“Aquatints,” said Margaret. “Isn’t that a new departure?”
“No. It is only a revival. I used to do a good deal of aquatint work, but I have not done any for quite a long time until I attacked these two. I like a change of method now and again. But I always come back to etchings.”
“Do you work much with the dry point?” asked Thorndyke.
“Not the pure dry point,” was the reply. “Of course, I use it to do finishing work on my etchings, but that is a different thing. I have done very few dry points proper. I like the bitten line.”
“I suppose,” said Thorndyke, “an etcher rather looks down on lithography.”
“I don’t think so,” replied Varney. “I don’t certainly. It is a fine process and an autograph process, like etching and mezzotint. The finished print is the artist’s own work, every bit of it, as much as an oil painting.”
“Doesn’t the printer take some of the credit?” Thorndyke asked.
“I am assuming that the artist does his own printing. If he doesn’t, I should not call him a lithographer. He is only a lithographic draughtsman. When I used to work at lithography, I always did my own printing. It is more than half the fun. I have the little press still.”
“Then perhaps you will revive that process, too, one day?”
“I don’t think so,” Varney replied. “The flat surface of a lithograph is rather unsatisfying after the rich raised lines of an etching. I shall never go back to lithography, except, perhaps, for some odd jobs;” and here a spirit of mischievous defiance impelled him to add, “I did a little lithograph only the other day, but I didn’t keep it. It was a crude little thing.”