Engraving: Its Origin, Processes, and History

by comte Henri Delaborde

As for other second or third rate foreign engravers of the period, as for those ragionevoli (as Vasari would have called them) whose work, if undeserving of oblivion, is likewise undeserving of attentive examination, we shall have done our part if we mention certain amongst them: as J. Houbraken, who worked at Dordrecht; Domenichino Cunego, of Rome; Weirotter, of Vienna; and Fernando Selma, of Madrid.

Meanwhile, in France and other countries, by royal command, or at the expense of rich amateurs, important series of prints were being published in commemoration of public events, or in illustration of famous collections of painting and sculpture. The first of the latter order was the "Galerie de Versailles," begun by Charles Simoneau, continued by Massé, and only finished in 1752 after twenty-eight consecutive years of labour. It was speedily succeeded by the "Cabinet de Crozat" and the "Peintures de l'Hôtel Lambert;" and a little later the example of France was followed by other countries, and one after the other there appeared, in Italy, Germany, and England, the "Museo Pio Clementino," the "Dresden Gallery," the catalogue of the Bruhl collection, and the publications of Boydell—all such magnificent works as do honour to the second half of the eighteenth century. Finally, thanks to Vivarès and Balechou, the engraving of landscape began to rival historical engraving, to which it had before been considered as merely accessory. The honour of having created it belongs to the French. It is too often forgotten that they were the first to excel in it, and that but for the practice of Vivarès, England to whom the merit of initiative is usually attributed might never have boasted of Woollett and his pupils.

Since Claude Lorraine and Gaspard Dughet, the French school had produced few painters of pure landscape—none of first-rate ability. The first to restore to the neglected art a something of its pristine brilliance was Joseph Vernet. An observer, but one rather clever than sincere, he is certainly wanting in the strength and gravity which are characteristics of the great masters. In his work there is more intelligence than deep feeling, and more elegance than true beauty. Like the descriptive poetry of the time, it shows us Nature a trifle too sleek and shiny, and a little over-emphasised; she is rather a theme for discourse than a model to be lovingly studied as a source of inspiration. Yet even where the truth is thus arbitrarily treated, it retains under Vernet's brush sufficient charm, if not to move, at least to interest and to please; so that the success of this brilliant artist, and the influence he exerted on the French school and on public taste, are easily understood.

In the lofty position which his talent had won him, Joseph Vernet was more capable than any other painter of giving a happy impulse to the art of engraving; and, indeed, the landscape engravers formed by him were masters of the genre. We have mentioned Balechou and Vivarès. The former, at first a pupil of Lépicié, began by engraving portraits, the best known of which, a full-length of Augustus III., King of Poland, brought upon its author the shame of a fitting punishment. Convicted of having detained a certain number of the first proofs for his own profit; Balechou was struck off the list of the Académie, and obliged to retire to Arles, his native town, and thence to Avignon, where he took to landscape engraving. There it was that he executed after Joseph Vernet his "Baigneuses," his "Calme," and his "La Tempête." In his latter years he returned to history, and executed after Carle Vanloo his tiresome "Sainte Geneviève," which was once so loudly vaunted, which even now is not unadmired, and which really might be a masterpiece, if technical skill and excessive ease of handling were all the art. Though, unlike Vivarès, he did not teach the practice of landscape in England, Balechou contributed enormously by his works to the education of the English engravers; and the best of them, Woollett, confessed that he produced his "Fishing" with a proof of the Frenchman's "La Tempête" always before his eyes.

As for Vivarès, he engraved in Paris a number of plates after Joseph Vernet and the Old Masters, and then, preceding De Loutherbourg and many others of his nation, he migrated to London. He took with him a new art, as Hollar had done a century before, and founded that school of landscape engravers whose talents were destined to constitute, even to our own time, the chief glory of English engraving.

But before his pupils and imitators could take possession after him of this vast domain, engraving in England had developed considerably, in another direction, under the influence of two distinguished artists, Hogarth and Reynolds, born at an interval of twenty-five years from one another. The son of a printer's reader, who apprenticed him to a goldsmith, William Hogarth spent almost all his youth in obscurity and poverty. At twenty he was engraving business cards for London tradesmen; some years later he was sign-painting, and was wearing himself out in work entirely unworthy of him, when he forced the attention of the public by the publication of a satirical print, the heroes of which were well known and easily recognised. His success being presently confirmed by other compositions of the same sort he profited by the fact to apply his talent to more serious work. He soon acquired a reputation, enriched himself by marrying the daughter of Sir James Thornhill, the king's painter, and remained till his death (1764) one of the most eminent men of his country.

Both as painter and engraver Hogarth was a deep student of art, on which he has left some commendable writings; but he never succeeded in fulfilling all its conditions. Extravagantly pre-occupied with the philosophical significance with which he purposes to endow his work, he does not always see when he has gone far enough in the exposition of his idea: he darkens it with commentary; he becomes unintelligible by sheer insistence on intelligibility. There are allegories of his in which, still striving after ingenuity, he has piled detail upon detail till the result is confusion worse confounded.

But when no excess of analysis has decomposed his primary idea to nothingness, by directing the attention elsewhere, Hogarth strikes home, and compasses most powerful effects. His series of prints, in which are storied the actions of one or more persons—his "Marriage à la Mode," his "Rake's Progress," his "Harlot's Progress," his "Industry and Idleness"—the last a sort of double biography representing the different lives of two apprentices, one of whom becomes Lord Mayor of London, whilst the other dies at Tyburn—all these engraved by himself, partly in etching and partly in line, are, as regards the execution, by no means irreproachable; are frequently, indeed, not even good: but in expression and gesture they are nearly always of startling truth, while the moral meaning, the innermost spirit of every scene, is felt and rendered with the keenest sagacity. At the very time when the genius of Richardson was working a like revolution in literature, Hogarth—and herein lies his chief merit—was introducing domestic drama into art. In England and elsewhere the painter-engraver and the novelist, both creators of the style in which they worked, have had a crowd of imitators; but they cannot be said to have met with rivals anywhere.

The genius of Sir Joshua Reynolds is of a totally different order. In the sense of consisting in the sentiment of effect and the masterly arrangement of tones it is essentially picturesque, and presents such a boldness of character as engravers could easily appreciate and reproduce. There is no far-fetched significance, no accessories tending to destroy the unity of the whole. On the contrary, the work proceeds by synthesis; it is all largely schemed, and built up in masses where the details are scarcely indicated. The expression lies not so much in niceties of physiognomy as in the whole attitude of the sitters and the characteristic pose and contour of the faces represented. The painter's imagination is brilliant rather than delicate; sometimes, indeed, it degenerates into bad taste and eccentricity. But far more frequently it gives his attitudes an air of ease and originality, and the general aspect of his portraits breathes a perfect dignity. The vigorous contrasts, the freedom and wealth of colour which are their primary characteristics, as they are those of Gainsborough's work likewise, are qualities to whose translation the free and flowing stroke of the graver is hardly fitted, but which mezzotint would naturally render with ease and success. And, as we have said before, it is to the influence of the famous painter that must be attributed the immense extension of the latter process in England during the latter part of the eighteenth century.

The landscape and mezzotint engravers began, therefore, to vitalise the English school: the former especially lent it real importance by their talent. From 1760 or thereabouts Woollett published, after Richard Wilson or after Claude, those admirable works which, on account of their suave harmony of effect, their transparency of atmosphere, and their variableness of colour, are less like engravings than pictures.[45] Shortly afterwards he completed his fame by work of another sort: the reproduction, first, of West's "Death of Wolfe," and then of his "Battle of La Hogue," the American's best picture, and the finest historical plate ever engraved in England. Lastly about the same time, Robert Strange, a pupil of Philippe Le Bas, engraved in line, after Correggio and Van Dyck, the "Saint Jerome" and the "Charles I.;" as well as other prints after these masters, which are quite as charming, and should, indeed, be unreservedly admired if the correctness of their drawing were only equal to their elegance of modelling and flexibility of tone.