DOI Kapitel:
Chapter VII
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62095#0089
60 Eighteenth-Century Colour-Prints
undefined. What has been called the “ English Renaissance ” lacked just that purity, just
that classicism necessary to form a standard. It was a bastard birth, half Italian and half
Chinese, driven hither and thither, now protected and now ignored : it took lurid colour
from the east and strange decoration from the west ; it educated itself outside the discipline
of a school, and this notwithstanding, or, perhaps, because of, the existence of a Royal
Academy and the generous ushership of a Duke of Richmond. Under such circumstances,
an art-revival without an art-education, it is not surprising that much of the public demand
was for the merely “ pretty,” whilst those that had a higher ideal were fed, if not satisfied,
by the sham magnificence of the Boydell enterprise.
Certainly an English art-school grew up. The life and the genius of Sir Joshua
Reynolds did not spend themselves in vain : but, outside the school, dominated by the
conditions that governed not Art but Commerce, Bartolozzi set up his manufactory of
stipple-engravings, and superintended the production of colour-prints as seriously as if he
knew no better. That in such hands this happy combination of two little arts produced
results almost equal to a great one, it is the object of my illustrations to prove. But
nothing is to be gained by exaggerating the powers and possibilities of stipple-engraving :
it lacks the grandeur of line-engraving and the poetry of mezzotint. The union with
colour made its strength : a union that would merely have destroyed the dignity of its
superiors.
The process of stipple-engraving in its eighteenth - century development ought,
perhaps, to be described before the process of printing in colour is fully gone into. It is
a simple process from start to finish.
An etching ground was laid on a copper plate and the subject transferred to it as in
an etching. The outline was laid in by means of small dots made with the dry etching-
point, after which all the darker parts were etched likewise in dots, which were larger and
laid closer together for the deep shades. The work was then bitten in, the engraver
taking care not to let the aquafortis remain too long on the middle tints. When the
ground was taken off the plate, all the lighter parts were laid in with the stipple-graver.
The stipple-graver was an ordinary engraving-tool differently placed in the handle to give
a facility for dot-making. Not only were the lighter parts in a good stipple-engraving
laid in with the graver, but the middle tints also, if they had been but faintly bitten in,
were deeper and softer when worked up with the graver. When the dark shadows were
too faint they were often deepened by laying a re-biting ground, which accounts for a
certain harshness of effect in some stipple-prints. The so-called “chalk manner ” is a
form of stipple in which the strokes of chalk or crayon on a granulated surface are imitated
by a succession of irregular dots so arranged as to give an exactly similar result.
It is not necessary to tell any one who knows anything of line or mezzotint work
how infinitely quicker and simpler it is to get a result from the above means than from
either of the others. It was this very ease and simplicity that made its great temptation.
Bartolozzi was a very quick worker in line, but with all his speed he could not have done in
line what he did in stipple, and, long before poor Ryland’s judicial murder had put an end
to the experiments at 159 Strand, his successor had discovered the value that fine colour-
printing gave to his hurried work. The colour-printers were exposed to the same tempta-
tion as the stipple-engravers, and the art decayed almost as rapidly as it had arisen. Like
undefined. What has been called the “ English Renaissance ” lacked just that purity, just
that classicism necessary to form a standard. It was a bastard birth, half Italian and half
Chinese, driven hither and thither, now protected and now ignored : it took lurid colour
from the east and strange decoration from the west ; it educated itself outside the discipline
of a school, and this notwithstanding, or, perhaps, because of, the existence of a Royal
Academy and the generous ushership of a Duke of Richmond. Under such circumstances,
an art-revival without an art-education, it is not surprising that much of the public demand
was for the merely “ pretty,” whilst those that had a higher ideal were fed, if not satisfied,
by the sham magnificence of the Boydell enterprise.
Certainly an English art-school grew up. The life and the genius of Sir Joshua
Reynolds did not spend themselves in vain : but, outside the school, dominated by the
conditions that governed not Art but Commerce, Bartolozzi set up his manufactory of
stipple-engravings, and superintended the production of colour-prints as seriously as if he
knew no better. That in such hands this happy combination of two little arts produced
results almost equal to a great one, it is the object of my illustrations to prove. But
nothing is to be gained by exaggerating the powers and possibilities of stipple-engraving :
it lacks the grandeur of line-engraving and the poetry of mezzotint. The union with
colour made its strength : a union that would merely have destroyed the dignity of its
superiors.
The process of stipple-engraving in its eighteenth - century development ought,
perhaps, to be described before the process of printing in colour is fully gone into. It is
a simple process from start to finish.
An etching ground was laid on a copper plate and the subject transferred to it as in
an etching. The outline was laid in by means of small dots made with the dry etching-
point, after which all the darker parts were etched likewise in dots, which were larger and
laid closer together for the deep shades. The work was then bitten in, the engraver
taking care not to let the aquafortis remain too long on the middle tints. When the
ground was taken off the plate, all the lighter parts were laid in with the stipple-graver.
The stipple-graver was an ordinary engraving-tool differently placed in the handle to give
a facility for dot-making. Not only were the lighter parts in a good stipple-engraving
laid in with the graver, but the middle tints also, if they had been but faintly bitten in,
were deeper and softer when worked up with the graver. When the dark shadows were
too faint they were often deepened by laying a re-biting ground, which accounts for a
certain harshness of effect in some stipple-prints. The so-called “chalk manner ” is a
form of stipple in which the strokes of chalk or crayon on a granulated surface are imitated
by a succession of irregular dots so arranged as to give an exactly similar result.
It is not necessary to tell any one who knows anything of line or mezzotint work
how infinitely quicker and simpler it is to get a result from the above means than from
either of the others. It was this very ease and simplicity that made its great temptation.
Bartolozzi was a very quick worker in line, but with all his speed he could not have done in
line what he did in stipple, and, long before poor Ryland’s judicial murder had put an end
to the experiments at 159 Strand, his successor had discovered the value that fine colour-
printing gave to his hurried work. The colour-printers were exposed to the same tempta-
tion as the stipple-engravers, and the art decayed almost as rapidly as it had arisen. Like