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 CHAPTER X

STEEL ENGRAVING—NINETEENTH CENTURY

The first use of steel in 1820—The commercial value of steel in yielding more impressions—Its effect on the style of engravers—The age of minuteness and over-elaboration—The invention of steel-facing—The return to copper.

Line engraving in the nineteenth century entered upon its last phase. The employment of various mechanical devices such as the use of the ruling machine to produce the clear blue sky and the flat tints, together with a fixed code of rules governing the technique in its rendering of flesh, of water, of fabrics, and of metal, and intricate axioms relating to lozenge work, helped to bring it into disrepute. Plates were no longer engraved by one but by several men, and this imperceptibly led to its deterioration as departing from the personality so necessary to any work of art. Sir Seymour Haden no doubt had this in mind when he described line engraving as a manufacture rather than an art.