 
 from the patch and following its shape like a border. 
 In course of time, as wood-engravers became more 
 expert, they were not so careful to spare themselves 
 trouble and pains, and then cross-hatchings were in- 
 troduced, but at first more as a variety to relieve the 
 eye than as a common method of shading. In the 
 sixteenth century a simple kind of wood-engraving 
 reached such a high degree of perfection that the 
 best work of that time has never been surpassed in 
 its own way. We intend very shortly to render full 
 justice to the highly-developed skill of modern wood- 
 engravers ; but it is undeniable that in the sixteenth 
 century the art stood more on its own merits than it 
 does now, respected itself more, and affirmed itself 
 without imitating other arts. 
 
88 DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 Wood-engraving in the sixteenth century was 
 much more conventional than it is in the present day, 
 and this very conventionahsm enabled it to express 
 what it had to express with greater decision and 
 power. The wood-engraver in those days was free 
 from many difficult conditions which hamper his 
 modern successor. He did not care in the least 
 about aerial perspective, and nobody expected him 
 to care about it ; he did not trouble his mind about 
 local colour, but generally omitted it, sometimes, how- 
 ever, giving it here and there, but only when it suited 
 his fancy. As for light-and-shade, he shaded only 
 when he wanted to give relief, but never worked 
 out anything like a studied and balanced effect of 
 light-and-shade, nor did he feel any responsibility 
 about the matter. What he really cared for, and 
 generally attained, was a firm, clear, simple kind of 
 drawing, conventional in its indifference to the mys- 
 tery of nature and to the poetic sentiment which 
 comes to us from that mystery, but by no means 
 indifferent to fact, of a decided and tangible kind. 
 The wood-engraving of the sixteenth century was a 
 singularly positive art, as positive as carving ; in- 
 deed, most of the famous woodcuts of that time 
 might be translated into carved panels without much 
 loss of character. Their complete independence of 
 
ENGRA VI NG 
 
 pictorial conditions might be illustrated by many 
 examples. In Dlirer's Salutation the dark blue of DUrer's 
 
 Salutation. 
 
 the sky above the Alpine mountains is translated by 
 dark shading, but so far is this piece of local colour 
 from being carried out in the rest of the composition 
 that the important foreground figures, with their 
 draperies, are shaded 
 as if they were statues 
 in plaster of Paris. 
 Again, the sky itself 
 is false in its shad- 
 ing, for it is without 
 gradation, but the 
 shading upon it has 
 a purpose, which is to 
 prevent the upper part 
 of the composition 
 from looking too 
 empty, as well as to 
 give relief to the 
 mountains, and the conventionalism of wood-en- 
 graving was so accepted in those days that the 
 artist could have recourse to this expedient in 
 defiance alike of pictorial harmony and of natural 
 truth. In Holbein's admirable series of small Holbein's 
 well-filled compositions, the Dance of Death, the Death" 
 
 nan (from Holbein's Dm 
 of Death). 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 handi- 
 crafts. 
 
 IJaldiu 
 (liiin. 
 
 90 
 
 firm and matter-of-fact drawing is accompanied 
 by a sort of light-and-shade adopted simply for 
 convenience, with as little reference to natural truth 
 as might be expected in a stained-glass window. 
 There is a most interesting series of little woodcuts 
 drawn and engraved 
 in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury by J. Amman 
 as illustrations of 
 the different handi- 
 crafts and trades, 
 and entitled The 
 Baker, The Miller, 
 The Butcher, and so 
 on. Nothing is more 
 striking in this valu- 
 able series than the 
 wvaving: (woodcut by j. Amman). remarkable close- 
 
 ness with which the artist observed everything in the 
 nature of a hard fact, such as the shape of a hatchet 
 or a spade ; but he sees no mystery anywhere — he 
 can draw leaves but not foliage, feathers but not 
 plumage, locks but not hair, a hill but not a land- 
 scape. In the Witches Kitchen, a woodcut by 
 Baldung Griin of Strasburg, dated 15 10, the steam 
 rising from the pot is so hard that it has the appear- 
 
^l"V^ 
 
 ■ 9^ OF THK 
 
 ^ UNIVERSITY 
 
 ENGRA VI NG 
 
 ance of two trunks of trees denuded of their bark, 
 and makes a pendant in the composition to a real 
 tree on the opposite side which does not look more 
 substantial. The clouds of steam round about the 
 jet are like puddings. Nor was this a personal de- 
 ficiency in Baldung Griin. It was Durer's own way 
 of engraving clouds and vapour, and all the en- 
 gravers of that time followed it. Their conceptions 
 were much more those of a carver than those of a 
 painter. Diirer actually did carve in high relief, and 
 Grun's Witches Kitchen might be carved in the 
 same manner without loss ; indeed it has the appear- 
 ance of an alto-rilievo with the ground tinted darker 
 than the carvings. When the engravers were rather 
 draftsmen than carvers, their drawing was of a 
 decorative character. For example, in the magnifi- 
 cent portrait of Christian III. of Denmark by Jacob J^coi. 
 Binck, one of the very finest examples of old wood- 
 engraving, the face and beard are drawn with few 
 lines and very powerfully, but the costume is treated 
 strictly as decoration, the lines of the patterns being 
 all given, with as little shading as possible, and what 
 shading there is is simple, without cross-hatching. 
 
 The perfection of simple wood-engraving having 
 been attained so early as the sixteenth century, the 
 art became extremely productive, and has been so 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 ever since. During the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries it still remained a comparatively severe 
 and conventional form of art, because the workman 
 shaded as much as possible either with straight lines 
 or simple curves, so that there was never much ap- 
 pearance of freedom. Modern wood-engraving is 
 quite a distinct art, being based on different prin- 
 ciples, but between the two stands the work of an 
 original genius, Bewick, who cannot be overlooked. 
 He was born in 1753, and died in 1828. Although 
 apprenticed to an engraver in 1767, he was never 
 taught to draw, and got into ways and habits of his 
 own which add to the originality of his work, though 
 his defective training is always evident. His work is 
 the more genuine from his habit of engraving his 
 own designs, which left him perfect freedom of inter- 
 pretation, but the genuineness of it is not only of the 
 kind which comes from independence of spirit, it is 
 due also to his fidelity to the technical nature of the 
 process, a fidelity very rare in the art. The reader^ 
 will remember that in wood-engraving every cutting 
 prints white, and every space left untouched prints 
 black. Simple black lines are obtained by cutting 
 out white lines or spaces between them, and cross 
 black lines have to be obtained by laboriously cutting 
 out all the white lozenges between them. In Bewick's 
 
ENGRA VING 
 
 cuts white lines are abundant and are often crossed, 
 but black lines are never crossed ; he is also quite 
 willing to utilise the black space, as the Japanese 
 wood-engravers and Dtirer's master Wohlgemuth 
 used to do. The side of the frying-pan in the vignette 
 of the Cat and the Mouse is treated precisely on 
 their principles, so precisely indeed that we have the 
 line at the edge for a border. In the vignette of the 
 Fisherman, at the end of the twentieth chapter of 
 the Memoir, the space of dark shade under the bushes 
 is left quite black, whilst the leaves and twigs, and 
 the rod and line too, are all drawn in pure white lines. 
 Bewick, indeed, was more careful in his adherence 
 to the technical conditions of the art than any of the 
 primitive woodcutters except those who worked in 
 cribld and who used white lines as well as their dots. 
 Such a thing as a lishing-net is an excellent test 
 of this disposition. In the interesting series by 
 J. Amman illustrating the crafts and trades of the Amman 
 sixteenth century, there is a cut of a man fishing in Bewick. 
 a river, from a small punt, with a net. The net 
 comes dark against the light surface of the river, and 
 Amman took the trouble to cut a white lozenge for 
 every mesh. Bewick, in one of his vignettes, repre- 
 sents a fisherman mending his nets by the side of a 
 stream. A long net is hung to dry on four upright 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 Sticks, but to avoid the trouble of cutting out the 
 lozenges, Bewick artfully contrives his arrangement 
 of light-and-shade so that the net shall be in light 
 against a space of black shade under some bushes. 
 This permits him to cut every string of the net in 
 white, according to his practice of using the white 
 line whenever he could. He used it with great 
 ability in the scales of his fish, but this was simply 
 from a regard to technical convenience, for when 
 he engraved on metal he marked the scales of his 
 fish by black lines. These may seem very trifling 
 considerations to persons unacquainted with the fine 
 arts, who may think that it can matter little whether 
 a fishing-net is drawn in black lines or in white, but 
 the fact is that the entire destiny of wood-engraving 
 has depended on preserving or rejecting the white 
 line. Had it been generally accepted as it was by 
 Bewick, original artists might have followed his 
 example in engraving their own inventions, because 
 then wood-engraving would have been a natural and 
 comparatively rapid art ; but since the black line has 
 been preferred the art has become a handicraft, because 
 original artists have not time to cut out thousands of 
 little white spaces. The reader may at once realise 
 for himself the tediousness of the process by compar- 
 ing the ease with which one writes a page of manu- 
 
ENGRA VING 
 
 script with the labour which would be involved in 
 
 filling up, with perfect accuracy, every space, however 
 
 minute, which the pen had not blackened with ink. 
 
 The two centuries in which wood-engraving has Modem 
 111 1 • 1 wood en- 
 
 developed Itself most remarkably are the sixteenth graving. 
 
 and the nineteenth. We have described the char- 
 acter of sixteenth -century work, which was easy, 
 as the work of that time had a limited purpose and 
 a settled character. It may not appear so easy to 
 describe the various and unsettled work of our own 
 time, but it is animated by a leading idea, which is 
 universality. Wood -engraving in the nineteenth 
 century has no special character of its own, nothing 
 like Bewick's work, which had a character derived 
 from the nature of the process ; but on the other 
 hand, the modern art is set to imitate every kind of its great 
 engraving and every kind of drawing. Thus we 
 have woodcuts that imitate line-engraving, others 
 that copy etching and even mezzotint, whilst others 
 try to imitate the crumbling touch of charcoal or of 
 chalk, or the wash of water-colour, or even the wash 
 and the pen-line together. The art is put to all 
 sorts of purposes ; and though it is not and cannot 
 be free, it is made to pretend to a freedom which 
 the old masters would have rejected as an affectation. 
 Rapid sketches are made on the block with the pen, 
 
 variety. 
 
I'anne- 
 maker. 
 
 96 DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 and the modern wood-engraver sets himself patiently 
 to cut out all the spaces of white, in which case the 
 engraver is in reality less free than his predecessor 
 in the sixteenth century, though the result has a false 
 appearance of liberty. The woodcut is like a poly- 
 glot who has learned to speak many other languages 
 at the risk of forgetting his own. And, wonderful as 
 may be its powers of imitation, it can only approxi- 
 mate to the arts which it imitates ; it can never rival 
 each of them on its own ground. It can convey the 
 idea of etching or water-colour, but not their quality; 
 it can imitate the manner of a line-engraver on steel, 
 but it cannot give the delicacy of his lines. What- 
 ever be the art which the wood-engraver imitates, a 
 practised eye sees at the first glance that the result 
 is nothing but a woodcut. Therefore, although we 
 may admire the suppleness of an art which can 
 assume so many transformations, it is certain that 
 these transformations give little satisfaction to severe 
 judges. We are bound, however, to acknowledge 
 that in manual skill and in variety of resource 
 modern wood-engravers far excel their predecessors. 
 A Belgian wood-engraver, Stephane Pannemaker, 
 exhibited at the Salon of 1876 a woodcut entitled 
 La Baigneuse, which astonished the art-world by 
 the amazing perfection of its method, all the delicate 
 
ENGRA VI NG 
 
 modelling of a nude figure being rendered by simple 
 modulations of unbroken line. At an earlier date 
 George Manson of Edinburgh (afterwards a painter 
 of promise, who died prematurely) had engraved 
 landscape very nearly on the same principle. He 
 also practised the white line. 
 
 Mr. Birket Foster had at one time an influence 
 over English wood -engraving of landscape almost 
 comparable to that of Turner on plate- engraving, 
 but however skilful the wood-engraver may be he 
 can never really rival the extreme delicacy of 
 tone in the best vignette engravings after Turner, 
 However, in the cuts by Mr. Edmund Evans, Mr. 
 7 
 
98 DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 Whymper, and others, from Birket Foster there is 
 sufficient delicacy to suggest, at least, the tones of 
 landscape, and these engravers worked in perfect 
 harmony with the draftsman. Many of Mr. 
 Foster's subjects, especially the mountainous ones 
 involving the representation of distant effects, offered 
 difficulties that the early wood-engravers never 
 attempted to contend against. 
 
 Modern woodcuts of figure-subjects for illustra- 
 tions are frequently strong in outline, whilst the 
 tonality is simplified by leaving white spaces, the 
 rest being either in strong darks or one or two or 
 three grays. An example of this kind of work is 
 " The Capture of Cleveland," from The Pirate. 
 
 Both English and French publications abound in 
 striking proofs of skill. The modern art, as exhibited 
 in these publications, may be broadly divided into 
 two sections, one depending upon line, in which 
 case the black line of a pen sketch is carefully pre- 
 served, and the other depending upon tone, when 
 the tones of a sketch with the brush are translated 
 by the wood-engraver into shades obtained in his 
 own way by the burin. The first of these methods 
 requires extreme care, skill, and patience, but makes 
 little demand upon the intelligence of the artist ; the 
 second leaves him more free to interpret, but he 
 
Loch Achray. 
 Drawn by Birket Foster. 
 Engraved on wood by J. W. Whym 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 cannot do this rightly without understanding both 
 tone and texture. The woodcuts in Dore's Don 
 Quixote are done by each method alternately, many 
 of the designs having been sketched with a pen 
 upon the block, whilst others were shaded with a 
 brush in Indian ink and white, the latter being 
 engraved by interpreting the shades of the brush. 
 In the pen drawings the lines are Dore's, in the 
 brush drawings the lines are the engraver's. In the 
 
 risan. night scenes M. Pisan has usually adopted Bewick's 
 system of white lines, the block being left untouched 
 in its blackness wherever the effect permitted. Mr. 
 W. J. Linton is also an admirable engraver in white 
 line, and his cuts both of figure and landscape are 
 a most profitable study for any one who cares to 
 know the value of the white line as a means of 
 artistic expression. Modern English wood-engrav- 
 ing shows to great advantage in such newspapers 
 
 Illustrated as the Illustrated Loiidoii N'ezvs and the Graphic, and 
 
 papers. also in vignettes for book illustration, which English 
 artists usually execute with delicacy and taste. A 
 
 Vignettes, certain standard of vignette engraving was reached 
 by Mr. Edmund Evans in Mr. Birket Foster's 
 edition of Cowper's Task, which is not likely to 
 be surpassed in its own way, either for delicacy of 
 tone or for careful preservation of the drawing. 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 M. Derbier, a French wood-engraver, has attained 
 remarkable perfection in the imitation of old line- 
 engraving on copper. An important extension of 
 wood- engraving in modern times has been due to 
 Compound the invention of compound blocks. Formerly a 
 
 blocks. 
 
 woodcut was limited in size to the dimensions of a 
 block of boxwood cut across the grain, except in 
 the primitive condition of the art, when commoner 
 woods were used in the direction of the grain ; but 
 in the present day many small blocks are fitted 
 together so as to form a single large one. They 
 can be separated or joined together again at will, 
 and it is this facility which has rendered possible 
 the rapid production of large cuts for the newspapers, 
 as many cutters work on the same subject at once, 
 each taking his own section. 
 Process of The process of modern wood-engraving may be 
 wood-en- briefly described as follows : The surface of the 
 ^^^^^ ' block is lightly whitened with Chinese white so as 
 to produce a light yellowish-gray tint, and on this 
 the artist draws either with a pen if the work is 
 intended j;o be in line, or with a hard-pointed pencil 
 and a brush jf it is intended to be in shade. If it is 
 to be a line v/oodcut the cutter simply digs out the 
 whites with a sharp burin or scalpel (he has these 
 tools of various shapes and sizes), and that is all he 
 
ENGRA VING 
 
 has to do ; but if the drawing on the wood is shaded 
 with a brush, then the cutter has to work upon the 
 tones in such a manner that they will come relatively 
 true in the printing. This is by no means easy, and 
 the result has often been disappointment, besides 
 which the artist's drawing is destroyed in the pro- 
 cess, so that it became at one time customary to 
 have the block photographed before the engraver 
 touched it, when the drawing was specially worth 
 preserving. This was done for Sir F. Leighton's 
 illustrations to Romola. More recently it has been 
 found possible to preserve the original drawing by 
 executing it at first on paper and then photograph- Photo- 
 ing it upon the block ; but the wood-engravers do on wood, 
 not like to work upon these photographs so well as 
 on the original drawings that used to be executed 
 directly on the wood, and it is not the engravers 
 who have encouraged the new practice, but pub- 
 lishers and artists, who were anxious to preserve 
 valuable drawings. One objection is that draftsmen. Practical 
 for their own convenience, often draw on a scale to it. 
 much larger than that of the intended engraving, 
 and then the photograph becomes only a reduction, 
 and the execution suitable for a large drawing is 
 neither simple enough nor sufficiently accentuated 
 when put on a small block. 
 
IV 
 
 COPPER AND STEEL PLATE -ENGRAVING 
 
 Engraving on plates of copper and steel is the 
 converse of wood-engraving in method. In line- 
 engraving it is the line itself which is hollowed, 
 whereas in the woodcut, as we have seen, when 
 the line is to print black it is left in relief, and only 
 white spaces and white lines are hollowed. There 
 was no difficulty about discovering the art of line- 
 engraving, which has been practised from the 
 Prehistoric earliest ages. The prehistoric Aztec hatchet given 
 
 engraving. 
 
 to Humboldt in Mexico was just as really and truly 
 engraved as a modern copper-plate with outlines 
 after Flaxman or Thorwaldsen ; the Aztec engrav- 
 ing is of course ruder than the European, but it is 
 the same art. The important discovery which 
 made line-engraving one of the multiplying arts 
 was the discovery how to print an incised line, 
 which would not occur to every one, and which 
 
f ^ OF THK ^ 
 
 |UNIVERSI 
 ENGRA VI NG 105 
 
 in fact was hit upon at last by accident, and known 
 for some time before its real utility was suspected. 
 Line-engraving in Europe does not owe its origin 
 to the woodcut, but to the chasing on goldsmiths' 
 work. If the reader will look at any article of 
 jewellery in which the metal is ornamented with 
 incised designs, he will there see the true origin 
 of our precious Diirers and Marcantonios. The 
 history of the first plate-printing is as follows. The Piate- 
 
 printing. 
 
 goldsmiths of Florence in the middle of the fifteenth 
 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. An engraved design filled up in this 
 manner was called a niello, and our modern door- 
 plates are really nielli also, for in them too the Nieiii. 
 engraved lines are filled with black. The word 
 comes from nigellum, and simply refers to the colour 
 of the enamel. Whilst a niello was in progress 
 the artist could not see it so well as if the enamel 
 were already in the lines, and on the other hand, he 
 did not like to put in the hard enamel prematurely, 
 as when once it was set it could not easily be got 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 out again. He therefore took a sulphur cast of his 
 niello in progress, on a matrix of fine clay, and 
 filled up the lines in the sulphur with lampblack, 
 thus enabling- himself to judge of the state of his 
 engraving. At a later period it was discovered that 
 a proof could be taken on damped paper by filling 
 the engraved lines with a certain ink and wiping 
 it off the surface of the plate, sufficient pressure 
 being applied to make the paper go into the hol- 
 lowed lines and fetch the ink out of them. This 
 was the beginning of plate-printing, but nobody at 
 first suspected the artistic and commercial import- 
 ance of the discovery. The niello-engravers thought 
 it a convenient way of proving their work, as it 
 saved the trouble of the sulphur cast, but they saw 
 no farther into the future. They went on engrav- 
 ing nielli just the same to ornament plate and furni- 
 ture ; nor was it until the next century that the new 
 method of printing was carried out to its great and 
 wonderful results. Even in our own day the full 
 importance of it is only understood by persons who 
 have made the fine arts a subject of special study. 
 Artistic There are, however, certain differences between 
 
 import- 
 ance of plate -printing and block -printing which affect the 
 
 plate- 
 printing, essentials of art. When paper is driven into a line 
 
 so as to fetch the ink out of it, the line may be of 
 
ENGRA VING 
 
 unimaginable fineness, it will print all the same ; 
 but when the paper is only pressed upon a raised 
 line, the line must have some appreciable thickness, 
 so that the wood-engraving can never be so delicate 
 as plate -engraving. Again, not only does plate- 
 printing excel block- printing in delicacy; it excels 
 it also in force and depth. There never was, and 
 there will never be, a woodcut line having the power 
 of a deep line in a plate, for in block-printing the 
 line is only a blackened surface of paper, whereas in 
 plate-printing it is a cast with an additional thick- 
 ness of printing ink. 
 
 Having limited ourselves in this treatise to en- 
 graving for the press, we do not stay to enumerate 
 the niello-engravers, but pass at once to the art of 
 line-engraving for prints ; and first let us describe 
 the process, which is as simple in theory as it is 
 difficult in practice. The most important of the 
 tools used is the burin, which is a bar of steel with The burin, 
 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 of it when sharpened takes 
 the form of a lozenge. Burins are made in many 
 varieties to suit individual tastes and the different 
 uses to which they are applied, but most burins 
 resemble each other in presenting the shape of 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 a more or less elongated lozenge at the end where 
 they are sharpened. 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. The 
 burin, however, is pushed while the plough is pulled, 
 and this peculiar character of the burin as a pushed 
 instrument at once establishes a wide separation 
 between it and all the other instruments employed 
 in the arts of design, such as pencils, brushes, pens, 
 and etching needles. The manual difficulty which 
 has to be overcome by the engraver is in making 
 himself master of the burin, and in order to accom- 
 plish this he is obliged to go through a great deal 
 of simply manual practice in cutting lines. The 
 beginner learns to cut straight lines and curves of 
 various degrees of depth, and to cross them so that 
 the interstices may form squares, lozenges, triangles, 
 etc. These exercises, after long practice, give a 
 degree of manual skill, which has been' often mis- 
 employed in ingenious trifling, to the detriment of 
 true artistic quality, so that laborious men have 
 wasted their time in cutting patterns like woven 
 wire, and carefully inserting a dot in the middle of 
 every lozenge or square. At one time it was 
 customary amongst landscape -engravers to adopt 
 a sort of coarse arrangement of thick wavy lines for 
 
ENGRA VING 
 
 foreground work which required some manual skill, 
 but had neither meaning nor science, as it expressed 
 no thought, whilst it did not translate or imitate any 
 of the truths of nature. Whilst avoiding these 
 errors, which have been the bane of engraving, the 
 student should train his hand and eye by copying 
 portions of good prints directly on the metal, as a 
 modern engraver cannot work in ignorance of the 
 language of his art, though he may employ it in his 
 own way afterwards. It is, however, unfortunately 
 true that set methods, which may be called the 
 business of engraving, have a tendency to become 
 much more predominant than in the sister art of 
 painting, so that real originality expresses itself 
 much less frequently with the burin than with the 
 brush. 
 
 The safe principle of execution in line-engraving Elements 
 and that generally followed, even by masters of the engraving 
 art, is to keep the plate pale for a long time, the 
 dark lines not being nearly so dark as they are 
 intended to be ultimately. When the engraver is 
 sure of his drawing and his middle tints he may 
 gradually deepen the darks by ploughing into the 
 same lines over and over again with his burin, 
 having test-proofs taken from time to time whilst 
 his work is in progress. The most delicate light 
 
DRAWING AND ENGRAVING 
 
 work necessary to finish the modeUing of faces may 
 also be reserved until the end. In a word, the plate 
 may be kept in middle tint with blank lights until 
 it is ready for finishing at both ends of the chromatic 
 scale. 
 
 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. Most readers of these pages will possess 
 an engraved plate from which visiting cards are 
 printed. Such a plate is a good example of some 
 elementary principles of engraving. 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 combina- 
 tions. The real line -engraver is always engraving 
 a line more or less broad and deep in one direc- 
 tion or another ; he has no other business than 
 this. 
 Gaiiiard's There is a well-known and very beautifully exe- 
 
 St. Sebas- 
 tian, cuted plate from the picture of St. Sebastian by 
 
 Gaillard, executed by the painter himself, who was 
 
 also one of the most skilful engravers of modern 
 
 times. A few proofs were taken when the plate 
 
ENGRA VI NG 
 
 was half-finished. On comparing one of these with 
 a proof of the final state we note the following 
 differences : — 
 
 Proof of the Plate in Progress. — This presents Early stat. 
 a speckled appearance as the small patches of shad- plate. 
 ing are scattered all over the figure and background 
 and have not been brought together. Dark shades 
 are left of the same tone as light shades except 
 some broken indications of darker work in the 
 shadow cast by the head. The architecture of the 
 background is confused and entirely pale. The 
 mountainous distance is broken in patches of shade 
 representing the ruggedness of the hills. In this 
 condition the plate is spotty, feeble, and indistinct, 
 so that an inexperienced critic would take it for bad 
 work, but in reality the drawing and anatomy are 
 already there, the subject only requiring clearing up 
 and bringing together. 
 
 Proof of the finished Plate. — Here the spotty The 
 appearance has entirely disappeared, because the plate. 
 patches of shade have been united. Dark shades 
 have been much deepened and unified. All over 
 the figure the modelling has been completed both in 
 light and in darker work, the change being from the 
 texture of a rough and unshapely cast to that of an 
 ivory statuette. The locks of hair have been made 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 out in dark, the arrow-head, loin-cloth, and aureole 
 being detached in light. The architecture has been 
 made clear by the addition of defining lines on the 
 principle of line and wash in the drawings of the old 
 Italian masters, the wash being represented by the 
 previous delicate shade. 
 
 On comparing other proofs of plates in progress 
 with proofs after completion we find the same rule 
 of advancement. The earliest states are usually 
 pale and scattered in effect, whilst in the latest 
 we have full oppositions of light and dark with 
 added unity in the shading. In short, the first stage 
 Stages of of an engraving consists in setting down broken 
 
 engraving. 
 
 indications of line, modelling, and chiaroscuro, all, 
 of course, exactly in their proper places, whilst the 
 second stage consists in bringing the previous work 
 well together so as to remedy the broken appearance 
 whilst the chiaroscuro is completed by the deepening 
 of the shades and by adding delicacy of distinction 
 to the palest tones. 
 
 We may now pass to the early Italian and early 
 German prints, in which the line is used with such 
 perfect simplicity of purpose that the methods of 
 the artists are as legible as if we saw them actually 
 at work. 
 
 The student may soon understand the spirit and 
 
ENGRA VI NG 
 
 technical quality of the earliest Italian engraving by Early 
 
 . , . 1 Italian line 
 
 giving his attention to a few of the series which used engraving. 
 erroneously to be called the Playing Cards of Man- 
 tegna. "The series," says Professor Colvin, "con- 
 sists of fifty pieces, divided into sets of ten each. 
 Of these five sets, each is marked with an initial 
 letter, A, B, C, D, E, and every print of the series 
 carries besides an Arabic numeral, i, 2, 3, up to 50. 
 Only the numerical order, which shows how the 
 series is meant to be arranged and studied, reverses 
 the alphabetical order which corresponds with the 
 respective dignity of the subject ; thus Nos. i-io are 
 lettered as class E, Nos. 11-20 as class D, and so 
 on. This number, fifty, and this plan of subdivision 
 by tens, are quite inconsistent with the supposed 
 destination of the series as playing-cards ; and so also 
 are the subjects of the series. They represent a kind 
 of encyclopaedia of knowledge, proceeding upwards 
 from earthly to transcendental things, — first, the vari- 
 ous orders and conditions of men ; second, the nine 
 muses and Apollo ; third, the seven liberal arts, with 
 poetry, theology, and philosophy added to complete 
 the group of ten ; fourth, the four cardinal and three 
 theological virtues, with three singular personifica- 
 tions or geniuses added to complete ten — a genius 
 of time, a genius of the sun, and a genius of cosmos, 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 Technical 
 principles. 
 
 the world ; fifth, the planets, in their mythological, 
 astrological, and astronomical signification, with the 
 three outer spheres added to make up the ten- — viz. 
 the eighth, or sphere of the fixed stars, the Primum 
 Mobile, or inclosing sphere, which by its rotation 
 imparts rotation to the rest within, and the Prima 
 Causa, or empyrean sphere, the unrevolving abiding 
 place of Deity. The series is, therefore, as the most 
 recent critics have called it, a moral and educational 
 series, or instructive picture-book." 
 
 We have not space to enter into the controversy 
 about the origin of these engravings. They are 
 supposed to be Florentine ; they are certainly 
 Italian ; and their technical manner is called that 
 of Baccio Baldini, of whose biography nothing is 
 known. But if the ' history of these engravings is 
 obscure, their style is as clear as a style can be. 
 There is not room for a moment's doubt about the 
 artist's conception of his art. In all these figures 
 the outline is the main thing, and next to that 
 the lines which mark the leading folds of the 
 drapery, lines quite classical in) purity of form and 
 severity of selection, and especially characteristic in 
 this, that they are always really engraver's lines, 
 such as may naturally be done with the burin, and 
 they never imitate the freer line of the pencil or 
 
ENGRA VI NG 
 
 etching needle. As for shading, it is used in the 
 greatest moderation with thin straight strokes of the 
 burin, that never overpower the stronger organic 
 Hnes of the design. Of chiaroscuro, in any complete 
 sense, there is none. 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. We 
 may observe that 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 ab- 
 stract manner, with care for natural form combined 
 with inattention to the effects of nature. Even the 
 forms, too, are idealised, especially in the cast of 
 draperies, for the express purpose of exhibiting the 
 line to better advantage. Such are the character- 
 istics of those very early Italian engravings which 
 were attributed erroneously to Mantegna. When 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 Mantegna. wc come to Mantcgna himself we find a style equally 
 decided. Drawing and shading were for him two 
 entirely distinct things. He did not draw and shade 
 at the same time, as a modern chiaroscurist would, 
 but he first got his outlines and the patterns on his 
 dresses all very accurate and right, and then threw 
 a veil of shading over them, and a very peculiar 
 kind of shading it was, all its lines being straight 
 and all diagonal. This is the primitive method, 
 its peculiarities being due, not to a learned self- 
 restraint, but to a combination of natural genius 
 with technical inexperience, which made the early 
 Italians at once desire and discover the simplest and 
 easiest methods. But whilst the Italians were 
 shading with straight lines the Germans had begun 
 to use curves, and as soon as the Italians saw good 
 German work they abandoned their old stiff practice 
 and tried to give to their burins something of the 
 German suppleness. 
 
 Early The characteristics of early metal engraving in 
 
 German 
 
 engraving Germany are seen to perfection in Martin Schon- 
 schon- gauer and Albert Dtlrer, who, though with striking 
 differences, had many points in common. Schon- 
 gauer was the earlier artist of the two, as he died in 
 1488; whilst the date of Dtirer's death is 1528, just 
 forty years later. Schongauer was therefore a whole 
 
~X^^ OF THJE "^y^ 
 
 [ UNIVERSITY ] 
 
ST. MARTIN AND THE BEGGAR 
 
 Engraving by Schongauer 
 Reproduced in Heliogravure by Amand-Durand 
 
 This is a good example of severe and simple early line 
 engraving. It differs from nature in the extreme clearness and 
 hardness of everything, in the complete absence of mysterj'. 
 The strong opposition of light-and-dark as shading is only 
 possible in abstract art of this kind where local colour is 
 omitted. Lines are always firm, always simple, and not 
 frequently crossed. There is not much modelling, still there 
 is a little, as in the beggar's limbs and the saint's leg. 
 
ENGRA VI NG 
 
 generation before Diirer, yet scarcely inferior to him 
 in the use of the burin, though Diirer has a much 
 greater reputation, due in great measure to his 
 singular imaginative powers. Schongauer is the 
 first great German engraver who is known to us by 
 name, but he was preceded by an unknown German 
 master, whom we now call the master of 1466, who 
 had Gothic notions of art (in strong contrast to the 
 classicism of Baccio Baldini), but used the burin 
 skilfully in his own way, conceiving of line and 
 shade as separate elements, yet shading with an 
 evident desire to follow the form of the thing 
 shaded, and with lines in various directions. Schon- 
 gauer's art is a great stride in advance, and we find 
 in him an evident pleasure in the bold use of the 
 burin. Outline and shade, in Schongauer, are not 
 nearly so much separated as in Baccio Baldini, and 
 the shading, generally in curved lines, is far more 
 masterly than the straight shading of Mantegna. 
 Durer continued Schongauer's curved shading, with DUrer. 
 increasing manual delicacy and skill ; and as he 
 found himself able to perform feats with the burin 
 which amused both himself and his buyers, he over- 
 loaded his plates with quantities of living and inani- 
 mate objects, each of which he finished with as 
 much care as if it were the most important thing 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 in the composition. The engravers of those days 
 had no conception of any necessity for subordinating 
 one part of their work to another ; they drew, Hke 
 children, first one object and then another object, 
 and so on until the plate was furnished from top 
 to bottom and from the left side to the right. Here, 
 of course, is an element of facility in primitive art 
 which is denied to the modern artist. In Durer 
 all objects are on the same plane. In his St. 
 Hubert, the stag is quietly standing on the horse's 
 back, with one hoof on the saddle, and the kneeling 
 knight looks as if he were tapping the horse on the 
 nose. Diirer seems to have perceived the mistake 
 about the stag, for he put a tree between us and the 
 animal to correct it, but the stag is on the horse's 
 back nevertheless. This ignorance of the laws of 
 effect is least visible and obtrusive in plates which 
 have no landscape distances, such as llie Coat of 
 Arms with the Deaths Head and The Coat of Arms 
 with the Cock. Durer's great manual skill and close 
 observation made him a wonderful engraver of 
 objects taken separately. He saw and rendered 
 His min- all objects ; nothing escaped him ; he applied the 
 same intensity of study to everything. Though a 
 thorough student of the nude (witness his Adam and 
 Eve, and other plates), he would pay just as much 
 
 uteness. 
 
CHRIST BEFORE PILATE 
 
 Engraving by Albert Durer 
 Reproduced in Heliogravure by Amand-Durand 
 
 The reader may compare this work technically with the 
 "Strength" of Marcantonio. Let him compare the two columns 
 and the treatment of drapery. This work is more delicate, more 
 minute, and it certainly shows more manual accomplishment, 
 but it has not Marcantonio's classical grandeur of conception, it 
 is inferior in style. Nevertheless, the plate is one of the best 
 examples of pure engraving amongst the works of the old 
 masters. 
 

ENGRA VI NG 
 
 attention to the creases of a gaiter as to the develop- 
 ment of a muscle; and though man was his main 
 subject, he would study dogs with equal care (see 
 the five dogs in the St. Hubert), or even pigs (see 
 the Prodigal Son) ; and at a time when landscape 
 painting was unknown he studied every clump of 
 trees, every visible trunk and branch, nay, every 
 foreground plant, and each leaf of it separately. In 
 his buildings he saw every brick like a bricklayer, 
 and every joint in the woodwork like a carpenter. 
 The immense variety of the objects which he en- 
 graved was a training in suppleness of hand. His 
 lines go in every direction, and are made to render 
 both the undulations of surfaces (see the plane in 
 the Melancholia) and their texture (see the granular 
 texture of the stones in the same print). 
 
 From Durer we come to Italy again, through Marc- 
 
 antonio. 
 
 Marcantonio, who copied Dlirer, 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 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 his interpreter, the reader is not to infer that en- 
 graving had as yet subordinated itself to painting. 
 Raphael's Raphael himself evidently considered engraving a 
 
 influence. . r i tv /r 
 
 distinct art, tor he never once set Marcantonio to 
 work from a picture, but always (much more judi- 
 ciously) gave him drawings, which the engraver 
 might interpret without going outside of his own 
 art ; consequently Marcantonio's works are always 
 genuine engravings, and are never pictorial. Marc- 
 antonio was an engraver of remarkable power. In 
 him the real pure art of line-engraving reached its 
 maturity. He retained much of the early Italian 
 manner in his backgrounds, where its simplicity 
 gives a desirable sobriety ; but his figures are boldly 
 modelled in curved lines, crossing each other in the 
 darker shades, but left single in the passages from 
 dark to light, and breaking away in fine dots as they 
 approach the light itself, which is of pure white 
 paper. A school of engraving was thus founded 
 by Raphael, through Marcantonio, which cast aside 
 the minute details of the early schools for a broad, 
 harmonious treatment. 
 
 We cannot here give a detailed account of the 
 northern and southern schools of line-engraving, 
 which, after Dlirer and Marcantonio, developed 
 themselves with great rapidity and were ennobled 
 
MAN SLEEPING NEAR A WOOD 
 
 Engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi 
 Reproduced in Heliogravure by Amand-Durand 
 
 This is a better example than the "Strength" by the same 
 engraver of his skill in the modelling of flesh, and the figure 
 of the woman is prettily draped. 
 
 My main purpose, however, in giving this plate has been 
 to show the total unsuitableness of line engraving for dealing 
 with the elements of landscape. The wood has none of the 
 qualities of a natural wood except a very limited degree of 
 veracity in the tree-trunks. What of the foliage 1 What of 
 the mysterious play of light and shade that there is always in 
 the gloom of a forest ? 
 
; UNIVEKF.ITY ] 
 
ENGRA VI NG 
 
 by many famous names, but although we cannot 
 give Hsts of these, we may direct the student to a 
 school of engraving which marked a new develop- 
 ment, the group known as the engravers of Rubens. The influ- 
 ence of 
 That great painter understood the importance of Rubens. 
 
 engraving as a means of increasing his fame and 
 wealth, and directed Vorsterman and others, as 
 Raphael had directed Marcantonio. The theory 
 of engraving at that time was that it ought not to 
 render accurately the local colour of painting, which 
 would appear wanting in harmony when dissociated 
 from the hues of the picture ; and it was one of the 
 anxieties of Rubens so to direct his engravers that 
 the result might be a fine plate independently of 
 what he had painted. To this end he helped his 
 engravers by drawings, in which he sometimes 
 went so far as to indicate what he thought the best 
 direction for the lines. Rubens liked Vorsterman's Vorster- 
 work, and scarcely corrected it, a plate he especially other en- 
 approved being Susannah and the Elders, which is Rubens. 
 a learned piece of work well modelled, and shaded 
 everywhere on the figures and costumes with fine 
 curved lines, the straight line being reserved for the 
 masonry. Vorsterman quitted Rubens after execut- 
 ing fourteen important plates, and was succeeded by 
 Paul Pontius, then a youth of twenty, who went on 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 engraving from Rubens with increasing skill until 
 the painter's death. Boetius a Bolswert engraved 
 from Rubens towards the close of his life, and his 
 brother Schelte a Bolswert engraved more than 
 sixty compositions from Rubens, of the most varied 
 character, including hunting scenes and landscapes. 
 This brings us to the engraving of landscape as a 
 separate study. Rubens treated landscape in a very 
 broad comprehensive manner, and Schelte's way of 
 engraving it was also broad and comprehensive. 
 The lines are long and often undulating, the cross- 
 hatchings bold and rather obtrusive, for they often 
 substitute unpleasant reticulations for the refinement 
 and mystery of nature, but it was a beginning, and 
 a vigorous beginning. The technical developments 
 of engraving under the influence of Rubens may 
 be summed up briefly as follows: — i. The Italian 
 Results of outline had been discarded as the chief subject of 
 ence. attention, and modelling had been substituted for 
 it ; 2. Broad masses had been substituted for the 
 minutely finished detail of the northern schools ; .3. 
 A system of light and dark had been adopted which 
 was not pictorial, but belonged especially to engrav- 
 ing, which it rendered (in the opinion of Rubens) 
 more harmonious. 
 
 The history of line-engraving, from the time of 
 
ENGRA VI NG 
 
 Rubens to the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
 is rather that of the vigorous and energetic appHca- 
 tion of principles already accepted than any new 
 development. From the two sources we have 
 already indicated, the school of Raphael and the 
 school of Rubens, a double tradition flowed to 
 England and France, where it mingled and directed 
 English and French practice. The first influence English 
 
 and 
 
 on English line-engraving was Flemish, and came French 
 
 line-en- 
 
 from Rubens through Vandyke, Vorsterman, and graving. 
 others ; but the English engravers soon underwent 
 French and Italian influences, for although Payne 
 learned from a Fleming, Faithorne studied in France 
 under the direction of Philippe de Champagne the 
 painter, and Robert Nanteuil the engraver. Sir 
 Robert Strange studied in France under Philippe strange. 
 Lebas, and then five years in Italy, where he 
 saturated his mind with Italian art. French en- 
 gravers came to stay and work in England as they 
 went to study in Italy, so that the art of engraving 
 became in the eighteenth century a cosmopolitan 
 language. In figure-engraving the outline was less 
 and less insisted upon. Strange made it his study 
 to soften and lose the outline. Meanwhile, the 
 great classical Renaissance school, with Gerard 
 Audran at its head, had carried forward the art of 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 Influence 
 of Claude. 
 
 Line-en- 
 graving ii 
 the nine- 
 teenth 
 century. 
 
 modelling with the burin, and had arrived at great 
 perfection of a sober and dignified kind. Audran 
 was very productive in the latter half of the seven- 
 teenth century, and died in 1703, after a life of 
 severe self-direction in labour, the best external 
 influence he underwent being that of the painter 
 Nicolas Poussin. He made his work more rapid 
 by the use of etching, but kept it entirely subordi- 
 nate to the work of the burin. One of the finest 
 of his large plates is St. John Baptizing, from 
 Poussin, with groups of dignified figures in the 
 foreground and a background of grand classical 
 landscape, all executed with the most thorough 
 knowledge according to the ideas of that time. 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. In this way, through Woollet and Vivares, 
 Claude exercised an influence on landscape engrav- 
 ing almost equal to that of Raphael and Rubens on 
 the engraving of the figure, though he did not, like 
 those painters, direct his engravers personally. 
 
 In the nineteenth century line-engraving has 
 received both an impulse and a check, which by 
 many is thought to be its death - blow. The im- 
 
ENGRAVING 125 
 
 pulse came from the growth of pubHc wealth, the 
 increasing interest in art and the increase in the 
 commerce of art, which now, by means of engrav- 
 ing, penetrated into the homes of the middle 
 classes, as well as from the growing demand for 
 illustrated books, which have given employment 
 to engravers of first - rate ability. The check to 
 line - engraving has come from the desire for 
 cheaper and more rapid methods, a desire satisfied 
 in various ways, but especially by etching and by 
 the various kinds of photography. Nevertheless, 
 the nineteenth century has produced most highly 
 accomplished work in line - engraving, both in the 
 
 figure and in landscape. Its characteristics, in Character- 
 istics of 
 comparison with the work of other centuries, are modem 
 
 chiefly a more thorough and delicate rendering of 
 local colour, light and shade, and texture. The 
 elder engravers could draw as correctly as the 
 moderns, but they either neglected these elements 
 or admitted them sparingly, as opposed to the 
 spirit of their art. If you look at a modern 
 engraving from Landseer, you will see the black- 
 ness of a gentleman's boots (local colour), the 
 soft roughness of his coat (texture), and the exact 
 value in light and dark of his face and costume 
 against the cloudy sky. Nay more, you will find 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 every sparkle on bit, boot, and stirrup. Modern 
 painting pays more attention to texture and chiar- 
 oscuro than classical painting did, so engraving has 
 followed in the same directions. But there is a 
 certain sameness in pure line - engraving which is 
 more favourable to some forms and textures than 
 to others. This sameness of line - engraving, and 
 
 Mixed its costliness, have led to the adoption of mixed 
 methods, which are extremely prevalent in modern 
 commercial prints from popular artists. In the 
 well - known prints from Rosa Bonheur, for ex- 
 ample, by T. Landseer, H. T. Ryall, and C. G. 
 Lewis, the tone of the skies is got by machine- 
 ruling, and so is much undertone in the land- 
 scape ; the fur of the animals is all etched, and 
 so are the foreground plants, the real burin work 
 being used sparingly where most favourable to 
 texture. Even in the exquisite engravings after 
 Turner, by Cook, Goodall, Wallis, Miller, Will- 
 more, and others, who reached a degree of deli- 
 cacy in light and shade far surpassing the work 
 of the old masters, the engravers had recourse to 
 etching, finishing with the burin and dry point. 
 
 Turner's Tumer's name may be added to those of Raphael, 
 Rubens, and Claude in the list of painters who 
 
 upon en 
 graving. 
 
 have had a special influence upon engraving. 
 

ENGRA VI NG 
 
 The speciality of Turner's influence was in the 
 direction of deHcacy of tone. In this respect the 
 Turner vignettes to Rogers's poems were a high- 
 water mark of human attainment, not hkely ever 
 to be surpassed. 
 
 The art of Hne- engraving is now practically 
 extinct in England. Efforts have been made to 
 keep it alive in France by the SociMd Frangaise Line 
 
 Gimveurs au Burin, of more recent origin. The 
 Government has also encouraged engraving by 
 having plates made after pictures in the Louvre. 
 The continued vitality of the art is shown by the 
 perfect workmanship in the engraving by M. 
 Adrien Didier from Raphael's Three Graces. The 
 St. Sebastian of the late Ferdinand Gaillard has 
 been already analysed to show the progress of a 
 plate. These two plates are the high-water mark 
 of the most modern European engraving. Still, it 
 is to be regretted that the general ignorance of 
 engraving, both in the public and amongst painters, 
 should prevent the revival of the purest old line- 
 engraving as^an art independent of painting and 
 nearer, in method and sentiment, to sculpture. In 
 that art which nobody now practises (even Didier 
 tries to follow the tonic values of painting), the first 
 
 Adrien 
 Dider. 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 Old line- object was linear beauty and the second a kind 
 no'^ionger of cleamcss in the opposition of white spaces and 
 shaded spaces, alternating all over the print, which 
 is entirely incompatible with the imitation of local 
 colour. Seeing that the purest and highest line- 
 engraving excludes both texture and local colour, 
 it is plain that it could never be (and it never was) 
 either a copy of nature or an art subordinate to 
 painting. It is therefore most unpopular at the 
 present day, and to follow it would mean obscurity 
 and starvation. The too complete naturalism of 
 modern painting has acted like a deadly poison on 
 line-engraving, which is one of the most abstract of 
 the linear arts, and one of the least interesting to an 
 Faint hope uncducated taste. The only hope of a revival lies 
 vivai. in the remote possibility of a culture greatly 
 superior to that which prevails, even amongst 
 artists, at the present day. 
 
PORTRAIT OF MEISSONIER 
 
 Line Engraving by T, C. Regnault 
 From a Picture by Meissonier 
 
 This is given as an example, quite first-rate in its way, of 
 modern line engraving. 
 
 If the reader will take the trouble to compare the modelling 
 of this face with that of the face and limbs in Marcantonio's 
 engraving of " Strength," he will see great and undeniable 
 progress in this respect. Besides full modelling, the modern 
 engraver gives the local colour of the hair and beard. 
 
E, MEISSONIER 
 
The revival of etching is one of the causes which 
 have operated destructively on line - engraving. 
 The chief difference between the two arts is that in 
 line - engraving the furrow is produced by the 
 ploughing of the burin, whereas in etching the 
 copper is eaten away by acid. The English word Etym< 
 
 logy. 
 
 is merely an Anglicised form of the Dutch etsen, 
 which has the same origin as our verb to eat, 
 consequently, unless there is corrosion, or eating 
 away of substance, there is no etching. The word 
 is vulgarly and most erroneously used for pen- 
 drawing. 
 
 (Some confusion may have been created of late 
 years by Mr. Haden's employment of the word 
 " etching " to designate all original engraving, that 
 which is not a translation of other men's work, 
 whilst he reserves the word " engraving " to signify 
 9 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 the labour of a translator. As a knowledge of 
 technical subjects is not likely to become general, 
 it is well to be strict and conservative in the use 
 of terms. The word " etching " should be re- 
 served for the corrosive processes. " Engraving " 
 is a generic term including etching as one of its 
 specialities.) 
 Prepaia- To prepare a plate for etching it is first covered 
 
 lion of the . , , . , . . , . . 
 
 plate. With etchmg - ground, a composition which resists 
 acid. The qualities of a ground are to be so ad- 
 hesive that it will not quit the copper when a small 
 quantity is left isolated between lines, yet not so 
 
 Etching- adhesive that the etching point cannot easily and 
 
 ground. 
 
 entirely remove it ; at the same time a good ground 
 will be hard enough to bear the hand upon it, or a 
 sheet of paper, yet not so hard as to be brittle. 
 Bosse's The best is that of Abraham Bosse, which is com- 
 posed as follows : — Melt two ounces of white wax ; 
 then add to it one ounce of gum-mastic in powder, 
 a little at a time, stirring till the wax and the mastic 
 are well mingled ; then add, in the same manner, an 
 ounce of bitumen in powder. There are three 
 different ways of applying an etching-ground to a 
 plate. The old-fashioned way was to wrap a ball 
 of the ground in silk, heat the plate, and then rub 
 the ball upon the surface, enough of the ground to 
 
 ground. 
 
A HEAD WITH A RUFF 
 
 Original Etching in Three Stages 
 By Henri Manesse 
 
 No. I explains itself. It is a first beginning. 
 
 No. 2 was begun exactly as No. i and then carried further, 
 
 that is, to the degree of finish we see. 
 No. 3 was begun as No. i, then carried to the stage of No. 2, 
 
 and finally to a degree of finish beyond which it did not 
 
 seem necessary to go. 
 A quarter of an hour spent in quiet study of this plate will 
 make clear to the reader the nature of the successive additions. 
 Nothing has been corrected in the sense of erasure. 
 
ENGRA VI NG 
 
 cover the plate melting through the silk. To Covering 
 equalise the ground a dabber was used, which was 
 made of cotton- wool under horse -hair, the whole 
 inclosed in silk. This method is still used by many 
 artists, from tradition and habit, but it is far inferior 
 in perfection and convenience to that which we will 
 now describe. When the etching -ground is melted, 
 add to it half its volume of essential oil of lavender, 
 mix well, and allow the mixture to cool. You have 
 now a paste which can be spread upon a cold plate 
 with a roller ; these rollers are covered with leather 
 and made (very carefully) for the purpose. You 
 first spread a little paste on a sheet of plate-glass {if 
 too thick, add more oil of lavender and mix with 
 a palette knife), and roll it till the roller is quite 
 equally charged all over, when the paste is easily 
 transferred to the copper, which is afterwards gently 
 heated to expel the oil of lavender. In both these 
 methods of grounding a plate the work is not com- 
 pleted until the ground has been smoked, which is 
 effected as follows. The plate is held by a hand- 
 vice if a small one, or, if large, is fixed at some 
 height, with the covered side downwards. A smok- Smoking 
 
 1-1 1 . the plate. 
 
 mg torch, composed of many thm bees -wax dips 
 twisted together, is then lighted and passed re- 
 peatedly under the plate in every direction, till 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 the ground has incorporated enough lamp-black to 
 blacken it. The third way of covering a plate 
 for etching is to apply the ground in solution as 
 collodion is applied by photographers. The ground 
 Liquid may be dissolved in chloroform, or in oil of laven- 
 
 grounds. 
 
 der. The plate being grounded, its back and edges 
 are protected from the acid by Japan varnish, which 
 soon dries, and then the drawing is traced upon it. 
 The best way of tracing a drawing is to use sheet 
 gelatine, which is employed as follows. The gela- 
 tine is laid upon the drawing, which its transparence 
 
 Tracing, allows you to See perfectly, and you trace the lines 
 by scratching the smooth surface with a sharp point. 
 You then fill these scratches with fine black-lead, in 
 powder, rubbing it in with the finger, turn the trac- 
 ing with its face to the plate, and rub the back of 
 it with a burnisher. The black - lead from the 
 scratches adheres to the etching-ground and shows 
 upon it as pale gray, much more visible than any- 
 thing else you can use for tracing. Then comes 
 the work of the etching - needle, which is merely 
 
 The a piece of steel sharpened more or less. Turner 
 
 used a prong of an old steel fork which did as well 
 as anything, but neater etching-needles are sold by 
 artists' colourmakers. The needle removes the 
 ground and lays the copper bare. Some artists 
 
 needle. 
 
^,g.E5t LIB 
 
 , ^ OK THK 
 
 > UNIVER; 
 
 ENGRA VI NG 133 
 
 C^OR 
 
 sharpen their needles so as to present a cutting edge 
 which, when used sideways, scrapes away a broad 
 line ; and many etchers use needles of various 
 degrees of sharpness to get thicker or thinner lines. 
 It may be well to observe, in connection with this Thick and 
 part of the subject, that whilst thick lines agree 
 perfectly well with the nature of woodcut, they 
 are very apt to give an unpleasant heaviness to 
 plate - engraving of all kinds, whilst thin lines have 
 generally a clear and agreeable appearance in plate- 
 engraving. Nevertheless, lines of moderate thick- 
 ness are used effectively in etching when covered 
 with finer shading, and very thick lines indeed 
 were employed with good results by Turner when 
 he intended to cover them with mezzotint, and to 
 print in brown ink, because their thickness was 
 essential to prevent them from being overwhelmed 
 by the mezzotint, and the brown ink made them 
 print less heavily than black. Etchers differ in 
 opinion as to whether the needle ought to scratch 
 the copper or simply to glide upon its surface. A 
 gliding needle is much more free, and therefore 
 communicates a greater appearance of freedom to 
 the etching, but it has the inconvenience that the 
 etching-ground may not always be entirely removed 
 (though it may seem to be), and then the lines may 
 
134 DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 be defective from insufficient biting. A scratching 
 needle, on the other hand, is free from this serious 
 inconvenience, but it must not scratch irregularly 
 Biting. so as to ciigrave lines of various depth. The biting 
 in former times was generally done with a mixture 
 of nitrous acid and water, in equal proportions ; but 
 in the present day a Dutch mordant is a good deal 
 used, which is composed as follows : — ^Hydrochloric 
 acid, lOO grammes ; chlorate of potash, 20 grammes ; 
 water, 880 grammes. To make it, heat the water, 
 add the chlorate of potash, wait till it is entirely 
 dissolved, and then add the acid. The nitrous 
 mordant acts rapidly, and causes ebullition ; the 
 Dutch mordant acts slowly, and causes no ebulli- 
 tion. The nitrous mordant widens the lines ; the 
 Dutch mordant bites in depth, with a minimum of 
 widening.^ The time required for both depends 
 
 1 In my positive process on a silvered plate, the Dutch mordant 
 widens the lines slowly but very much. This is due to the extreme 
 tenuity of the wax ground, and is essential to the power of the 
 etching as the needle used is very sharp. But I do not advise the 
 reader to trouble himself about my positive process, which, though 
 perfect in itself and technically sure, is hardly practicable on account 
 of the extreme certainty and decision that it requires in the artist. 
 Mr. Herkomer's positive process is much easier. He first covers 
 the plate with ordinary etching-ground, without smoking, then dabs 
 on that with the finger a coat of the white grease-paint used by 
 actors. The purpose of this is to retain zinc white, which is applied 
 to it in powder with a camel-hair brush. Result, a white surface on 
 which the lines show dark. 
 
ENGRA VING 
 
 upon temperature. A mordant bites slowly when 
 cold, and more and more rapidly when heated. To 
 obviate irregularity caused by difference of tempera- 
 ture, the writer of these pages has found it a good 
 plan to heat the Dutch mordant to 95° Fahr. by 
 lamps under the bath (for which a photographer's 
 porcelain tray is most convenient), and keep it 
 steadily to that temperature ; the results may then 
 be counted upon ; but whatever the temperature 
 fixed upon, the results will be regular if it is 
 regular. To get different degrees of biting on the 
 same plate the lines which are to be pale are 
 "stopped out" by being painted over with Japan 
 varnish or with etching - ground dissolved in oil 
 of lavender, the darkest lines being reserved to 
 the last, as they have to bite longest. When 
 the acid has done its work properly the lines 
 are bitten in such various degrees of depth that 
 they will print with the degree of blackness re- 
 quired, and if some parts of the subject require 
 to be made paler, they can be lowered by rub- 
 bing them with charcoal and olive oil ; but as 
 this produces the same effect as wear by much 
 printing it is better to compress the copper with the 
 burnisher which narrows the lines. If they have 
 to be made deeper they can be rebitten or deepened 
 
136 DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 with a burin, or covered with added shading. The 
 burin is difficult to use if the Hnes are very sinuous, 
 as they often are in free etching, and if it is em- 
 ployed to deepen straight or curved lines it alters 
 Reducing, their quality so that it is necessary to rebite them 
 Rebiiing. aftcrwards, to restore it. Rebiting is done with the 
 roller above mentioned, which is now charged very 
 lightly with paste and rolled over the copper with 
 no pressure but its own weight, so as to cover the 
 smooth surface, but not fill up any of the lines. The 
 oil of lavender is then expelled as before by gently 
 heating the plate, but it is not smoked. The lines 
 which require rebiting may now be rebitten, and the 
 others preserved against the action of the acid by 
 stopping out. These are a few of the most essential 
 technical points in etching, but there are many 
 matters of detail for which the reader is referred to 
 the special works on the subject. 
 Safe As a general rule, the safest practice in etching 
 
 is to depend rather on differences of thickness in 
 the points used than on differences of biting, and to 
 resort to few bitings, neither very pale nor very 
 deep, but so as to give a pure black line not 
 widened by the acid.^ The etcher may afterwards 
 
 ^ This may seem in contradiction to the practice of Samuel 
 Pahner who was an advocate of frequent stoppings-out, and very 
 
 practice 
 in etching. 
 
ENGRA VI NG 
 
 go down to any depth he pleases by rebiting the 
 Hnes which require emphasis, and as for very pale 
 lines and tints he can add them afterwards with the 
 dry point. If he prefers to etch the pale lines 
 rather than use the dry point he can cover the plate 
 again with etching-ground ; but there is a risk that 
 the edges of the deep lines may be attacked by the 
 acid. To obviate this the present writer has found 
 , it convenient to fill all lines already bitten with wax a protec- 
 mixed with lamp-black or wax mixed with gold cess. 
 bronze-powder before applying the etching-ground 
 with the roller. This ground is not smoked, and 
 the lines show through it plainly, whilst they are 
 perfectly protected against any involuntary rebiting.^ 
 This method might be especially useful for etchings 
 
 numerous bitings. He mentioned with approval one instance in 
 which a plate had been bitten seventy times. This may succeed in 
 very skilful or experienced hands, but painters who etch little would 
 usually be unable to foresee the exact subdivisions of depth that these 
 numerous bitings would obtain. Besides this, the present writer has 
 demonstrated by practical evidence that a fine line bitten deeply and 
 with a mordant that does not enlarge, yields in printing no more 
 black than if it had been bitten to, say, half its depth, because a 
 deep fine line retains, in the press, a considerable portion of its ink. 
 1 The way of filling the lines is to heat the plate and then 
 roughly paint all over it with the heated mixture of wax and bronze 
 (or wax and lamp-black as the case may be). The superfluous wax 
 may then be removed with the edge of a wooden paper-cutter, 
 leaving the lines filled and clearly visible. If bronze is used the 
 plate should be first stained dark by being previously plunged in the 
 
138 DRA WING AND ENCRA VI NG 
 
 begun after Turner's manner in powerful organic 
 lines, and finished with shading cast over these as 
 the mezzotint was in the plates of Turner's Liber 
 Studiorwn. 
 
 The two countries in which etching has been 
 most practised are Holland and France. It has 
 also been successfully practised in Italy, Germany, 
 and England, but not to so great an extent. It has 
 resembled line-engraving in receiving a powerful 
 impulse from celebrated painters, but whereas with 
 the exception of Albert Diirer the painters have 
 seldom been practical line - engravers, they have 
 advanced etching not only by advice given to others 
 Influence but by the work of their own hands. Rembrandt 
 
 of Rem- 
 brandt and did as much for etching as either Raphael or Rubens 
 
 Claude. 
 
 for line-engraving ; and in landscape the etchings of 
 Claude had an influence which still continues, both 
 Rembrandt and Claude being practical workmen in 
 etching, and very skilful workmen. And not only 
 these, but many other eminent painters have prac- 
 tised etching successfully, each in his own way. 
 Ostade, Ruysdael, Berghem, Paul Potter, Karl 
 Dujardin, etched as they painted, and so did a 
 
 Dutch mordant when the bronze shows in hght. If lamp-black is 
 mixed with the wax the plate is left of its natural colour. It is then 
 covered with etching-paste by means of the roller, and slightly heated 
 but not smoked. 
 
PORTRAIT OF A MAN 
 With a Square Beard 
 
 Etching by Rembrandt 
 Reproduced in Heliogravure by Amand-Durand 
 
 This is a capital example of Rembrandt's more finished 
 etchings. If the reader will compare this face and beard with 
 the flesh and hair in the line engravings by Schongauer and 
 Marcantonio, he will ^oon perceive that etching, if less 
 dignified in style than burin work of the most severe order, 
 approaches, nevertheless, much more nearly to the qualities of 
 nature. 
 
 He may then compare this with the modern portrait work 
 of Regnault after Meissonier, in which the modelHng is carried 
 further. 
 
ENGRA VI NG 
 
 greater than any of them, Vandyke. In the earlier 
 
 part of the present century etching was almost a 
 
 defunct art, except as it was employed by engravers 
 
 as a help to get faster through their work, of which 
 
 "engraving" got all the credit, the public being 
 
 unable to distinguish between etched lines and lines 
 
 cut with the burin. During the last twenty or thirty The re- 
 vival of 
 years, however, there has been a great revival of etching. 
 
 etching as an independent art, a revival which has 
 extended all over Europe, though France has had 
 by far the largest and most important share in it. 
 It was hoped, at the beginning of this revival, that 
 it would lead to the production of many fine original 
 works ; but the commercial laws of demand and 
 supply have unfortunately made modern etching 
 almost entirely the slave of painting. Nearly all 
 the clever etchers of the present day are occupied in 
 translating pictures, which many of them, especially 
 Unger, Jacquemart, Flameng, and Rajon, have done 
 with remarkable ability, even to the very touch and 
 texture of the painter. The comparative rapidity of 
 the process, and the ease with which it imitates the 
 manner of painters, have caused etching to be now 
 very generally preferred to line-engraving by pub- 
 lishers for the translation of all pictures except those 
 belonging to a severe and classical style of art, for 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 sidling. 
 
 which the burin is, and will always remain, better 
 adapted than the etching-needle. 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding the present commercial pre- 
 dominance of etching from pictures, there are still 
 some artists and eminent amateurs who have culti- 
 vated original etching with success. Mr. Seymour 
 Haden, Mr. Whistler, Mr. Samuel Palmer, and 
 others in England; MM. Bracquemond, Daubigny, 
 Charles Jacque, Appian, Lalanne, and others on the 
 Continent, besides that singular and remarkable 
 genius, Charles Meryon, have produced original 
 works of very various interest and power. Etching 
 clubs, or associations of artists for the publication of 
 original etchings, have been founded in England, 
 Erance, Germany, and Belgium. The real difficulty 
 of the art, and its apparent facility, have led to much 
 worthless production, but this ought not to make us 
 overlook what is unquestionably valuable. 
 
 The following is a brief analysis of different 
 styles of etching : — i. Pure Line. — As there is line- 
 engraving, so there is line -etching ; but as the 
 etching-needle is a freer instrument than the burin, 
 the line has qualities which differ widely from those 
 of the burin line. Each of the two has its own 
 charm and beauty ; the liberty of the one is charm- 
 ing, and the restraint of the other is admirable also 
 
ENGRA VI NG 
 
 in its right place. In line-etching, as in line-engrav- 
 ing, the great masters purposely exhibit the line and 
 do not hide it under too much shading. 2. Line 
 and Shade. — This answers exactly in etching to 
 Mantegna's work in engraving. The most im- 
 portant lines are drawn first throughout, and the 
 shade thrown over them like a wash with the brush 
 over a pen sketch in indelible ink. 3. Shade and 
 Texture. — This is used chiefly to imitate oil-paint- 
 ing. Here the line (properly so called) is entirely 
 abandoned, and the attention of the etcher is given 
 to texture and chiaroscuro. He uses lines, of course, 
 to express these, but does not exhibit them for their 
 own beauty ; on the contrary, he conceals them. 
 
 Of these three styles of etching the first is tech- 
 nically the easiest, and being also the most rapid, is 
 adopted for sketching on the copper from nature ; 
 the second is the next in difficulty ; and the third 
 the most difficult, on account of the biting, which is 
 never easy to manage when it becomes elaborate. 
 The etcher has, however, many resources ; he can 
 make passages paler by burnishing them, or by 
 using charcoal, or he can efface them entirely with 
 the scraper and charcoal ; he can darken them by 
 rebiting or by regrounding the plate and adding 
 fresh work ; and he need not run the risk of biting 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 the very palest passages of all, because these can be 
 easily done with the dry point, which is simply a 
 well -sharpened stylus used directly on the copper 
 without the help of acid. It is often asserted that 
 any one can etch who can draw, but this is a mis- 
 taken assertion likely to mislead. Without requiring 
 so long an apprenticeship as the burin, etching is a 
 very difficult art indeed, the two main causes of its 
 difficulty being that the artist does not see his work 
 properly as he proceeds, and that mistakes or mis- 
 fortunes in the biting, which are of frequent occur- 
 rence to the inexperienced, may destroy all the 
 relations of tone. 
 Principles It is desirable that a school of original etching 
 
 of original r i i mi • it 
 
 etching. should be founded as much as possible on mtelligent 
 expression by line rather than on texture and full 
 chiaroscuro. In pure line -etching shade may be 
 summarised and suggested as in pen -drawing, by 
 leaving all light shades white, and by representing 
 the others with a few broad divisions and no sub- 
 divisions, say, three or four grays and black. In 
 work of this kind linear expression is the artistic 
 purpose, whilst shading is quite secondary, though 
 it may be powerfully and effectively suggested. In 
 Mr. Haden's etchings the bitings are rarely delicate, 
 they are usually rather deep, and light tones are 
 
A BEGGAR AND HIS DOG 
 
 Etching by Rembrandt 
 Reproduced in HfeLioGRAVURE by Amand-Durand 
 
 In this little plate light and shade are strongly given, but with, 
 out local colour. Compare it with Schongauer's " St. Martin," 
 in which the same principles are carried out in burin work. 
 
 This is a first-rate example to follow during early practice in 
 etching. A young etcher should first try to do simple strong 
 work of this kind, divided plainly into light and dark, before 
 he aims at any delicacy of subdivision in tone. 
 
'^.Ml 
 
ENGRA VI NG 
 
 suggested more by the openness of the work than 
 by tender shades. Mr. Haden has also a tendency 
 to represent the darker greens and purples of nature 
 by black, which, though not strictly accurate in 
 tonality, is permissible and intelligible. The etch- 
 ings of Mr. Ernest George are also linear with little 
 shading, and so were those of Maxime Lalanne. 
 
 As to the publication of etchings, it has been The pubiu 
 
 . 1 r 1 • cation of 
 
 suggested by Mr. Herkonier that mstead or arbi- etchings. 
 trarily fixing the limit of "proofs" at a certain 
 number of impressions, calling those that come after 
 them "prints," we should henceforth call "proofs" 
 the impressions from the naked copper, and reserve 
 the inferior term for all impressions that are taken 
 after steeling. This proposal is excellent, because 
 there is really an important difference in quality 
 between an impression from the copper itself and 
 one from the steeled surface. The first might be 
 called a copper-proof. Such a term might not be at copper- 
 first intelligible to buyers, but it would excite their ^"^"^ '^' 
 curiosity, so that they would speedily learn its mean- 
 ing. The present distinction is quite arbitrary, as 
 there is no difference of quality between proofs and 
 prints from steeled plates, but only a difference of 
 price. When plates are published at a high price 
 for collectors the edition ought to be strictly limited 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 The mor- 
 ality of 
 printing. 
 
 Limited to what the copper will bear without the slightest 
 
 editions. . , . 
 
 perceptible deterioration, and there ought not to be 
 any steeling whatever. 
 
 A heated controversy was once raised about the 
 morality of printing, in which the most excited dis- 
 putants were certain journalists who condemned all 
 printing as dishonest whenever the workman (even 
 under the etcher's direction) did anything to help 
 the plate. The truth is that when the etcher leaves 
 something to the printer, there can be no moral 
 delinquency if the workman's share is clear, simple, 
 and certain, and can be determined beforehand by 
 the artist. All that an intelligent etcher expects a 
 printer to do is to impart a certain richness and soft- 
 ness of quality to the impressions, and this is not 
 more dishonest than an author's expectation that 
 the printer will lend more clearness and authority 
 to his literary performance than it ever could have 
 Extremely in mauuscript. Extremely artificial printing could 
 
 artilncial i • i 
 
 printing, uot be repeated with certainty through an entire 
 edition. It may be possible for a few proofs, taken 
 by the etcher himself, and therefore honestly his 
 own. 
 
 Of late years certain etchers and printsellers have 
 encouraged a kind of printing in which far too much 
 is entrusted to the workman, who almost does the 
 
ENGRA VI NG 
 
 shading with ink left on the plate, or pumped up out 
 of the lines by the process known as retroussage} Retrous- 
 The abusive intrusion of the printer in the shading 
 of plates produced a reaction in the opposite ex- 
 treme, that of absolutely naked printing, in which Naked 
 the copper is polished with whitening every time a 
 proof is taken, so that the lines come perfectly 
 sharp and hard like the letters on visiting cards, 
 which are printed exactly in that manner. The 
 two extremes of naked and artificial printing are 
 almost equally fatal to the beauty of a proof. In 
 the finest printing, that of Goulding for instance, 
 shades are not added to the artist's work, but it is 
 treated tenderly and with consideration ; it is neither 
 stripped nor disguised. In a fine proof there is a Quality of 
 certain mellowness of quality that a good judge of proof. 
 printing recognises at a glance, yet at the same 
 time there is no smudge. The etcher himself can- 
 not give this mellowness, though he may count upon 
 it. He ought, however, to work out his full scheme 
 of light-and-shade, because, as Samuel Palmer pointed 
 out, there is a luminous quality in the minute spaces 
 between the lines of shading in etched work that 
 
 1 This consists in passing a very soft rag lightly over the plate 
 till the ink comes up out of the lines and spreads itself over the small 
 spaces of polished copper between them. 
 lO 
 
146 DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 can nev^er be given by a smudge of printer's ink. 
 In this matter, as in all operations affecting the fine 
 arts, there is need of delicacy and care. A plate may 
 be misrepresented by hard, mechanical treatment, 
 and it may be misrepresented by covering it with 
 blacking. 
 Aquatint. Aquatiiit. — This is a kind of etching which suc- 
 cessfully imitates washes with a brush. There are 
 many ways of preparing a plate for aquatint, but the 
 following is the best : Have three different solutions 
 of rosin in rectified alcohol, making them of various 
 degrees of strength, but always thin enough to be 
 quite fluid, the weakest solution being almost colour- 
 less. First pour the strongest solution on the plate. 
 When it dries it will produce a granulation ; and 
 you may now bite as in ordinary etching for your 
 darker tones, stopping out what the acid is not to 
 operate upon, or you may use a brush charged with 
 acid, perchloride of iron being a very good mordant 
 for the purpose. After cleaning the plate, you pro- 
 ceed with the weaker solutions in the same way, 
 the weakest giving the finest granulation for skies, 
 distances, etc. The process requires a good deal of 
 stopping-out, and some burnishing, scraping, etc., 
 at last. It has been employed very successfully by 
 M. Brunet-Debaines in his plates from Turner, 
 
ENGRA VING 
 
 especially in Agrippina landing with the Ashes of 
 GermanicMs. Aquatint may be effectively used in 
 combination with line -etching, and still more har- 
 moniously with soft ground -etching in which the 
 line imitates that of the lead pencil. 
 
 The natural tendency of the three kinds of en- Tendency 
 
 of engrav- 
 
 graving we have studied is from line to shade and ing to tone 
 from shade to texture. The perfection of line is ure. 
 seldom maintained when the attention of artists has 
 been directed to the other elements, for line is a 
 separate study. Shade is its enemy, but line may 
 still survive under a veil of half-shade. When chiar- 
 oscuro becomes complete the delicacy of line, which 
 is an abstraction, is nearly lost ; and when texture 
 becomes an object also, the line is lost altogether. 
 This appears to be the natural law of development 
 in the graphic arts, and it is an approach to nature, 
 which is all shade and texture without line ; yet the 
 pure line is a loss in art, from its ready expression 
 of the feeling of the artist as well as for its quick and 
 clear statement of positive facts, and the loss of it is 
 one for which more natural truth is not always a 
 compensation. 
 
VI 
 
 MEZZOTINT 
 
 Of all the kinds of engraving, mezzotint comes 
 
 nearest to nature, though it is far from being the 
 
 best as a means of artistic expression. It is said to 
 
 Invention have been invented by Prince Rupert, or by Lewis 
 
 of mezzo- ... . . 
 
 tint en- Siegen, a lieutenant m his service, in or about the 
 
 graving. 111 1 i 1 
 
 year loii, and to have been suggested by the rust 
 on a weapon which a soldier was cleaning. The 
 plate is prepared (before any design is made upon it) 
 by means of an instrument like a chisel, with the 
 edge ground into the segment of a circle like the 
 rocker of a cradle, and so engraved as to present 
 Prepara- when sharp about lOO or 120 small teeth. This 
 
 plate. 
 
 ^ cradle is rocked from side to side with the hand, and 
 
 every tooth makes a small dent in the copper, and 
 raises a corresponding bur. The whole surface of 
 the plate is gone over with this instrument about 
 eighty times, in different directions, before it is in a 
 
THE ELEMENTS OF MEZZOTINT 
 
 Engraved by Frank Short 
 
 At my request Mr. Frank Short has shown how a plate is 
 prepared for mezzotint. The upper portion is intended to 
 exhibit the work of the rocker, and for that purpose it is divided 
 into two parts. The uppermost or Hghtest part was prepared 
 in the same way as the darker subdivision immediately under 
 it, but it was afterwards scraped quite clear of bur so as to 
 exhibit the effects of the rocker's teeth in digging into the 
 copper. The nine strong dotted lines are lines of " ways," 
 showing the direction of rocking. Here they are etched ; in a 
 plate intended for future work they are temporarily marked in 
 chalk. 
 
 The whole of the lower example was rocked " full," showing 
 the depth to be obtained by leaving bur untouched and also 
 qualities of shade to be obtained by its partial removal with 
 the scraper. 
 
'^r 
 
ENGRA VI NG 
 
 fit condition to be worked upon. When sufficiently 
 prepared it presents a fine soft-looking and perfectly 
 even grain, and if in this state a proof is taken from 
 it by the usual process of copper-plate printing, the 
 result is nothing but the richest possible black. The The pro- 
 engraver works from dark to light by removing the 
 grain with a scraper, and exactly in proportion as he 
 removes it the tint becomes paler and paler. Pure 
 whites are got by scraping the grain away entirely, 
 and burnishing the place. As the process is from 
 dark to light, the engraver has to be very cautious 
 not to remove too much of his grain at once. He 
 proceeds gradually from dark to half-dark, from half- 
 dark to middle-tint, from middle-tint to half-light, 
 and from half-light to light. He has nothing to do 
 with line, but thinks entirely of masses relieved from 
 each other by chiaroscuro. When the work is good 
 the result is soft and harmonious, well adapted to the 
 interpretation of some painters, but not of all. As 
 the art has been most practised in England, some of 
 its most successful work has been employed in the 
 translation of English artists. More than a hundred The en- 
 
 111 1 1 gravers of 
 
 engravers m mezzotmt employed themselves on the Reynolds. 
 portraits of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the best of 
 their works are now valued as the classics of the art, 
 which is connected with the name of Reynolds just 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 as line-engraving is connected with that of Raphael. 
 Turner and Constable's landscapes were also admir- 
 
 Lupton. ably engraved in mezzotint by Liipton and others, 
 Turner himself being a good mezzotint engraver, 
 though he practised the art little. Mezzotint en- 
 
 Cousens. graving was continued in England by Cousens and 
 others, and in the latter part of the nineteenth 
 century there has been a revival of mezzotint as 
 an original art, chiefly by Mr. Haden and Mr. 
 Herkomer. Mezzotint engraving would no doubt 
 be more resorted to than it is if the plates yielded 
 larger editions, but unfortunately they soon show 
 signs of wear. 
 
 ^7 Dry point is really nothing but mezzotint in line. 
 
 As the point of the stylus makes its scratch on the 
 copper, it raises a bur, which retains the ink in the 
 printing just as the bur from the cradle does in 
 mezzotint. The bur of dry point also wears away 
 fast, and yields but few impressions. 
 
 Copper, steel, and zinc are the metals chiefly 
 used for engraving. Steel is less employed than 
 formerly, because copper is now covered with a coat 
 of steel by the electrotype process, which enables it 
 to resist printing indefinitely, as the steel can be 
 renewed at will. Zinc is similarly coated with 
 copper, and sometimes used for small editions. 
 
LADY AT A PIANO 
 
 Engraving in Mezzotint 
 By Henri Manesse 
 
 This is a study of darks from a drawing in Indian ink made 
 by the engraver from nature in his own studio. The subject 
 was selected because it afforded a good opportunity for broad 
 masses of dark as well as for some minor ones. The reader 
 will see for himself the differences of tone between the lady's 
 back and her piano, between her hair and her neck, etc. 
 
 This study is intended to be merely elementary, a sort of 
 experiment in the oppositions of simple tones. It has no pre- 
 tension to be a work of elaborate art, indeed elaborate mezzo- 
 tints are usually on a larger scale. 
 
VII 
 
 PHOTOGRAPHIC PROCESSES OF ENGRAVING 
 
 This title is given as the most generally intelligible, Title a 
 but, in fact, there are no photographic processes of 
 engraving, as photography is unable to engrave 
 anything in metal. The processes of "photo- 
 gravure," "heliogravure," etc., are really no more 
 than inventions by v^hich photography transfers 
 (and often at the same time reduces) a drawing so 
 that it has not to be copied by hand, but the en- 
 graving is a subsequent operation in which photo- 
 graphy has no part. 
 
 In the Goupil process of photogravure, which The 
 
 Goupil 
 
 is the most perfect, the photograph is taken on a process. 
 substance which, after subsequent treatment, leaves 
 the darks in strictly proportionate relief. From this 
 a cast is taken in copper by the electrotype process, 
 and it is this cast which forms the plate. There 
 is strictly no engraving so far, but only casting. 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 HiUo. 
 graviire. 
 
 When the electrotype gives an imperfect result (as 
 usually happens) it is worked upon, not by the sun, 
 but by the hand of a human engraver. 
 
 The process oi heliogravure as practised by Amand- 
 Durand was first photography on a sensitised etching- 
 ground. After washings, the copper was left bare 
 in the lines and exposed to the action of a mordant. 
 The plate was then cleaned and covered for rebiting 
 with an ordinary etching-ground, the whole subsequent 
 Amand- proccss being exactly that of common etching, and 
 
 Dvirand. i i • 
 
 concluduig With the burin or the dry point. The 
 Amand -Durand hdiogravures are therefore quite 
 strictly etchings on copper. Dujardin's liMiograv- 
 Dujardin. ures, different, I believe, in the ground and mordant, 
 are also unquestionably etchings. It would, how- 
 ever, be misleading to call them so, because the 
 What is word is usually understood to mean an engraving by 
 by "etcii- corrosion in which the lines were draivn by the artist 
 "^^" himself on metal and also bitten by him. When 
 
 Amand-Durand made his facsimiles from Rembrandt 
 we could not call them etchings by the Dutch 
 master, who did not bite the coppers, and it would 
 be misleading to call them etchings by the French- 
 man, who drew nothing. A hdiogravure is usually 
 an etching of which the drawing has been done by 
 an artist, then transferred to a plate with the help 
 
ENGRA VING 
 
 of photography and bitten by another operator. It 
 is now a common practice to draw in ink on paper 
 and have the work reproduced in heliogravure. The Drawing 
 
 for helio- 
 
 resuk cannot truthfully be called an etching by the gravure. 
 draftsman, because he did not etch but only drew, 
 as he had no control over the biting. 
 
 There are several photographic processes by Process 
 which, with the help of electrotype, blocks are pro- 
 duced for printing along with letterpress. These 
 are of two kinds, one (the simpler and more satis- 
 factory) copies lines whilst the other imitates tones. 
 The first is usually employed for reducing and copy- The linear 
 ing pen-drawings so that they may be printed like 
 facsimile woodcuts, the second (by the interposition 
 of gauze when the subject is photographed) trans- 
 lates tones into innumerable dots, and can be applied 
 either to pictures or to photographs from nature. 
 It is now extensively used for both purposes. The 
 linear process usually gives the more perfect results, 
 and has been practised with success by Chefdeville 
 and others. Meisenbach of Vienna and Guillaume 
 of Paris have done acceptable work with the tone The 
 process, whilst Boussod and Valadon have employed 
 it largely for the reproduction of contemporary 
 paintings. These processes are not artistically sub- 
 stitutes for wood-engraving, which has qualities that 
 
 tone 
 process. 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 they cannot rival, but commercially they are substitutes 
 
 for it in the sense that they are now frequently employed 
 
 instead of woodcuts for purposes of cheap illustration. 
 
 Artistic The artistic influence of processes has been ex- 
 
 influence 
 of pro- tremely important. They have largely encouraged 
 
 cesses. . , ^ . 
 
 the practice of drawing, whilst imposing upon it 
 certain restrictions. The special influence of the 
 linear typographic process has been to revive pen- 
 drawing on a most extensive scale and to create 
 a demand for clever and brilliant manual execution. 
 This demand has led to the production of the pen- 
 The pen- Specialist, the professional pen-draftsman who knows 
 
 specialist. 
 
 • his business, and is indifferent to the advice of 
 
 painters, whom he looks upon as ignorant of his 
 
 craft. On the other hand, the tone process is doing 
 
 Cheap good service in providing cheap memoranda of 
 
 memor- 
 anda, works in painting, sculpture, and architecture, the 
 
 last by the reproduction of photographs taken directly 
 from the buildings, or by copying the designs of 
 the architectural draftsman. All these things, 
 considered simply as memoranda, have considerable 
 value as documents for critical or historical use, 
 because (within certain limits that we know before- 
 hand) they can be absolutely relied upon. So much 
 cannot be said of woodcuts, though wood-engraving, 
 as an art, is far superior to these processes. 
 
VIII 
 
 BOOKS ON ENGRAVING 
 
 Authorities. — A real knowledge of engraving can 
 only be attained by a careful study and comparison 
 of the prints themselves, or of accurate facsimiles, so 
 that books are of little use except as guides to prints 
 when the reader happens to be unaware of their 
 existence, or else for their explanation of technical 
 processes. The department of art-literature which 
 classifies prints is called Iconography, and the classi- 
 fications adopted by iconographers are of the most 
 various kinds. For example, if a complete book 
 were written on Shakespearian iconography it would 
 contain full information about all prints illustrating 
 the life and works of Shakespeare, and in the same 
 way there may be the iconography of a locality or of 
 a single event. The history of engraving is a part 
 of iconography, and there are already various 
 histories of the art in different languages. In 
 
156 DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 England Mr. W. Y. Ottley wrote an Early History 
 of Engraving, published in two volumes 4to, 1 8 1 6, 
 and began what was intended to be a series of 
 notices on engravers and their works. Mr. H. 
 Ottley has also written upon the same subject. The 
 facilities for the reproduction of engravings by the . 
 photographic processes have of late years given an 
 impetus to iconography. One of the most reliable 
 modern writers on the subject is M. Georges 
 Duplessis, the keeper of prints in the National Library 
 of France. He has written the History of Engrav- 
 ing in France, and has published many notices of 
 engravers to accompany the reproductions by M. 
 Amand-Durand. He is also the author of a useful 
 little manual entitled Les Merveilles de la Gravure. 
 Count de Laborde collected materials for a history 
 of wood-engraving, and began to publish them, but 
 the work advanced no further than a first number. 
 Jansen's work on the origin of wood and plate 
 engraving, and on the knowledge of prints of the 
 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was published at 
 Paris in two volumes 8vo in i8o8. Didot's Essai 
 typographique et bibliographiijue sur riiistoire de la 
 gravitre sur bois was published in Paris (8vo) 1863. 
 A Treatise on Wood Engraving, by John Jackson, 
 appeared in 1839, and a second edition of the work 
 
ENGRA VI NG 
 
 in 1 86 1. A good deal of valuable scattered infor- 
 mation about engraving is to be found in the back 
 numbers of the principal art periodicals, such as the 
 Gazette des Beaux- Arts, L'Art, and the Portfolio. 
 In the year 1877 Professor Colvin published a series 
 of articles in the Portfolio on "Albert Durer, His 
 Teachers, His Rivals, and His Followers," which 
 contain in a concentrated form the main results of 
 what is known about the early engravers, with 
 facsimiles from their works. Professor Ruskin also 
 published a volume on engraving, entitled Ariadne 
 Florentina, in which the reader will find much that 
 is suggestive ; but he ought to be on his guard 
 against certain assertions of the author, especially 
 these two, — ( i ) that all good engraving rejects 
 chiaroscuro, and (2) that etching is an indolent and 
 blundering process at the best. The illustrations to 
 his volume are of unequal merit : the facsimiles 
 from Holbein are good ; the reductions of early 
 Italian engravings are not good. The reader will 
 find information about engraving, and many fac- 
 similes of old woodcuts, in the different volumes by 
 Paul Lacroix on the Middle Ages and the Renais- 
 sance, published by Firmin Didot ; the information 
 may be relied upon, but the facsimiles, though 
 effective, are not always perfect. Roret's Collection 
 
158 DRA WING AND ENGRA VI NG 
 
 de Maruiels formaiit tine Encyclopddie des Sciences et 
 des Arts contains a pocket volume on engraving 
 which is full of useful practical information, and 
 another similar volume on plate-printing, also very 
 useful to engravers on metal, who ought always to 
 understand printing ; these volumes may be had 
 separately. Etching has been the subject of several 
 different treatises. The oldest is that of Abraham 
 Bosse, published at Paris in 1645, 8vo, and in 1701. 
 i2mo. The revival of etching in our own day has 
 been accompanied by the publication of various 
 treatises. The first was a short account of the old 
 process by Mr. Alfred Ashley ; then came the 
 French brochm-e of M. Maxime Lalanne ; then 
 Etching and Etchers (450 pages, in the stereotyped 
 edition) by the writer of this article, and a smaller 
 treatise. The Etcher s Handbook, by the same. 
 These were followed by another short French hand- 
 book, that of M. Martial. In the year 1892, Pro- 
 fessor Herkomer published his Oxford lectures on 
 Etching and Mezzotint in a volume and announced 
 two new processes. In the same year Mr. W. J. 
 Linton, the distinguished American wood-engraver, 
 published a volume on his own art. For informa- 
 tion about the states of plates, their prices, their 
 authenticity and history, the student ought to con- 
 
ENGRAVING 159 
 
 suit the best catalogue-markers, such as Bartsch, 
 Claussin, Vosmaer, Charles Blanc, etc. The litera- 
 ture of engraving is now rapidly increasing in con- 
 sequence of the new processes of reproduction, and 
 the great engravers of past times are becoming much 
 better known. Works on the subject frequently 
 appear, not only in England and France, but also 
 in Germany, whilst Holland and Italy bring their 
 contributions to general iconography. In conse- 
 quence of this rapid extension of studies on the 
 subject, any attempt at a universal bibliography of 
 works about engraving would soon become obsolete 
 or incomplete. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 The Law of Progress in Drawing 
 
 Since revising the text of these papers I have happened to find 
 in "Igdrasil" for March 1892, a report of one of Mr. Ruskin's 
 Oxford lectures where he speaks of a picture by John Bellini, a 
 Madonna at Venice, " in which," Mr. Ruskin observes, " we are 
 struck with the wonderful reality of a scroll which St. Jerome, 
 who is introduced in the picture, holds in his hand. If we 
 examine it closely we see that this reality arises from the fact 
 that two whole chapters are written out bodily." 
 
 This is a most instructive instance of the difference between 
 primitive and advanced art. The kind of reality attained by 
 Bellini in this picture is much desired and laboured for by artists 
 in the earlier stages of progress and has caused an incalculable 
 expenditure of toil. In a later stage it is perceived that this 
 minuteness whilst giving, at great cost, a certain kind of reality, 
 does not give the higher truth of the visual impression, and 
 so the pursuit of it becomes less earnest and is finally aban- 
 doned. If, in a picture, any one is represented as holding 
 written or printed matter in his hand and the letters are 
 made out carefully you may always be certain that the art 
 of the painter, however manually skilful, is mentally immature. 
 In Rembrandt's " Doctor Faustus " there is some lettering 
 within the visionary circles on the window, but the letters are 
 II 
 
DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 few and irregular ; no one could imagine a mature draftsman 
 like Rembrandt copying out, with the clearness of print, two 
 whole chapters of his Bible. In all mature modern drawing, 
 such details as lettering on sign-boards, etc., are either treated 
 with a wise and intentional slightness (a mere indication being 
 enough) or else avoided altogether. For example, in the 
 " Etchings of Old London " by Mr, Ernest George it happens 
 that there are sign-boards in one etching, theatrical posters in the 
 foreground of another, and tombstones with inscriptions in the 
 immediate foreground of a third. In all these cases the artist 
 has been careful to work on principles exactly the opposite of 
 those followed by Bellini. He has given only the larger letters, 
 and amongst these he has made intentional omissions, whilst he has 
 avoided the error of imitating the rigid characters too accurately. 
 In a word, he has bestowed no more attention on these details 
 than is due to their visual importance in the drawing, and that is 
 not great, though it was necessary just to indicate their presence. 
 I have long observed in Mr. Ruskin's teaching a much 
 stronger sympathy with the immature conditions of graphic art 
 than with its complete maturity. One mark of this is his insist- 
 ence on outline which, in the mature states of the art of drawing, 
 gives place to modelling and mass and to a variety of indications 
 of character within the spaces that would have been enclosed by 
 definite outlines in an earlier stage of art. In connection with 
 this is Mr. Ruskin's love for a distinct separation of colours, as in 
 maps, where the states are coloured differently. Lastly, and this 
 is a question of supreme importance, we have Mr. Ruskin's 
 association of virtue and conscientiousness in the artist with the 
 elaboration of minute details, whilst the true advance is not 
 towards a real carelessness but towards something that is often 
 misrepresented as carelessness. The true advance of graphic art 
 is towards a summary and comprehensive expression in which 
 detail is made use of only just so far as is necessary for character 
 or for the degree of explicitness required by the subject as a whole. 
 The mature artist is not blind to the infinite detail of nature, but 
 his art is not an imitation of it, just as in literature the minute 
 
ST. CLOUD, TURNERIAN TOPOGRAPHY 
 
 A Pen Sketch by the Author 
 Reproduced in Heliogravure by P. Dujardin 
 
 I have purposely sketched this rather roughly in order that 
 there might be no appearance of any attempt to imitate the 
 delicacy of Miller's engraving, which would have been equally 
 hopeless and unnecessary. There has been some slight 
 shading with dry-point on the copper. 
 
 The sketch shows with sufificient clearness how Turner 
 composed his subject. What a large share is due to pure 
 invention may be seen by a comparison with my literal drawing 
 entitled " St. Cloud from the River." 
 
If /■'" 
 
 1.^ 
 
 ^Af 
 
 8^ i 
 
 ir^fe^ 
 
 
 
ST. CLOUD FROM THE RIVER 
 
 A Pen Sketch by the Author 
 Reproduced in Heliogravure by P. Dujardin 
 
 A sketch from nature showing St. Cloud as it is, without the 
 slightest attempt at any kind of pictorial arrangement. The 
 real scene has nothing of the sublimity which belongs to 
 Turner's imaginary one, but it is not without a certain richness 
 and beauty of its own, I mean in nature, for in the drawing 
 what strikes the eye most forcibly is the awkwardness of the 
 straight shore, which nobody working for an artistic end 
 would tolerate for a moment. 
 
^ UNIVERSITY ' 
 **!^CALIFORH)^ 
 
APPENDIX 163 
 
 descriptions indulged in by some writers for the purpose of making 
 " copy " are anything but a sign of mastery. 
 
 Inaccuracy in the Drawing of Landscape 
 
 The best way to understand the inaccuracy in landscape- 
 drawing which is the inevitable result of the necessity for compo- 
 sition, is to take some of the engravings from Turner to the places 
 which they profess to represent. It would be interesting if some 
 accurate draftsman followed Turner on the Seine and the 
 Loire, making careful drawings from nature of the sites selected 
 by him, and comparing them with his free and imaginative inter- 
 pretation. This would be interesting, but not all that the traveller 
 should undertake. He ought to hunt up all the materials of 
 which Turner composed his picture, and this is difficult for two 
 reasons, first, because they are often far apart, and secondly, 
 because Turner often altered the materials themselves till they 
 were past recognition. I visited lately, the scenes of two illustra- 
 tions by Turner, the St. Cloud in the illustrations to Scott and 
 the St. Germain in the Rivers of France. His St. Cloud professes 
 to be taken from the left shore of the Seine, on which the chateau 
 itself is situated, but in reality the view was taken from the right 
 shore as from that alone the artificial cascade and the palace are 
 together visible. Neither of the two shores near the river offers the 
 slightest artistic interest ; that which Turner gives is his own inven- 
 tion and it made no difference whether he placed his invention on 
 one side or the other. His reason for preferring the left was that 
 the invented shore gave unity to his composition by aff'ording a 
 support to the wooded steep on which the chateau stands. Placing 
 myself where Turner must have stood to see the cascade, I found 
 that there was only a glimpse of the palace, the upper story and 
 pediment being visible, but that the keepers' lodges to the right were 
 visible enough, looking (from that place) more important than the 
 palace itself. Turner made this building appear to be a part of the 
 palace by treating it so loosely and mysteriously that the spectator 
 
i64 DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 must of necessity confuse the two. By this artifice he saved 
 the importance of his palace. To increase the romance of the 
 situation, the height of the artificial cascade was much exagger- 
 ated and the palace was placed much higher on the wooded 
 steep. The importance of the real palace is, and always was, 
 reduced to a minimum by the neighbourhood of the town of St. 
 Cloud which is overwhelming, the palace seeming (in the reality) 
 no more than the suburban residence of some wealthy tradesman. 
 Turner sacrificed the town in two ways, first, by denying the 
 existence of the advancing shore on which it is built, and 
 secondly, by hiding the little that he left room for behind a 
 massive clump of trees. He gives a little of the bridge, but pays 
 such slight attention to it that he does not represent anything 
 characteristic of the real structure. His bridge is merely a wall 
 with arched holes to let the water through. 
 
 The drawing contains, however, a more remarkable piece 
 of infidelity than all these. It gives a view of the Mont 
 Valerien in the distance. Only the crest of this is visible from 
 the river bank anywhere between St. Cloud and Sevres, but 
 the hill itself becomes visible, as Turner drew it, at a point on 
 the Boulogne shore near the present Rue de Beuzenval (right 
 bank) 1150 yards from the place where Turner sketched St. 
 Cloud. His sketch of Mont Valerien is tolerably faithful. 
 
 All these alterations are explicable at once by the artistic 
 desire to give importance and beauty to the palace. To attain 
 this end Turner contrived to increase the nobility of its situation 
 and removed every object that might set up a dangerous rivalry. 
 He had no objection to the buildings on the crest of Mont 
 Valerien, because they were lessened by distance. 
 
 The illustration of St. Germain, in the Rivers of France, 
 contains several objects that it is not difficult to recognise. We 
 see at once that Turner was on the great terrace, and his writing 
 companion, Mr, Leitch Ritchie, expressly says : " The view from 
 the terrace of St. Germain is one of the finest in France. In 
 the annexed engraving the spectator is supposed to stand upon 
 the terrace, a small portion of which is seen, but only a very 
 
ST. GERMAIN, TURNERIAN TOPOGRAPHY 
 
 A Pen Sketch by the Author 
 Reproduced in Heliogravure by P. Dujardin 
 
 This is a rough translation of Allen's engraving after Turner 
 into a simpler form of art. The principal mass of shade has 
 been indicated with the roulette, a small toothed instrument 
 that gives a sort of inferior mezzotint. The outlines are 
 intentionally made very definite for the sake of clearness. As 
 in the case of the " St. Cloud," there is no attempt to follow 
 the delicacy of the engraving. It was enough to show how 
 Turner had put together the materials of his composition. 
 
APPENDIX 1 6s 
 
 small portion ; this superb promenade being 7200 feet long and 
 90 broad." Then follows a description of the view visible from 
 the terrace so that there can be no doubt about the matter. It 
 is easy, when visiting the terrace itself, to fix the exact position 
 from which Turner saw the view and made most, though not all, 
 of the memoranda from which the engraved drawing was after- 
 wards composed. There is a projection in the terrace called the 
 Rosarium, with seats to enable visitors to enjoy the prospect, 
 and it is here that Turner studied the subject of the engraving. 
 The parts of Turner's composition will have to be considered 
 separately, because there is no point of view, either on the 
 terrace or elsewhere, from which they can be seen together as in 
 his drawing. The reader will observe a building to the right 
 with two towers and several buttresses. The nearest tower has a 
 dome, the more distant one a flatter roof that seems supported 
 on short pilasters with open spaces between them. Both 
 towers appear to be octagonal. They help us to identify the 
 building which is not the castle of St. Germain, though it looks 
 like a castle, but a remnant of what is called the Pavilion Henri 
 IV. which, in the reahty, is a picturesque jumble of buildings 
 now used as an hotel. Of the two towers (if they can be called 
 so) at the angles, one has a dome as in Turner's drawing, and 
 the other a mansard roof, but neither one nor the other is 
 octagonal, they are both square. As for the buttresses, they 
 appear to have been simply an invention of Turner's, to help 
 his composition by continuing and carrying up the slope of the 
 steep ground which a vertical wall must have failed to do ; in 
 fact the buttresses are a great beauty in the composition, almost 
 a necessity. Another very interesting feature is a terrace below 
 the castellated building with a steep ascent at each end. That 
 terrace really exists, but though not far from the Pavilion Henri 
 IV. it is not visible from the Rosarium. The reader will observe, 
 lower down to the left, an enclosure with a tower. Perhaps this 
 may be intended for the cemetery, which is visible from the 
 Rosarium, and close to it is a Gothic tower either modern 
 or much restored. In Turner's drawing the bridge is fetched 
 
1 66 DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 from some distance into the composition, in reality it is more to 
 the left, lower down the Seine. The river itself cannot be made 
 to come into any topographic view of the Pavilion Henri IV., it 
 is much too far to the left. The aqueduct of Marly on the top 
 of the hill does just come into a long drawing and that is all. 
 
 Turner's treatment of the river itself is very peculiar. He 
 greatly reduces the size of all objects, such as trees and houses, 
 on its banks in order to convey the idea of a much wider expanse 
 of water. In the reality there are rich masses of well-grown 
 trees which, by their importance, make the river look even 
 narrower than it really is, and the Seine near Paris, though 
 beautiful, is hardly yet a great river. In Turner's drawing it is, 
 however, made to appear as broad as the finest reaches of the 
 Saone. I only wish it were so, for the sake of the boating. 
 Turner carries us into the distance as far as Bougival, and so 
 conveys the idea of the panoramic scene visible from the 
 Rosarium, whilst still preserving the form of a picture, and 
 rather a square form too ; indeed I have wondered that he did 
 not prefer a longer shape for his river subjects. 
 
 Turner compressed his materials from both right and left, 
 making one picture out of two distinct subjects, and even bring- 
 ing material up, as it were, from behind. His principle seems to 
 have been always to crowd as much material as he could com- 
 press together into one view which is exactly opposed to the 
 principle of the modern French impressionists who take as little 
 as possible of nature at one time, and fix the spectator's attention 
 on one or two objects, and on the contrast or harmony between 
 two hues as a scheme of colour. 
 
 It might perhaps be possible to retain the character of objects 
 in landscape whilst modifying their forms. In Turner's work the 
 expression of character is most variable. His interpretation of 
 French rivers is, in a general way, characteristic, though his 
 perpetual search for beauty led him to miss a great deal of river 
 character that is peculiar and impressive rather than beautiful. 
 Observe, for instance, how anxious Turner was to make the shore 
 of St. Cloud (I mean what is close to the water) beautiful when 
 
ST. GER.MA1N FROM THE TERRACE 
 
 A Pen Sketch by the Author 
 Reproduced in Heliogravure by P. Dujardin 
 
 The intention of this sketch being merely a plain state- 
 ment of facts, it is clear rather than artistic. In an artistic 
 drawing the buildings would not have been so regularly out- 
 lined, and there might have been a little display of manual 
 dexterity, which is scarcely compatible with plain topographic 
 work. 
 
 The buildings explain themselves, having been left as clear 
 as possible. The author has not permitted himself to add 
 any charm to them by that kind of inaccuracy which is called 
 picturesque treatment. 
 
 The things that look like sticks in the foreground are not 
 intended to represent any kind of vegetation. They are 
 merely old vine-sticks. 
 
 There is some slight shading with dry-point on the copper. 
 The object of it is to give a hint only of effect without obscur- 
 ing the positive character of the lines. 
 
THE SEINE FROM ST. GERMAIN 
 
 A Pen Sketch by the Author 
 Reproduced in Heliogravure by P. Dujardin 
 
 A VERY simple sketch from nature without any artistic arrange- 
 ment, showing the real nature of the river as seen from the 
 terrace of St. Germain. The heliogravure is from a memo- 
 randum in strong ink Hues, preserving only essential facts. 
 The author has added a slight tint with dry-point lines on the 
 copper, just to distinguish between land and water. Strong 
 lines, helped a little by a light tint, are much authorised by 
 the practice of the old masters. 
 
; UNIVERSITY 
 
APPENDIX 167 
 
 in nature it is not so. I may be ' answered that it has been 
 spoilt, perhaps, by the new railway. No, the railway is so low 
 down that one is hardly aware of it until a train passes, and 
 before writing these pages I was careful to ascertain the state of 
 the shore before Turner's time by a reference to a careful en- 
 graving done by a man without any disturbing imagination. 
 Turner's shore is imaginary, and it is not characteristic. His in 
 terpretation of the cascade has also taken away much of its char- 
 acter which depends on width as much as on height. His chateau 
 is not characteristic being made to appear as vast as Versailles 
 and as uninteresting, whilst the real St. Cloud was comparatively 
 small and pretty. The trees on the slope are, in nature, remark- 
 able for their division in massive clumps. On the Turnerian 
 slope they are comparatively insignificant in themselves and 
 impressive rather by multitude than by mass. The same may 
 be said for the trees in the distance of the St. Germain draw- 
 ing in comparison with the fine masses by the river-side in nature, 
 and Turner's buttressed castle to the right, though an exceedingly 
 picturesque invention, misses almost everything that is essentially 
 characteristic of the edifice that suggested it, an edifice also 
 very picturesque, but in quite a different way. 
 
 My own present condition of mind with regard to Turner's 
 drawings is simply enjoyment of the drawings themselves, as a 
 purely esthetic pleasure, accompanied by complete uncertainty 
 as to the degree of their veracity, unless (as in these two cases of 
 St. Cloud and St. Germain) I happen to know the places. When 
 I do know the places, of course I cannot help seeing Turner's 
 innumerable modifications, and then there comes an effort (not 
 always successful) to forget all the facts and get back once more 
 to purely aesthetic enjoyment which is, in reality, all that Turner 
 has to give. 
 
 Corot is now quite as celebrated as Turner, and he was equally 
 indifferent to accuracy in drawing, but he seldom (except in very 
 early works) even pretended to any degree of fidelity in matters 
 of detail. Turner does give abundance of detail, most of it 
 altered almost beyond recognition ; Corot simply omits, or takes 
 
i68 DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 here and there what is topographically insignificant, and almost 
 destitute of any specially local character. Yet these two men, 
 with Claude who also drew inaccurately, are the most famous 
 landscape-painters that the world has ever seen, and the very few 
 men who have attempted to introduce accurate drawing into 
 landscape have either remained in complete obscurity or attained 
 only a very modest and secondary success. It would be useless 
 to mention their names, as so few readers would recognise them. 
 If the reader has not much previous acquaintance with this 
 subject he is likely to infer that inaccurate drawing must be bad 
 drawing, but I should be sorry to imply that inaccurate drawing 
 was always bad, though it is so very often. Claude drew in- 
 accurately, yet in his best works with a tender grace that gained 
 him much sincere and well-merited admiration. The qualities of 
 Turner's drawing, considered as a representation not of particular 
 scenes, but of landscape beauty, reveal an exquisite refinement 
 in his sense of form. In this respect Turner's landscape-drawing 
 was incomparably superior to that common amongst landscape- 
 painters, especially of the French school, in the present day. 
 Corot seemed hardly to draw at all, yet he drew well enough to 
 express with the utmost delicacy the ideal of landscape elegance 
 that haunted him. These men were not draftsmen of objects 
 like a good painter of the figure, or of still life, but they were 
 draftsmen of grace and beauty for which nature supplied only 
 a suggestion. 
 
 Elementary Exercises with the Burin, Engraved by 
 Leopold Flameng 
 
 Although few readers of the present volume are likely to study 
 engraving practically, these elementary exercises may be of use 
 to the reader who has no intention of copying them by enabling 
 him to analyse the technical execution of line-engravings more 
 completely. The practical student may imitate them with a 
 burin on a copper-plate in the order indicated by the numbers. 
 
APPENDIX 171 
 
 engraving had a sort of texture or quality of its own produced by 
 the clearness of the engraved lines, distinctly visible, however 
 numerous. 
 
 Pyrogravure 
 
 This is a means of engraving on wood, leather, and other 
 substances for decorative purposes, not for printing. The instru- 
 ment used is a point heated to redness. The art is a very old 
 one and has been practised in many countries, but it has become 
 much more convenient of late through the invention of an 
 improved heating apparatus. The point was formerly a piece of 
 iron heated in the fire, awkward to hold, and always rapidly 
 cooling ; at present it is as convenient as an ordinary crayon- 
 holder, and the heat can be maintained or regulated to different 
 degrees at the will of the operator. The point is of platinum 
 first heated in a spirit-lamp, and the incandescence is maintained 
 by a steady current of atmospheric air, carburetted by passing 
 over a mineral essence in a phial. The current is supplied 
 either from a balloon or from a reservoir like a gasometer, or 
 else from an indiarubber pear pressed with the left hand, and it 
 reaches the point through a little tube in the holder. These 
 improvements, or the application of them to fire-engraving, are 
 due to M. Manuel-Perier, of Paris, (i Rue Pleyel.) 
 
 Let us suppose that the subject to be engraved is the decora- 
 tion of a panel in poplar-wood. The drawing is first made out 
 carefully with a lead pencil and the engraver burns in every line 
 with the incandescent platinum point, giving various degrees of 
 depth according to the effect required. The appearance or 
 quality reminds one very closely of the bitten etched line. If a 
 tone is required over the lines, or between them, it can be easily 
 given by holding a broader platinum instrument, heated in the 
 same manner, over the wood without touching it. This gives a 
 brown tone of any required depth. 
 
 Landscapes, portraits, etc., can be engraved in this way as 
 easily as decorative ornament, provided that the work is on 
 rather a large scale. If the subject is a landscape on a poplar 
 
172 DRA WING AND ENGRA VING 
 
 panel it will present almost the appearance of a large etching 
 and can easily be reduced and reproduced as a heliogravure. 
 Fire -engravings on leather (calf) have a different quality. If 
 reproduced so as to print typographically, they have the appear- 
 ance of woodcuts and sometimes of pen -drawings according to 
 the mode of treatment. But the great use of this art will be for 
 decoration. It can be used on various kinds of wood, on bone, 
 ivory, velvet, leather, etc., and being essentially an artist's art it 
 permits the utmost variety of personal expression. Decorative 
 pyrogravure is a rational pursuit for moderately accomplished 
 amateurs, as although the highest artistic talent or genius (the 
 genius of a Rembrandt, for instance) might find expression by 
 its means, one may fire -engrave ornaments of all degrees of 
 simplicity or complexity, and they can be copied from existing 
 designs. 
 

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