Page:Chats on old prints (IA chatsonoldprints00haydiala).pdf/411

 *tains fifty coloured aquatints by J. H. Clark, and deals with Hunting, Coursing, Hawking, Shooting, Fishing, and does not exclude Cock-fighting and Bear-baiting. This was originally published at £10, but it now brings anything from £40 to £70. Much of Alken's work is soft-ground etching coloured by hand. "The Sporting Scrap Book" of 1824, with fifty etchings, is more often found uncoloured than coloured. Alken's "Notions" is a set of six humorous hunting plates, "I had not the most distant notion my horse was going to stop," &c. The edition of 1837 is worth about £4, but this set on account of its popularity has been reproduced in various forms in colour.

Jakob C. Le Blon in Holland anticipated the modern three-colour process by using three plates inked with red, blue, and yellow and superimposing them on the same piece of paper, thus getting his range of colours from these three primary ones. His system was also used in France and England.

In late eighteenth-century days in France Janinet, Vidal, and Debucourt elaborated printing in colour by using six or seven plates each inked with a separate colour. This required great nicety, as in each successive printing the plate and paper had to be adjusted exactly in position, and this "register" required the same accurate treatment in lithographic colour work where many printings were given in different colours.

Coloured aquatints are another story. They may be bought cheaply and they repay study. Rarely more than two or three colours were applied to the plate itself; the colouring was mostly done after