DOI issue:
No. 53 (July, 1901)
DOI article:Wedmore, Frederick: Recent etching and engraving
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22775#0034
Recent Etching and Engraving
admirably successful. Mezzotint has been allied
with etching too, the most notable instance of
that alliance being in the Liber Studiorum
of Turner. But generally mezzotint has been
employed alone, and its service has been
greatest in the translation of the touch of the
painter. It is perfectly adapted to such trans-
lation, and the broader the painter’s touch the
better is mezzotint adapted to render it. For
the moment, at the Painter Etchers, what has
been seen in mezzotint has been original work
wholly—the best of it, perhaps, a lovely little sea-
scape by Mr. Frank Short, which may really hold
its own against the Weymouth Bay of Constable
as translated by David Lucas. But it is pre-
mature to speak of particular examples; I am
on the track now of the various methods, and we
have not got to the end of them. One other
method alone, however, so far as I remember, has
got to be enumerated, and that is line engraving.
Line engraving, like mezzotint, has been much
employed in translation; but we must never forget
that, unlike mezzotint, it has been largely and
most variously employed in original work. In line
engraving were expressed the original conceptions
of Andrea Mantegna and of Diirer; of Lucas van
Leyden and of the German Little Masters. And
it is through line engraving to-day that are made
public the ingenious fancies of that modern Little
Master, Mr. Sherborn. In that medium we are to
admire the skill of handiwork which Aldegrever
and the Behams would have been scarcely unwilling
to acknowledge.
To get to particular engravers then, why not
begin with Sherborn himself—a veteran ? Seeing
that by far the greater part of his work consists in
the provision of bookplates for the most studious
of the well-to-do and the least impecunious of the
learned, and seeing that a bookplate, to be
acceptable to its average owner, has got to show
some recognition either of that owner’s armorial
bearings, or of his private fads in matters of taste,
and sometimes has got to show both—it is astound-
ing with what fertility and readiness Mr. Sherborn
pours out his inventions. Now and then—and I
need not assign the cause of it—there is a certain
incongruity, a certain crowding of subject-matter
in Mr. Sherborn’s work, which those great masters
STUDY OF WILLOWS
18
BY MISS C. M. POTT
admirably successful. Mezzotint has been allied
with etching too, the most notable instance of
that alliance being in the Liber Studiorum
of Turner. But generally mezzotint has been
employed alone, and its service has been
greatest in the translation of the touch of the
painter. It is perfectly adapted to such trans-
lation, and the broader the painter’s touch the
better is mezzotint adapted to render it. For
the moment, at the Painter Etchers, what has
been seen in mezzotint has been original work
wholly—the best of it, perhaps, a lovely little sea-
scape by Mr. Frank Short, which may really hold
its own against the Weymouth Bay of Constable
as translated by David Lucas. But it is pre-
mature to speak of particular examples; I am
on the track now of the various methods, and we
have not got to the end of them. One other
method alone, however, so far as I remember, has
got to be enumerated, and that is line engraving.
Line engraving, like mezzotint, has been much
employed in translation; but we must never forget
that, unlike mezzotint, it has been largely and
most variously employed in original work. In line
engraving were expressed the original conceptions
of Andrea Mantegna and of Diirer; of Lucas van
Leyden and of the German Little Masters. And
it is through line engraving to-day that are made
public the ingenious fancies of that modern Little
Master, Mr. Sherborn. In that medium we are to
admire the skill of handiwork which Aldegrever
and the Behams would have been scarcely unwilling
to acknowledge.
To get to particular engravers then, why not
begin with Sherborn himself—a veteran ? Seeing
that by far the greater part of his work consists in
the provision of bookplates for the most studious
of the well-to-do and the least impecunious of the
learned, and seeing that a bookplate, to be
acceptable to its average owner, has got to show
some recognition either of that owner’s armorial
bearings, or of his private fads in matters of taste,
and sometimes has got to show both—it is astound-
ing with what fertility and readiness Mr. Sherborn
pours out his inventions. Now and then—and I
need not assign the cause of it—there is a certain
incongruity, a certain crowding of subject-matter
in Mr. Sherborn’s work, which those great masters
STUDY OF WILLOWS
18
BY MISS C. M. POTT