IN PRAISE OF PRINTS (TO JOSEPH PENNELL)

The gallery is rather narrow, but long and lofty; the light is diffused and gentle. A tiny staircase leads to mysterious retreats where, Piranesi-like, may be descried other galleries, though not peopled by the prisoners of the fantastic Italian etcher. A familiar voice welcomes the visitor who, weary of the monotonous mobs on the avenue, finds here a haven where, surrounded by the ingratiating arts of black-and-white—mezzotinting, etching, lithograph and line-engraving—he may soothe his soul and rest his bones. The color-scheme is harmonious. A dark panelling, and for the smaller galleries a more cheerful though neutral tone, is observed. Moving slowly about he sees some black spots on the wall; at close range they resolve themselves into ingenious patterns. Stacked in portfolios are prints. On large tables more of them sprawl. In the rear room there is, perhaps, an exhibition of etchings or mezzotints, but seldom of line-engravings. A young Scotsman shows his mettle—the Scotch take to the needle as ducks do to grass. Why are line-engravings never hung nowadays? You are told that taste has changed since the golden age of engraving ruled our walls. And changed for the worse, thinks the fanatic of pure line.

Yonder, above a huge bin, in which are stored rare prints, hangs the Moses of Philippe de Champaigne, engraved by Edelinck. It is a largely moulded composition. The Hebrew lawgiver, on whose noble features linger the reflections of Jehovah’s divine illumination, the horns of light emanating from Mount Sinai, holds the rod in one hand, supporting with the other the table of the laws. A picture in the grand manner. Therefore, to be passed by in favor of some cryptic scratches on a small plate, a signed proof by an artistic nobody, who designs and etches in a mediocre fashion. Yet his work is eagerly snapped up, while the rhythmic line of Edelinck is not even looked at, rich as it is as an interpretation or artistic performance. “Engraving is so mechanical, don’t you think so!” is the usual reason advanced for the neglect of this branch of black-and-white. But, by the same token, no more mechanical than the myriads of fussy little plates of the etchers, for the most part without distinction in style or technique. Nevertheless, etching is a swifter method for registering illusion, and in all the arts—George Moore says there are nine, not seven—the chief thing is to create illusion.

Etching rules. Why? Because an artist of overwhelming genius set upon the art his seal. Because it is a consummate medium for expressing personality, and in all the arts personality is the slogan of the hour. We must bare our souls in our work, cry young folk; the rest, art included, can go hang! But the question is whether these same souls are worth the bother of such exposure. When Rembrandt or Méryon, Whistler, or Pennell exhibited their personalities on their plates the result was: primo, art; secundo, personalities. In a word, not even the perky, cantankerous side of Whistler intervened between his art and his public; the nobler phases of his character, and there were many, shone clear and truthfully. The massive bulk of Rembrandt’s personality is reflected in his work with the needle; yet what magnificent art is his! Also a dangerous beacon in a stormy sea for lesser etchers. We love etching. It is the most concise and delicate of all artistic stenography. The scratched line, its symbol, is less complex than the convention of the so-called “steel” engraver, who works in a denser, richer medium, despite the allegation that his is a chilly art. So is sculpture chilly. All depends on the man handling the chisel, or in engraving the wielder of the burin. The richest of the mediums is copper mezzotinted, or scraped plate. It sometimes gives muddy results. Etching has more personal charm; line-engraving is chaster, loftier in style, because more objective.

If a certain formal rigidity or hardness may be urged against the less personal art of line-engraving, what cannot be said of the thin, facile, shallow impressionism of the etched plate? Above all else, structure is lacking, and it is too often a vehicle for piffling anecdote, or the stamping-ground of the superficial dauber. Mezzotint is not always a satisfactory means of expression. It too is mainly reproductive, while its seductive, velvety surfaces may easily degenerate into monotonous formulas. Between Valentine Green and his interpretations of Sir Joshua Reynolds, or Richard Earlom’s evocation of an incandescent forge, and the apocalyptic visions of a John Martin, there is the wide and ineluctable gulf of technical mastery. Martin may have been half-mad, like William Blake—as are most mystics viewed in the cold light of worldly reason—but he possessed vision; while Green and Earlom, accomplished copper-scrapers as they were, only saw the superficies of things eternal. To-day John Martin’s crude prints may be had for a penny, and the fantastic Piranesi is a drug in the shops. Neither this mezzotinter nor etcher reveals that mysterious “quality” essential in the arts.

It is quality, then, that appeals in etching and mezzotint. It was quality that appealed when the specimen plates of the master engravers were in vogue. Well and good. But why doesn’t that quality continue to make the same appeal now to our fastidious taste as it did a half century ago? Naturally enough, the answer is Fashion, which has decreed that the grand old line-engravings be hung in crepuscular hallways. To be sure, there is a corridor in the Pitti Palace, Florence, a sun-flooded hallway upon which sing the marvels of lyric line-engravings. Fashion says: admire the signed etching, coddle the impertinent remarque proof; Fashion has set top-notch figures for the English mezzotinters of English portraiture. By leaps and bounds the prices of Green and a few of his contemporaries have been mounting, so that to own a Gainsborough or a Sir Joshua portrait in mezzotint is to proclaim yourself a person of means. Nor should there be a protest against these exalted prices. Rare art can never be high enough; besides, the domain of mezzotinting will soon be as bare of practitioners as that of line-engraving. S. Arlent Edwards is a name that occurs to us in mezzotinting. Joseph Pennell’s essays in that medium reveal his mastery; while the artist that is Timothy Cole, stands solitary as probably the last of distinguished wood-engravers, as Mandel may be said to have been the last of famous European line-engravers.

The once haughty elder sister of the arts graphic is now become their Cinderella. Who but an anonymous minority cares for the stately engraved pictures of the past? How their dignified style reproaches the heedless haste of latter-day photographic reproductions! Yet, what modern mechanical process can match the slowly executed plates of Mantegna, Marc Antonio Ramondi, Albrecht Dürer, or Nanteuil—who engraved after his own designs? From the finesse of the Behams to the majestic sweep of Bervic, or the virtuosity of Antoine Masson—consider his head of Brisacier, the Gray-Haired Man—has not every manner, every mood, every technique been reproduced—rather, let us say, interpreted—in the terms of line-engraving? The engraved plate can state as succinctly as the etched the linear fretwork and silhouette of forms. Among other resources, the engraved plate is a method of the disposing of mass. It is more subtle than mezzotint in the indication of character, and is seldom so monotonous; while to the impressionism and often insignificant patterns of etching it opposes a static quality, opposes with its synthetic qualities of the permanent, the majestic, the gracious, and the powerful. As a medium it is as supple as either etching or scraped copper, though in this attribute it yields to wood-engraving.

What cannot line-engraving do in the way of interpretation? Think of the variety of technical styles and artistic individualities. Ambushed behind every laboriously engraved “steel” plate—steel is only in use since 1820—there lurks a personality. Think of Mantegna, a master of line in his painting; of Lucas, of the quaint Martin Schongauer, of Altdorfer, Wierix—who aped Rembrandt in his version of The Three Trees—of Sadeler and Goltzius; of Caracci, Wille, Nanteuil, Raphael Morghen, Visscher, with his Sleeping Cat and his Rat-Catcher; of the Drevets, of William Sharp, Robert Strange, and Woolet, the English trio; and George Friedrich Schmidt is still a name to conjure with. A litany of names might be recited of engravers who have made masterpieces. To-day, when we are in such a hurry to go nowhere to see nothing, the lenten and aristocratic art of line-engraving has lost its glamour, its significance. Nevertheless, a beautiful art it will always remain, beautiful notwithstanding the fluctuations of fashion. We feel that the pendulum of popular taste will surely swing back to this method of black-and-white, despite its slow, painful process of production. After an optical debauch in color, line is regaining its old supremacy. What else meant the apparition of cubism but a revolt against a too fluid impressionism! If this be true of easel-paintings it will come truer of line-engraving. The Sisters Five should walk abreast, not processionally—line, mezzotint, etching, wood-cutting and lithography are their names. And no one of this family is handsomer, more stately, more decorative, less “spotty” on a wall than the classics of line-engraving.