Line Engraving

Line Engraving, on plates of copper or steel, the method of engraving (q.v.), in which the line itself is hollowed, whereas in the woodcut when the line is to print black it is left in relief, and only white spaces and white lines are hollowed.

The art of line engraving has been practised from the earliest ages. The prehistoric Aztec hatchet given to Humboldt in Mexico was just as truly engraved as a modern copper-plate which may convey a design by Flaxman; the Aztec engraving is 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 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. The goldsmiths of Florence in the middle of the 15th century were in the habit of ornamenting their works by means of engraving, after which they filled up the hollows produced by the burin with a black enamel made of silver, lead and sulphur, the result being that the design was rendered much more visible by the opposition of the enamel and the metal. An engraved design filled up in this manner was called a niello. Whilst a niello was in progress the artist could not see it so well as if the enamel were already in the lines, yet he did not like to put in the hard enamel prematurely, as when once it was set it could not easily be got 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 hollowed lines and fetch the ink out of them. This was the beginning of plate printing. The niello engravers thought it a convenient way of proving their work—the metal itself—as it saved the trouble of the sulphur cast, but they saw no further into the future. They went on engraving nielli just the same to ornament plate and furniture; nor was it until the 16th century that the new method of printing was carried out to its great and wonderful results. There are, however, certain differences between plate-printing and block-printing which affect the essentials of art. When paper is driven into a line so as to fetch the ink out of it, the line may be of 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; the wood engraving, therefore, can never—except in a tour de force—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 slightly impressed, whereas in plate-printing it is a cast with an additional thickness of printing ink.

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

In the early Italian and early German prints, the line is used with such perfect simplicity of purpose that the methods of the artists are as obvious as if we saw them actually at work.

The student may soon understand the spirit and technical quality of the earliest Italian engraving by giving his attention to a few of the series which used erroneously to be called the “Playing Cards of Mantegna,” but which have been shown by Mr Sidney Colvin to represent “a kind of encyclopaedia of knowledge.”

The history of these engravings is obscure. They are supposed to be Florentine; they are certainly Italian; and their technical manner is called that of Baccio Baldini. But their style is as clear as a style can be, as clear as 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 etching needle. Shading is used in the greatest moderation with thin straight strokes of the burin, that never overpower the stronger organic lines 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. In this early metal engraving the lines are often crossed in the shading, whereas in the earliest woodcuts they are not; the reason being that when lines are incised they can as easily be crossed as not, whereas, when they are reserved, the crossing involves much labour of a non-artistic kind. Here, then, we have pure line-engraving with the burin, that is, the engraving of the pure line patiently studied for its own beauty, and exhibited in an abstract manner, with care for natural form combined with inattention to the effects of nature. Even the forms are idealized, especially in the cast of draperies, for the express purpose of exhibiting the line to better advantage. Such are the characteristics of those very early Italian engravings which were attributed erroneously to Mantegna. When we come to Mantegna 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 then threw over them a veil of shading, a very peculiar kind of shading, all the lines being straight and all the shading 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. 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 tried to give to their burins something of the German suppleness.

The characteristics of early metal engraving in Germany are seen to perfection in Martin Schongauer and Albert Dürer, who, though with striking differences, had many points in common. Schongauer died in 1488; whilst the date of Dürer’s death is 1528. Schongauer was therefore a whole generation before Dürer, yet not greatly inferior to him in the use of the burin, though Dürer has a much greater reputation, due in great measure to his singular imaginative powers. Schongauer is the first great German engraver known by name, but he was preceded by an unknown German master, called “the Master of 1466,” who had Gothic notions of art (in strong contrast to the classicism of Baccio Baldini), but used the burin skilfully, 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. Schongauer’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. Dürer continued Schongauer’s curved shading, with 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 inanimate objects, each of which he finished with as much care as if it were the most important thing 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, like 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 Dürer all objects are on the same plane. In his “St Hubert” (otherwise known as “St Eustace”) of c. 1505, 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. Dürer 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 “The Coat of Arms with the Death’s Head” (1503) and “The Coat of Arms with the Cock” (c. 1512).

Dürer’s great manual skill and close observation made him a wonderful engraver of objects taken separately. He saw and rendered 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 (1504) and other plates—he would pay just as much attention to the creases of a gaiter as to the development 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”), as well as pigs (see the “Prodigal Son,” c. 1495); 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 engraved 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 Melencolia, 1514) and their texture (see the granular texture of the stones in the same print).

From Dürer we come to Italy again, through Marcantonio, who copied Dürer, translating more than sixty of his woodcuts upon metal. It is one of the most remarkable things in the history of art, that a man who had trained himself by copying northern work, little removed from pure Gothicism, should have become soon afterwards the great engraver of Raphael, who was much pleased with his work and aided him by personal advice. Yet, although Raphael was a painter, and Marcantonio his interpreter, the reader is not to infer that engraving had as yet subordinated itself to painting. Raphael himself evidently considered engraving a distinct art, for he never once set Marcantonio to work from a picture, but always (much more judiciously) gave him drawings, which the engraver might interpret without going outside his own art; consequently Marcantonio’s works are always genuine engravings, and are never pictorial. Marcantonio 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.

The group known as the engravers of Rubens marked a new development. Rubens understood the importance of engraving as a means of increasing his fame and wealth, and directed Vorsterman and others. 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 indicated what he thought the best direction for the lines. Rubens liked Vorsterman’s work, and scarcely corrected it, a plate he especially approved being “Susannah and the Elders,” which is 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 executing fourteen important plates, and was succeeded by Paul Pontius, then a youth of twenty, who went on 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 of 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 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: (1) The Italian outline had been discarded as the chief subject of 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 engraving, which it rendered (in the opinion of Rubens) more harmonious.

The history of line-engraving, from the time of Rubens to the beginning of the 19th century, is rather that of the vigorous and energetic application of principles already accepted than any new development. From the two sources 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 on English line-engraving was Flemish, and came from Rubens through Vandyck, Vorsterman, and others; but the English engravers soon underwent French and Italian influences, for although Payne learned from a Fleming, Faithorne studied in France under Philippe de Champagne the painter and Robert Nanteuil the engraver. Sir Robert Strange studied in France under Philippe Lebas, and then five years in Italy, where he saturated his mind with Italian art. French engravers came to England as they went to Italy, so that the art of engraving became in the 18th century cosmopolitan. 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 Gérard Audran at its head, had carried forward the art of 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 17th 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 subordinate 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. Through Woollett and Vivarès, Claude exercised an influence on landscape engraving almost equal to that of Raphael and Rubens on the engraving of the figure, though he did not direct his engravers personally.

In the 19th century line-engraving received first an impulse and finally a check. The impulse came from the growth of public wealth, the increasing interest in art and the increase in the commerce of art, which, by means of engraving, fostered in England mainly by John Boydell, penetrated into the homes of the middle classes, as well as from the growing demand for illustrated books, which gave employment to engravers of first-rate ability. The check to line-engraving came 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 19th century produced most highly accomplished work in line-engraving, both in the figure and in landscape. Its characteristics, in comparison with the work of other centuries, were 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. In a modern engraving from Landseer may be seen the blackness of a man’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, there is to be found every sparkle on bit, boot and stirrup. Modern painting pays more attention to texture and chiaroscuro than classical painting did, and engraving necessarily followed in the same directions. But there is a certain sameness in pure line-engraving more favourable to some forms and textures than to others. This sameness of line-engraving, and its costliness, led to the adoption of mixed methods, extremely prevalent in commercial prints from popular artists. In the well-known prints from Rosa Bonheur, for example, 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 landscape; 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 Cooke, Goodall, Wallis, Miller, Willmore, and others, who reached a degree of delicacy 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 name may be added to those of Raphael, Rubens and Claude in the list of painters who have had a special influence upon engraving. The speciality of Turner’s influence was in the direction of delicacy of tone. In this respect the Turner vignettes to Roger’s poems were a high-water mark of human attainment, not likely ever to be surpassed.

The record of the art of line-engraving during the last quarter of the 19th century is one of continued decay. Technical improvements, it was hoped, might save the art; it was thought by some that the slight revival resultant on the turning back of the burin’s cutting-point—whereby the operator pulled the tool towards him instead of pushing it from him—might effect much, in virtue of the time and labour saved by the device. But by the beginning of the 20th century pictorial line-engraving in England was practically non-existent, and, with the passing of Jeens and Stacpoole, the spasmodic demand by publishers for engravers to engrave new plates remained unanswered. Mr C. W. Sherborn, the exquisite and facile designer and engraver of book-plates, has scarcely been surpassed in his own line, but his art is mainly heraldic. There are now no men capable of such work as that with which Doo, J. H. Robinson, and their fellows maintained the credit of the English School. Line-engraving has been killed by etching, mezzotint and the “mixed method.” The disappearance of the art is due not so much to the artistic objection that the personality of the line-engraver stands obtrusively between the painter and the public; it is rather that the public refuse to wait for several years for the proofs for which they have subscribed, when by another method they can obtain their plates more quickly. An important line plate may occupy a prodigious time in the engraving; J. H. Robinson’s “Napoleon and the Pope” took about twelve years. The invention of steel-facing a copper plate would now enable the engraver to proceed more expeditiously; but even in this case he can no more compete with the etcher than the mezzotint-engraver can keep pace with the photogravure manufacturer.

The Art Union of London in the past gave what encouragement it could; but with the death of J. Stephenson (1886) and F. Bacon (1887) it was evident that all hope was gone. John Saddler at the end was driven, in spite of his capacity to do original work, to spend most of his time in assisting Thomas Landseer to rule the skies on his plates, simply because there was not enough line-engraving to do. Since then there was some promise of a revival, and Mr Bourne engraved a few of the pictures by Gustave Doré. But little followed. The last of the line-engravers of Turner’s pictures died in the person of Sir Daniel Wilson (d. 1892), who, recognizing the hopelessness of his early profession, laid his graver aside, and left Europe for Canada and eventually became president of the university of Toronto.

If line-engraving still flourishes in France, it is due not a little to official encouragement and to intelligent fostering by collectors and connoisseurs. The prizes offered by the École des Beaux Arts would probably not suffice to give vitality to the art but for the employment afforded to the finished artist by the “Chalcographie du Musée du Louvre,” in the name of which commissions are judiciously distributed. At the same time, it must be recognized that not only are French engravers less busy than they were in days when line-engraving was the only “important” method of picture-translation, but they work for the most part for much smaller rewards. Moreover, the class of the work has entirely changed, partly through the reduction of prices paid for it, partly through the change of taste and fashion, and partly, again, through the necessities of the situation. That is to say, that public impatience is but a partial factor in the abandonment of the fine broad sweeping trough cut deep into the copper which was characteristic of the earlier engraving, either simply cut or crossed diagonally so as to form the series of “lozenges” typical of engraving at its finest and grandest period. That method was slow; but scarcely less slow was the shallower work rendered possible by the steel plate by reason of the much greater degree of elaboration of which such plates were capable, and which the public was taught—mainly by Finden—to expect. The French engravers were therefore driven at last to simplify their work if they were to satisfy the public and live by the burin. To compensate for loss of colour, the art developed in the direction of elegance and refinement. Gaillard (d. 1887), Blanchard, and Alphonse François (d. 1888) were perhaps the earliest chiefs of the new school, the characteristics of which are the substitution of exquisite greys for the rich blacks of old, simplicity of method being often allied to extremely high elaboration. Yet the aim of the modern engraver has always been, while pushing the capability of his own art to the farthermost limit, to retain throughout the individual and personal qualities of the master whose work is translated on the plate. The height of perfection to which the art is reached is seen in the triptych of Mantegna by Achille Jacquet (d. 1909), to whom may perhaps be accorded the first place among several engravers of the front rank. This “Passion” (from the three pictures in the Louvre and at Tours, forming the predella of the San Zeno altarpiece in Verona) not only conveys the forms, sentiment, and colour of the master, but succeeds also in rendering the peculiar luminosity of the originals. Jacquet, who gained the Prix de Rome in 1870, also translated pictures of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and engraved fine plates after Paul Dubois, Cabanel, Bouguereau, Meissonier and Detaille. The freedom of much of his work suggests an affinity with etching and dry-point; indeed, it appears that he uses the etching-needle and acid to lay in some of his groundwork and outlines. Léopold Flameng’s engraving after Jan van Eyck’s “Virgin with the Donor,” in the Louvre, is one of the most admirable works of its kind, retaining the quality and sentiment of the master, extreme minuteness and elaboration notwithstanding. Jules Jacquet is known for his work after Meissonier (especially the “Friedland”) and after Bonnat; Adrien Didier for his plates after Holbein (“Anne of Cleves”), Raphael, and Paul Veronese, among the Old Masters, and Bonnat, Bouguereau, and Roybet among the new. Jazinski (Botticelli’s “Primavera”), Sulpis (Mantegna and Gustave Moreau), Patricot (Gustave Moreau), Burney, and Champollion (d. 1901), have been among the leaders of the modern school. Their object is to secure the faithful transcript of the painter they reproduce, while readily sacrificing the power of the old method, which, whatever its force and its beauty, was easily acquired by mediocre artists of technical ability who were nevertheless unable to appreciate or reproduce anything beyond mechanical excellence.

The Belgian School of engraving is not without vitality. Gustave Biot was equally skilful in portraiture and subject (engraving after Gallait, Cabanel, Gustave Doré, among his best work); A. M. Danse executed plates after leading painters, and elaborated an effective “mixed method” of graver-work and dry-point; and de Meerman has engraved a number of good plates; but private patronage is hardly sufficient in Belgium to maintain the school in a state of prosperous efficiency.

In Germany, as might be expected, line-engraving retains not a little of its popularity in its more orthodox form. The novel Stauffer-Bern method, in which freedom and lightness are obtained with such delicacy that the fine lines, employed in great numbers, run into tone, and yield a supposed advantage in modelling, has not been without appreciation. But the more usual virtue of the graver has been best supported, and many have worked in the old-fashioned manner. Friedrich Zimmermann (d. 1887) began his career by engraving such prints as Guido Reni’s “Ecce Homo” in Dresden, and then devoted himself to the translation of modern German painters. Rudolph Pfnor was an ornamentist representative of his class; and Joseph Kohlschein, of Düsseldorf, a typical exponent of the intelligent conservative manner. His “Marriage at Cana” after Paul Veronese, “The Sistine Madonna” after Raphael, and “St Cecilia” after the same master, are all plates of a high order.

In Italy the art is well-nigh as moribund as in England. When Vittorio Pica (of Naples) and Conconi (of Milan) have been named, it is difficult to mention other successors to the fine school of the 19th century which followed Piranesi and Volpato. A few of the pupils of Rosaspina and Paolo Toschi lived into the last quarter of the century, but to the present generation Asiolo, Jesi, C. Raimondi, L. Bigola, and Antonio Isac are remembered rather for their efforts than for their success in supporting their art against the combined opposition of etching, “process” and public indifference.

Outside Europe line-engraving can no longer be said to exist. Here and there a spasmodic attempt may be made to appeal to the artistic appreciation of a limited public; but no general attention is paid to such efforts, nor, it may be added, are these inherently worthy of much notice. There are still a few who can engrave a head from a photograph or drawing, or a small engraving for book-illustration or for book-plates; there are more who are highly proficient in mechanical engraving for decorative purposes; but the engraving-machine is fast superseding this class. In short, the art of worthily translating a fine painting beyond the borders of France, Belgium, Germany and perhaps Italy can scarcely be said to survive, and even in those countries it appears to exist on sufferance and by hot-house encouragement.