When we consider the conditions under which the art of successful line-engraving is attained, the amount and quality of artistic knowledge implied, the years of patient, unwearied application imperiously demanded, the numerous manual difficulties to be overcome, and the technical skill to be acquired, it is not surprising that the names of so few engravers should be pre-eminent and familiar.
In our own country, at least, the instinct and habit of the people do not favor the growth and perfection of an art only possible under such conditions.
So fully and satisfactorily, however, have these demands been met in Marshall's line-engraving of the head of Abraham Lincoln, executed after Mr. Marshall's own painting, that we are induced to these preliminary thoughts as much by a sense of national pride as of delight and surprise.
Our admiration of the engraving is first due to its value as a likeness; for it is only when the heart rests from a full and satisfied contemplation of the face endeared to us all, that we can regard it for its artistic worth.
Mr. Marshall did not need this last work, to rank him at the head of American engravers; for his portraits of Washington and Fenimore Cooper had done that already; but it has lifted him to a place with the foremost engravers of the world.
The greatness and glory of his success, in this instance, are to be measured by the inherent difficulties in the subject itself.
The intellectual and physical traits of Abraham Lincoln were such as the world had never seen before. Original, peculiar, and anomalous, they seemed incapable of analysis and classification.
While the keen, comprehensive intellect within that broad, grand forehead was struggling with the great problems of national fate, other faculties of the same organization, strongly marked in the lower features of his face, seemed to be making light of the whole matter.
His character and the physical expression of it were unique, and yet made up of the most complex elements;—simple, yet incomprehensible; strong, yet gentle; inflexible, yet conciliating; human, yet most rare; the strangest, and yet for all in all the most lovable, character in history.
To represent this man, to embody these characteristics, was the work prescribed the artist. Instead of being fetters, these contradictions seem to have been incentives to the artist. Justice to himself, as to an American who loved Lincoln, and justice to the great man, the truest American of his time, appear also to have been his inspiration.