[42] Amongst Audran's most distinguished scholars, we need only mention the following names: Gaspard Duchange; Dorigny, summoned to London by Queen Anne; Louis Desplaces; and Nicolas Henri Tardieu, founder of a family of clever engravers, the last of whom died in 1844, worthy of the name he bore.
[43] Engraver of the "Assumption" of Philippe de Champaigne. He must not be confused with another Bartholomew Kilian, his ancestor, and the head of a family in which there are no less than twenty engravers.
[44] Some of these little unpretentious amateur prints are not without charm; some even show a certain amount of talent in the execution, and the portraits drawn and engraved by Carmontelle, the author of the "Proverbes," deserve, amongst others, to be mentioned on that account.
[45] In his landscapes, Woollett makes use of etching, line, and the dry-point, all three. Philippe Le Bas was the first to make use of dry-point to render the misty tones of distances and the clearness of skies. This mode of engraving, improved by Vivarès, was carried to its highest perfection by Woollett. Certain English artists of the same period tried to apply the process of mezzotint to landscape engraving; but the landscapes engraved in this way by Watson and Brookshaw, after the German Kobell, will not bear comparison with Woollett's.
[46] In a work dedicated to Pitt, "On the Origin of Trade and its History to the Present Times" (London, 1790), we read that the prints exported from England at that time were, as compared with those imported from France, in the proportion of "five hundred to one by the most exact computation," and that the trade in English engravings, far from being restricted to one or two countries, extended all over Europe.
[47] The credit of the invention is really due to Jean Charles François, born at Nancy in 1717. But the application that François made of his discovery was—if we consider the improvements introduced soon afterwards by Demarteau—still so incomplete that it seems only fair to attribute to the latter a principal share in the original success.
[48] "Lettre de Cochin, Secrétaire perpétuel de l'Académie, au Sieur François," 26th November, 1757.
[49] Before giving himself up almost exclusively to the practice of aquatint, Debucourt produced a large number of engravings in colour: "Le Jardin" and "La Galerie de Bois au Palais Royal," the "Promenade aux Tuileries," "L'Escalade," and so forth. We know the ardour, verging on mania, with which these prints, albeit of little value from an artistic point of view, are now collected.
[50] This important publication contains, in four sections, the most remarkable pictures and sculptures of the Louvre, as it existed after Napoleon had enriched it with masterpieces from every school. Begun in 1802, it was continued till 1811.
[51] This fine cathedral, burnt with so many other churches in the great fire, was 690 feet in length, 130 feet broad, and 520 feet high at the top of the spire.