Engraving: Its Origin, Processes, and History

CHAPTER VIII.

ENGRAVING IN FRANCE AND IN OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. NEW PROCESSES: STIPPLE, CRAYON, COLOUR, AND AQUATINT

Morin, Nanteuil, Masson, and the other portrait engravers of the period, in spite of the variety of their talent, left their immediate successors a similar body of doctrine and a common tradition. Now the works of the painter Rigaud, whose importance had considerably increased towards the end of the reign of Louis XIV., made certain modifications of this severe tradition necessary on the part of the artists employed to engrave them. Portraits, for the most part bust portraits, relieved against an almost naked background, were no longer in fashion. To render a crowd of accessories which, while enriching the composition, frequently encumbered it beyond measure, became the problem in engraving. It was successfully solved by Pierre Drevet, his son Pierre Imbert, and his nephew Claude Drevet, this last the author, amongst other plates now much prized, of a "Guillaume de Vintimille" and a "Count Zinzendorff."

The first of these three engravers – at Lyons the pupil of Germain Audran, and at Paris of Antoine Masson – engraved, with some few exceptions, only portraits, the best known of which are a full-length "Louis XIV.," "Louis XV. as a Child," "Cardinal Fleury," and "Count Toulouse;" they attest an extreme skill of hand, and a keen perception of the special characteristics of the originals. The second, the similarity of whose Christian name has often caused him to be mistaken for his father, showed himself from the first still more skilful and more certain of his own powers. He was only twenty-six when he finished his full-length "Bossuet," in which the precision of the handling, the exactness and brilliancy of the burin work, seem to indicate a talent already arrived at maturity. In this plate, indeed, and in some others by the same engraver – as the "Cardinal Dubois," the "Adrienne Lecouvreur," and others – there are parts, perhaps, that seem almost worthy of Nanteuil himself. It is impossible to imitate with greater nicety the richness of ermine, the delicacy of lace, and the polish and brilliancy of gilding; but the subtle delicacy of physiognomy, the elasticity of living flesh which animated the portraits of the earlier masters, will here be looked for in vain. Such work is the outcome of an art no longer supreme, albeit of a very high order still.

As much may be said of the best historical plates engraved in France under the Regency, and in the first years of Louis XV. The older manner, it is true, was still perceptible, but it was beginning to change, and was soon to be concealed more and more under a parade of craftsmanship amusingly self-conscious, and an elegance refined to the point of affectation.

The French engravers of the time of Louis XV. may be divided into two distinct groups: the one submitting to the authority of Rigaud, and partially preserving the tradition of the last century; the other, of greater numerical importance, and in some respects of greater ability, but, in imitation of Watteau and his followers, seeking success in attractiveness of subject, grace of handling, and the expression of a general prettiness, rather than in the faithful rendering of truth.

As we know, the manners of the time were not calculated to discourage a like tendency, which, indeed, grew more and more general amongst artists during the whole course of the eighteenth century, until it ended in a revolution, as radical in its way as the great political one: namely, the exclusive worship of a somewhat barren simplicity and of the antique narrowly understood.

In 1750 (that is to say, almost at the very time of the birth of David, the future reformer of the school) the public asked nothing more of art than a passing amusement. The immediate successors of Lebrun had brought the historical style into great disrepute. People had wearied of the pompous parade of allegory, the tyranny of splendour, the monotony of luxury; they took refuge in another extreme – in the exaggeration of grace and all the coquetries of sentiment. Pastorals, or would-be pastorals, and subjects for the most part mythological, took the place of heroic actions and academical apotheoses. They had not a whit more nature than these others, but they had at any rate more interest for the mind, and greater charm for the eye.

From the point of view of engraving alone, the prints published in France at this time are for the most part models of spirit and delicacy, as those of the Louis XIV. masters are of learned execution and vigorous conception. Moreover, under the frivolous forms affected by French engraving in the eighteenth century, something not unfrequently survives of the masterly skill and science of the older men. It is to be supposed that Laurent Cars remembered the example of Gérard Audran, and, in his own way, succeeded in perpetuating it when he engraved Lemoyne's "Hercule et Omphale," and "Délivrance d'Andromède." Even when he was reproducing such fantasies as the "Fête vénitienne" of Watteau, or scenes of plain family life, like Chardin's "Amusements de la Vie privée," and "La Serinette," he had the art of supplementing from his own taste whatever strength and dignity his originals might lack. Was it not, too, by appropriating the doctrine, or at least the method, of Audran – his free alliance of the burin with the needle – that Nicolas de Larmessin, Lebas, Lépicié, Aveline, Duflos, Dupuis, and others, produced their charming transcripts of Pater, Lancret, Boucher himself – in spite of his impertinences of manner and his unpleasant falseness of colour – and, above all, Watteau, of all the masters of the eighteenth century the best understood and the most brilliantly interpretated by the engravers? A while later, Greuze had the honour to occupy them most; and some among them, as Levasseur and Flipart, did not fail to acquit themselves with ability of a task rendered peculiarly difficult by the flaccid and laboured execution of the originals.

However summary our description of the progress of French engraving during the whole of the reign of Louis XV., or the early years of Louis XVI., it is scarcely possible not to mention, side by side with historical and genre engraving, the countless illustrations – of novels, fables, songs, and publications of every description – the general aspect of which so strongly bears witness to the fertility and grace of French art at that time. It is difficult to omit the names of those agreeable engravers of dainty subjects, not seldom of their own design: those poetæ minores, the vaudevillists of the burin, who, from the interpreters of Gravelot, Eisen, and Gabriel de St. Aubin to Choffard, from Cochin to Moreau, have left us so much work steeped in the richest, the most varied imagination, or informed by an exquisite natural perception. Ready and ingenious above all others, delicate even in their most capricious flights, witty before everything, they are artists whose accomplishment, in spite of its appearance of frivolity, is not to be matched for delicacy and science in the work of any other epoch, or the school of any other country.

Placed, in some sort, at an equal distance from the contemporary historical engravers and the engravers of illustrations, and divided, as it were, between the recollections of the past and the examples of the present, Ficquet, and some years later, Augustin de St. Aubin, produced the little portraits which are as popular now as then. The portraits of Ficquet are prized above all; though those of St. Aubin, in spite of their small size, exhibit a largeness and firmness of modelling not to be found in work that is sometimes preferred to them. What is more, Ficquet's plates are generally only reductions of prints already published by other engravers, Nanteuil, Edelinck, and the rest; whilst the portraits of St. Aubin have the merit of being directly taken from original pictures or drawings. As a rule, however, these portraits are relieved on a dead black ground, without gradation or variety of effect; and it is probably to the somewhat harsh and monotonous aspect thus produced that we must attribute the comparative disfavour with which they are regarded.

It is also permissible to suppose that Ficquet's almost microscopic prints, like those of his imitators, Savart and Grateloup, owe much of their popularity to their extreme finish. When the mind is not exercised in discerning the essential parts of an art, the eye is apt to look upon excessive neatness of workmanship as the certain evidence of perfection. As people insensible to the charm of painting fall confidingly into raptures over the pictures of Carlo Dolci, Gerard Dow, and Denner, so, it maybe, certain admirers of Ficquet esteem his talent in proportion to the exaggerated cleanness and carefulness of his plates. Yet his real merit does not entirely rest on such secondary considerations. Many of his small portraits, most of them intended as illustrations, are remarkable for firm drawing and delicate facial expression; and if the work were generally simpler and less crowded with half-tints, it might be classed, as miniature in line, with Petitot's enamels.

The analogy, however, can only be supported with regard to their talent; their dispositions differ in every point. The painter Petitot, a fervent Calvinist, whose life presents a curious contrast with the worldly character of his work, had the honour to attract the attention of Bossuet, who, it is said, attempted to convert him. He was imprisoned at For-l'Evêque after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and only quitted it to devote himself to solitude and study. Ficquet, for his part, took no interest whatever in religious questions, and gave up every spare moment to the pursuit of pleasure; he was, besides, for ever short of money, and was perpetually hunted by his creditors, who, weary of struggling, usually ended by installing him in their own houses to finish a plate for them.

It was in this way that he came to spend nearly two months at St. Cyr, in the very heart of which community he engraved his "Mme. de Maintenon," after Mignard. This portrait, paid for long previously to the last farthing, made no progress whatever; and the Mother Superior, having exhausted prayers and reproaches, and despairing of seeing it finished, addressed herself to the metropolitan. From him she obtained permission to introduce the artist into the convent, and to keep him there till the accomplishment of his task. But things went on no better. Ficquet, bored to death in his seclusion, simply slept out the time, and never touched his graver. One day he sent for the Superior, and told her that if he stayed at St. Cyr to all eternity, he could not work in the solitude they had made for him; amusement he must and would have, and in default of better, it must be the conversation of the nuns; he added, in a word, that he refused to finish the portrait unless some of them came every day to keep him company. His conditions were accepted; and to encourage him still further, some of the pupils accompanied the nuns, and played and sang to him in his room. At length the long-expected plate was ready; but Ficquet, disgusted with the work, destroyed it, and would only consent to begin again on the promise of instant liberty and a still larger sum. By these means the nuns of St. Cyr at last became possessed of the likeness of their foundress, and the little "Mme. de Maintenon" – which is perhaps Ficquet's masterpiece – made up to them for the strange exactions with which they had had to comply.

As the habit of employing etching in the execution of their works had gained ground among artists, the temptation to have recourse to this speedy process had vanquished one person after another, even those who seemed least likely to yield, whether from their position in society, or their former methods. There were soon as many amateur as professional engravers; and learning the use of the needle well enough to sketch a pastoral was soon as fashionable as turning a madrigal. Among the first to set the example was the Regent; he engraved a set of illustrations for an edition of "Daphnis et Chloe," and his initiative was followed by crowds of all ranks: great lords like the Duc de Chevreuse and the Marquis de Coigny; gentlemen of the gown, like the Président de Gravelle; financiers, scholars, and men of letters, like Watelet, Count Caylus, and D'Argenville.44 Court ladies and the wives of plain citizens joined the throng; from the Duchesse de Luynes and the Queen herself, to Mme. de Pompadour and Mme. Reboul (who afterwards married the painter Vien), there were scores of women who amused themselves by engraving, to say nothing of the many who made it a profession.

The drawback of such pastimes, innocent enough in themselves, was that they degraded art into a frivolous amusement, and promulgated a false view of its capabilities and real object. This is what very generally happens when, on the strength of a certain degree of taste, mistaken for talent, people aspire to compass, without reflection or study, results only to be attained by knowledge and experience. The authors of such hasty work think art easy, because they are ignorant of its essentials; and the public, in its turn mistaken as to these, accepts appearances for reality, becomes accustomed to the pretence of merit, and loses all taste for true superiority. Every art may be thus perverted; and in our own days, amateur water colours, statuettes, and waltzes are as injurious to painting, sculpture, and music, as in former days, the amusement of print-making was to engraving.

Moreover, it was not art only that these prints began to injure. Prompted by gallantry, as understood by the younger Crébillon and Voisenon when they wrote their experiences, they often presented to the eyes of women scenes to the description of which they would not have listened: as a certain lady is reported to have asked Baron de Besenval, during the relation of an embarrassing adventure, to "draw a picture-puzzle of what he couldn't tell her." Often, however, engraving, as practised in the salons, appealed to quite another order of passions and ideas. In support of the great cause of the day – philosophy – all weapons seemed fair, and the needle was used to disseminate the new evangel. When Mme. de Pompadour, in her little engraving, the proofs of which were fought for by her courtiers, attempted to show "The Genius of the Arts Protecting France," she set no very dangerous example, and only proved one thing – that the said Genius did not so carefully protect the kingdom as to exclude the possibility of platitude. But when the habitués of Mme. d'Épinay and D'Holbach set themselves in their little prints to attack certain so-called mental superstitions, they unconsciously opened the door to people of a more radical turn of mind. Before the end of the century prints a good deal more crudely energetic appeared on the same subject; and the pothouse engravers, in their turn, illustrated the Père Duchêne, as the drawing-room engravers had illustrated the "Essai sur les Mœurs" and the "Encyclopédie."

Although the engraving of illustrations, or at least "light" subjects, was, in the eighteenth century, almost the only sort practised in France, even by the most eminent artists, some of these imparted to their productions a severer significance, and an appearance more in harmony with that of former work. Several – pupils of Nicolas Henri Tardieu, or of Dupuis – resisted with much constancy the encroachment of the fashionable style, and passed on to their scholars of all nations those teachings they had received in their youth. The Germans, Joseph Wagner, Martin Preisler, Schmidt, John George Wille; the Italian, Porporati; the Spaniards, Carmona and Pascal Molés; the Englishmen, Strange, Ingram, Ryland, and others, came, at close intervals, for instruction or improvement in this school. In Paris they published plates of various degrees of excellence; but, in the greater part of these, the nationality and personal sentiment of their authors are obliterated in acquired habits of taste and handling.

Wille's prints, for instance – those even which have most contributed to his fame, "Paternal Instruction," after Terburg, or the "Dutchwoman Knitting," after Mieris – might just as well, for anything one sees to the contrary, have been the work of a French engraver of the same period. They only differ from plates bearing the name of Beauvarlet or of Daullé in a certain Teutonic excess of coldness in the handling; in a somewhat staid, and, as it were, metallic stiffness of arrangement. Carmona's "François Boucher," and his "Colin de Vermont," after Roslin, and Porporati's "Tancrède et Clorinde," after Carle Vanloo, have still less of the stamp of originality.

Finally, with the exception of Ryland, by reason of the particular process he employed, and of which we shall presently have to speak – and especially of Strange, who has his own peculiar mode of feeling, and a sort of merit peculiar to himself – none of the English engravers trained in the French school fail to show the signs of close relationship. Engravers of more original talent must be looked for neither amongst historical nor portrait engravers, nor even amongst engravers of genre. For information as to the state of the art outside of France, and apart from the French school, we must rather turn to the illustrations of books and almanacs engraved by Chodowiecki at Dantzic or Berlin, or to the vast plates from ancient Roman monuments etched – not without a certain rhetorical emphasis – by Piranesi.

As for other second or third rate foreign engravers of the period, as for those ragionevoli (as Vasari would have called them) whose work, if undeserving of oblivion, is likewise undeserving of attentive examination, we shall have done our part if we mention certain amongst them: as J. Houbraken, who worked at Dordrecht; Domenichino Cunego, of Rome; Weirotter, of Vienna; and Fernando Selma, of Madrid.

Meanwhile, in France and other countries, by royal command, or at the expense of rich amateurs, important series of prints were being published in commemoration of public events, or in illustration of famous collections of painting and sculpture. The first of the latter order was the "Galerie de Versailles," begun by Charles Simoneau, continued by Massé, and only finished in 1752 after twenty-eight consecutive years of labour. It was speedily succeeded by the "Cabinet de Crozat" and the "Peintures de l'Hôtel Lambert;" and a little later the example of France was followed by other countries, and one after the other there appeared, in Italy, Germany, and England, the "Museo Pio Clementino," the "Dresden Gallery," the catalogue of the Bruhl collection, and the publications of Boydell – all such magnificent works as do honour to the second half of the eighteenth century. Finally, thanks to Vivarès and Balechou, the engraving of landscape began to rival historical engraving, to which it had before been considered as merely accessory. The honour of having created it belongs to the French. It is too often forgotten that they were the first to excel in it, and that but for the practice of Vivarès, England to whom the merit of initiative is usually attributed might never have boasted of Woollett and his pupils.

Since Claude Lorraine and Gaspard Dughet, the French school had produced few painters of pure landscape – none of first-rate ability. The first to restore to the neglected art a something of its pristine brilliance was Joseph Vernet. An observer, but one rather clever than sincere, he is certainly wanting in the strength and gravity which are characteristics of the great masters. In his work there is more intelligence than deep feeling, and more elegance than true beauty. Like the descriptive poetry of the time, it shows us Nature a trifle too sleek and shiny, and a little over-emphasised; she is rather a theme for discourse than a model to be lovingly studied as a source of inspiration. Yet even where the truth is thus arbitrarily treated, it retains under Vernet's brush sufficient charm, if not to move, at least to interest and to please; so that the success of this brilliant artist, and the influence he exerted on the French school and on public taste, are easily understood.

In the lofty position which his talent had won him, Joseph Vernet was more capable than any other painter of giving a happy impulse to the art of engraving; and, indeed, the landscape engravers formed by him were masters of the genre. We have mentioned Balechou and Vivarès. The former, at first a pupil of Lépicié, began by engraving portraits, the best known of which, a full-length of Augustus III., King of Poland, brought upon its author the shame of a fitting punishment. Convicted of having detained a certain number of the first proofs for his own profit; Balechou was struck off the list of the Académie, and obliged to retire to Arles, his native town, and thence to Avignon, where he took to landscape engraving. There it was that he executed after Joseph Vernet his "Baigneuses," his "Calme," and his "La Tempête." In his latter years he returned to history, and executed after Carle Vanloo his tiresome "Sainte Geneviève," which was once so loudly vaunted, which even now is not unadmired, and which really might be a masterpiece, if technical skill and excessive ease of handling were all the art. Though, unlike Vivarès, he did not teach the practice of landscape in England, Balechou contributed enormously by his works to the education of the English engravers; and the best of them, Woollett, confessed that he produced his "Fishing" with a proof of the Frenchman's "La Tempête" always before his eyes.

As for Vivarès, he engraved in Paris a number of plates after Joseph Vernet and the Old Masters, and then, preceding De Loutherbourg and many others of his nation, he migrated to London. He took with him a new art, as Hollar had done a century before, and founded that school of landscape engravers whose talents were destined to constitute, even to our own time, the chief glory of English engraving.

But before his pupils and imitators could take possession after him of this vast domain, engraving in England had developed considerably, in another direction, under the influence of two distinguished artists, Hogarth and Reynolds, born at an interval of twenty-five years from one another. The son of a printer's reader, who apprenticed him to a goldsmith, William Hogarth spent almost all his youth in obscurity and poverty. At twenty he was engraving business cards for London tradesmen; some years later he was sign-painting, and was wearing himself out in work entirely unworthy of him, when he forced the attention of the public by the publication of a satirical print, the heroes of which were well known and easily recognised. His success being presently confirmed by other compositions of the same sort he profited by the fact to apply his talent to more serious work. He soon acquired a reputation, enriched himself by marrying the daughter of Sir James Thornhill, the king's painter, and remained till his death (1764) one of the most eminent men of his country.

Both as painter and engraver Hogarth was a deep student of art, on which he has left some commendable writings; but he never succeeded in fulfilling all its conditions. Extravagantly pre-occupied with the philosophical significance with which he purposes to endow his work, he does not always see when he has gone far enough in the exposition of his idea: he darkens it with commentary; he becomes unintelligible by sheer insistence on intelligibility. There are allegories of his in which, still striving after ingenuity, he has piled detail upon detail till the result is confusion worse confounded.

But when no excess of analysis has decomposed his primary idea to nothingness, by directing the attention elsewhere, Hogarth strikes home, and compasses most powerful effects. His series of prints, in which are storied the actions of one or more persons – his "Marriage à la Mode," his "Rake's Progress," his "Harlot's Progress," his "Industry and Idleness" – the last a sort of double biography representing the different lives of two apprentices, one of whom becomes Lord Mayor of London, whilst the other dies at Tyburn – all these engraved by himself, partly in etching and partly in line, are, as regards the execution, by no means irreproachable; are frequently, indeed, not even good: but in expression and gesture they are nearly always of startling truth, while the moral meaning, the innermost spirit of every scene, is felt and rendered with the keenest sagacity. At the very time when the genius of Richardson was working a like revolution in literature, Hogarth – and herein lies his chief merit – was introducing domestic drama into art. In England and elsewhere the painter-engraver and the novelist, both creators of the style in which they worked, have had a crowd of imitators; but they cannot be said to have met with rivals anywhere.