Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 07.djvu/142

* ENGRAVING. 120 ENGRAVING. this, which is called printing from relief, has also been in use continually. It is the process used in all the taking of prints from wood-engravings, and from those metal plates which in very early days were engraved on the same principle as wood desired pattern left in relief, and the ground sunk. Engraving for printing according to the first i is "discussed under the separate heads I)i;v Point; Etching; Line-Engkavtng ; Ma- mi. i.k ( RIBLEE; Stipple. The engraving for print- ing from relief is described under Wood-Engrav- ii,. There are also processes, such as mezzotint, or maniere noire, in which the ink is held on the surface of the plate and is taken from that surface, although the plate is of metal, and the process in many ways resembles that of ordinary engraving in intaglio. (See Soft-Ground Etch- There are also mixed processes, as when a plate etched in line is then charged with mezzo- tint, or with aquatint, and the printing involves the taking of the ink at once from the incised lines and from the roughened surface. For this see Liber Studiorum, under which is described the most elaborate instance of this mixed process. For the making of the impressions on paper, see Print: Proof. Wood engraving and also engraving on copper, which are the two -I common forms of the art i i i ngraving for printing, were both at first orig- inal art-. Such copying as theirs was only that which is inseparable from the growth of all fine ait, which in all epochs of advance and original i has constantly followed tradition, improv- ing upon it year by year. The engravings of the ili century by the Italians and Germans, the woodcuts by early and as yet unidentified masters, and those a little later signed by Albert DBrer and his compeers, were original works in that a painting of the time was original, and the moderns have invented a term raver (q.v.) for such an original ar- ti-t a- this. It appeared, however, that famous tngs which could not be moved from the walls which they adorned could be very easily enpied in blark and white by mean- (if prints from wood blocks or copper plates, and as irli con equence of this the ait of engrav- ing in all its forms became almost exclusively an .-Hi mi' copying, Uthough this copying was not always dune with greal accuracy, and although the engraver would take libeitics with his orig- inal, unjustifiable if lie is considered as a copyist, but perfectly legitimate if he is considered as an original artist, yet the tendency through the six- teenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries was awaj from original thought mi the I'.iit "t tli" engraver, ami constantly toward a mere re] ruction which soon became largely me- chanical. The result is thai the great volumes of costly plates illustrating this ami that European 1 losl I heir interest for moderns, who have at their disposal far more accurate repro duction oi painting and sculptures in those of the greal copyist engravers I heir hold on the modern student oi art, and I'' i of the beautj .a' their work. 1 hi Muller :it the close of the sixteenth cen tury, Johann Gotthard von Midler and hi Priedrich in the eighteenth and nineteenth ecu- i ! i8 1833 i Volpato (e.lT.'l.'l 1803), are men x 1 ti I | - work ' faithful reproductions "f paintings, but who keep their [dace as artists in the estimation even ot critical students. In like manner, wood-engraving, although it has been put to even humbler uses than engraving on metal, and has been used for two centuries to illustrate primers and schoolbooks and popu- lar reading of scarcely greater permanent im- portance, is continually brought to the front again by able men who love it for its own sake, who care for the beautiful gradations of light and shade which the prints from good wood- cuts may possess, and who elaborate their art. The most famous of wood-engravers is Thomas Bewick (1753-1828), and since his time there have been such able men, more or less students of Bewick's method, as W. J. Linton (1812 to 1897), and in quite recent times Charles Baude of Paris and several other French engravers, who, in many ways, have excelled all that had been done before. The American wood-engravers working for the prosperous illustrated magazines, which since 1875 have built up a singularly active school of specialized art, have achieved some not very desirable imitations of the texture of oil paintings and other works of original art, but have also made reproductions of great paintings in which the true spirit and significance of the picture is retained by means of the most simple and legitimate engraving. A certain amount of entirely original work has also been done by these engravers, and although the portrait work, which is very valuable, may be thought to be greatly helped by photography, the landscape engravings bj' two or three of the American engravers are painter-engravings of the best sort. Bibliography. Of general catalogues covering special epochs the most celebrated is Bartseh, Le peintre-graveur (21 vols.. Vienna. 1803-21), reprinted (Leipzig, 1854), and supplemented by Passavant, Lc peintrt graveur (6 vols., Leipzig, 1SG0-64). The French engravers were included in Bobert-Dumesnil, Le peintre-graveur fran- cais (8 vols.. Paris, 1835-50) ; the Flemish and Dutch in Van der Kellen (ed.), Le peintre- graveur hollandais et flamand (Utrecht, 1873). The more recent artists are treated in Hippert and Linnig, Le peintre-graveur hollandais et bclae du XI Xc sieele (Brussels, 1874-79) ; Beraldi, Les graveurs </» XI Xe Steele (12 vols., Paris, 1885-92). Aimmg other useful books of reference may be mentioned: Fielding, Art of Engraving (London, 1840); Duplessis, Les mervcillix dr In gravure (Paris, 1871; Eng. trans., London, 1871); Baker. American Engravers and Their Works (Philadelphia. 1875) ; YVillshire. Introduction to the Study and Collection of Ancient Prints (Lon- don, IS77). which has a bibliography; Hamerton, Graphic Arts (London, 1882) ; Lostalot, I, is pro- cides de la gravure (Paris. 1882); and De- laborde, La gravure (ed. 1882), and the latter, translated by R. A. M. Stevenson, with a chap- ter »n English engraving by William Walker, as En graving : its Origin, Processes, and History i New fork, lHSCi : Duplessis and Bouchot, Die- tionnaire des marques et monogramtnes (Paris, 1886) : l.iitzuw. Qeschichte des Kupferstichs and chnittes i Devlin, 1891) ; Singer, Qeschichte ili s Kupferstichs (Magdeburg, 1895), The most important general work is Duplessis. llislnirr de la arm an en Italic iii Espagne, en illemagne, duns les Pays-Baa, <« Angleterre, et en France I Pari.-, 1888).