International studio (33.1907/1908(1908))

Recent Publications


Courtesy J. B. Lippincott Company
JAMES FIRST AND FROM “OLD ENGRAVERS
HIS QUEEN OF ENGLAND”

NGRAVERS AND DRAUGHTSMEN
Mr. Malcolm C. Salaman, who has
covered an important field of art history
in his “Old Engravers of England” (J.
B. Lippincott Co.), sets his heart on line engraving
proper. In a time when mezzotint has become
something of a craze many readers will be more
drawn to the second part of his book, where he
treats in full the subject of this development of the
art. But the free, commanding use of unretrieved
line will always hold the admiration of the few in
a more vigorous grip. Following the British Mu-
seum folio, Mr. Salaman has brought his account
down a century later. After giving the history of
William Rogers, Cockson, Elstrack, one of whose
characteristic studies in portraiture is reproduced
above; Hole, Delaram, Van de Passe, Payne, Fai-
thorne, Droeshout, Marshall, Hollar, White and
others, he turns, with the bulk of his book before
him, to the fascinating story of mezzotint from its
romantic beginnings with Prince Rupert’s enthusi-
asm to the extension of the technique by George

For the selection of reproductions of
“The Drawings of David Cox” (im-
ported by Charles Scribner’s Sons),
Alexander J. Finberg contributes a
biographical introduction, based on
Neal Solly’s memoir. The colored re-
productions represent drawings made
at Hereford during the artist’s thirteen-
year stay there. The Autumn Woods,
which the author thinks the best of
this series, was difficult to handle in
color, but the half-tone reproduction is
welcome. The Chepstow Bridge, Good-
rich Castle, which may represent a
sketch for the 1819 picture, and the
simple Low Tide, all in color, are most
valuable in showing the quiet directness
of Cox’s brush and the quick generalization of his
eye. Yet more interesting, because less marked
by the perfunctory habits of the teacher, are the
reproductions of the charcoal and chalk sketches of
the later days, when he went his own gait more
freely.
“There is no such thing as a pot-boiler,” Men-
zel’s answer and rebuke to his disciple’s complaint
that young men had to waste their time in paltering
to a market—his rule of thumb that all work, even
the “pretty-pretty stuff,” should be accepted “once
for all as a genuine artistic problem,” gives the
key to a study of his drawings and sketches. The
forty-eight plates in the “Drawings of Menzel”
(imported by Charles Scribner’s Sons, text by Pro-
fessor Singer), with one exception reproduced for
the first time, are selected from twenty-nine port-
folios containing over four thousand drawings found
in the artist’s studio after his death. Despite his
remarkable versatility, which enabled him to experi-
ment with every new style of painting, it is his
work in line rather than in oils that counts.

White and its decline and brilliant re-
vival in its heyday. The revival of
line engraving, with Vertue, who carried
on the traditions which mezzotint had
almost thrown into oblivion, and Ho-
garth, Ravenet, Strange, Woollett,
Sharp, Blake and the rest, gives the
author better satisfaction. A chapter
is added on stipple engraving and
color prints. The treatment is histori-
cal rather than critical, the style gos-
sipy and entertaining. Half a hundred
plates illustrate the book.

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