Tripod, by Gouthière.
Mezzotint and aquatint have been not nearly so fortunate. The former appears to have fallen, almost everywhere, into disuse. Even in England, where, as soon as Von Siegen's invention was imported, a school was founded to cultivate its resources—in England, where, from Earlom to S. W. Reynolds and Cousins, mezzotint engravers so long excelled—it is a mere chance if a few are still to be found supporting the tradition. In other countries, France, Belgium, Germany, and Italy, mezzotint is, to speak strictly, scarcely practised at all. It has been replaced by aquatint, which itself, as we mentioned in a former chapter, is only used for purely commercial requirements, except by engravers of real talent in combination with the needle and the graver.
Wood engraving has made, in certain respects, considerable progress in the course of the last few years. In France and England it is producing results that not only confirm its advances, but are as the prophecy of still better things. Amongst recent prints, those of Robert, for instance, do more than promise; they realise the hopes which others only hold out. All the same, it is commonly the case with wood engravers that, clever though they be, they are apt to deceive themselves as to the special conditions of their art, and too often to forget that it is not their province to imitate the appearance of line engraving. Instead of attempting to copy the complicated results of the graver, they should rather, in accordance with the nature of the process at their disposal, be satisfied with rapid suggestions of effect and modelling and a summary imitation of form and colour. The illustrations after Holbein, by Lützelburger and other Germans of the sixteenth century, and the portraits and subjects cut on wood by Italian artists, or by Frenchmen of the same epoch, as Geofroy Tory and Salomon Bernard, are models to which the engravers of our own day would do well to conform, instead of entering, under pretext of improvements, upon attempted innovations as foreign to the true nature of the process as to its objects and real resources.
Though the practice of line engraving is more scientific in France than anywhere else, it has nevertheless distinguished representatives in other countries. Besides the French, the German, and the Italian engravers we have mentioned, Weber, in Switzerland; De Kaiser, in Holland; Biot and Franck, in Belgium; Jacobi, Sonnenleiter, and Klaus, in Austria, are working manfully for the cause so well supported by Henriquel and his followers. But everywhere the perseverance of zeal and talent is unfortunately insufficient to overcome the prejudices of the public, and its exaggerated confidence in the benefits of mechanical discovery.
Since the progress accomplished by science in the domain of heliographic reproduction, since the advantages with regard to material exactness that photography and the processes derived from it have offered, or seem to offer, line engraving, of all the different methods, is certainly the one that has suffered most from the supposed rivalry. A mistake, all the more to be regretted as it seems to be general, gave rise to the idea that it was all over with the art of engraving, simply because, as mere copies, its products could not have the infallible fidelity of photographic images, and that, however painstaking and faithful the engraver's hand, it could never produce that exact fac-simile, that ruthless imitation of the thing copied.
Nothing could be truer than this, if the only object of line engraving were to give us a literal copy, a brutal effigy of its original. But is it necessary to mention again that, happily, it has also the task of interpretation? Owing to the very limited field in which he works, as it were in monochrome, the engraver is compelled to choose and to combine the best means of rendering by analogy the various colours of his original, to organise its general effect, and to bring out both the character and the style, now by the simplification of certain details, now by applying the principle of selection to certain others. We have no longer here the stupid impartiality, or, if it be preferred, the unreasoning veracity of a mechanical apparatus, but the deliberate use of feeling, intelligence, and taste—of all those faculties, indeed, which mould and enter into the talent of an artist.
Now as long as there are men in the world capable of preferring idea to matter, and the art which appeals to the mind to the fact which speaks to the eyes, line engraving will retain its influence, however small it may be supposed, however limited it may really be. In any case, those who in these days, in spite of every obstacle, are determined to pursue in their own way the work of such men as Edelinck and Nanteuil, will have deserved recognition from their contemporaries, and will have averted, so far as they could, the complete decay, if it must come, of art properly so called, when sacrificed to the profit of chance manufacture and mere technique.