DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.73058#0099
On the Art of Engraving.
a book, he has to think in two languages—in colour and in black and white. The fact
that he has to translate brush-work and colour into black and white, and lines or specks,
makes him an interpreter rather than an imitator. He aims at making the spirit and
manner of the master, after whom he is working, so entirely his own, that picture and
engraving shall be informed by the same impulse and thought. The principles of art,
therefore, must be known to both, and to both in the same degree. The performing
musician has almost as great a glory as the composing musician ; for he must assimilate
his composer's music, and make it live by expression. To do this thoroughly and finely
requires something like genius—receptive genius. And if the same music were put into a
street organ, and automatically and correctly ground out, the difference of performances
would be far less than that between a good and a mediocre engraving : for in the first case
there would be mechanical precision and faithfulness; in the second, as we have said,
the process is mental, and the performance, therefore, would be not only spiritless, but in
some way wrong.
To become a skilful line engraver requires keen artistic instincts, a love of the work
and years of devoted and persevering study. It is sincerely to be regretted that the art-
loving public of the present day fails to offer sufficient encouragement to warrant the
younger generation in aspiring to fill the gaps in the present rapidly dying-out school of
line engravers. The reason is not far to seek : photography * and lithography, with their
* * * * "too surely superseded in the windows that stop the crowd by the more material and almost tangible
truth with which the apothecary-artist stereographs the stripped actress and the railway mound."
* * * * "And, above all, to request you if you will not look at pictures instead of photographs, at least not
to allow the cheap merits of the chemical operation to withdraw your interest from the splendid human labour of the
engraver." —Russia.
tens of thousands of cheaply-produced impressions; and still more, wood engraving, in
conjunction with its handmaiden electrotyping, by which millions of impressions are
produced without the original wooden block being worked from, have struck a death-blow
at line engraving. Wood engraving has, since the days of those pioneers of a new school,
the brothers Bewick,* advanced with rapid strides, and printing machinery has kept pace
* Ruskin says: "I know no drawing so subtle as Bewick's since the fifteenth century, except Holbein's and
Turner's."
with it ; and woodcuts, of a fineness and delicacy rivalling that of the productions from
steel plates (as in The Century, Harper's Magazine, Cassell's Magazine of Art, and
others), are produced at a price which places them within the reach of the many.
Mr. Ruskin explains the essential difference between metal and wood engraving in
very few words: "In metal engraving you cut ditches, fill them with ink, and press
your paper into them ; in wood engraving you leave ridges, rub the tops of them with
ink, and stamp them on your paper."
The utility of the art of engraving, or artistic reproduction of pictures, scarcely needs
to be insisted upon. Thousands of paintings have disappeared through carelessness,
accident, theft, the action of fire and water, or chemical defect in the original compo-
sition of the pigments, by which the colours, and even the form, have faded out of all
recognition. An engraving in black and white never fades: it is otherwise open to the
79 same
a book, he has to think in two languages—in colour and in black and white. The fact
that he has to translate brush-work and colour into black and white, and lines or specks,
makes him an interpreter rather than an imitator. He aims at making the spirit and
manner of the master, after whom he is working, so entirely his own, that picture and
engraving shall be informed by the same impulse and thought. The principles of art,
therefore, must be known to both, and to both in the same degree. The performing
musician has almost as great a glory as the composing musician ; for he must assimilate
his composer's music, and make it live by expression. To do this thoroughly and finely
requires something like genius—receptive genius. And if the same music were put into a
street organ, and automatically and correctly ground out, the difference of performances
would be far less than that between a good and a mediocre engraving : for in the first case
there would be mechanical precision and faithfulness; in the second, as we have said,
the process is mental, and the performance, therefore, would be not only spiritless, but in
some way wrong.
To become a skilful line engraver requires keen artistic instincts, a love of the work
and years of devoted and persevering study. It is sincerely to be regretted that the art-
loving public of the present day fails to offer sufficient encouragement to warrant the
younger generation in aspiring to fill the gaps in the present rapidly dying-out school of
line engravers. The reason is not far to seek : photography * and lithography, with their
* * * * "too surely superseded in the windows that stop the crowd by the more material and almost tangible
truth with which the apothecary-artist stereographs the stripped actress and the railway mound."
* * * * "And, above all, to request you if you will not look at pictures instead of photographs, at least not
to allow the cheap merits of the chemical operation to withdraw your interest from the splendid human labour of the
engraver." —Russia.
tens of thousands of cheaply-produced impressions; and still more, wood engraving, in
conjunction with its handmaiden electrotyping, by which millions of impressions are
produced without the original wooden block being worked from, have struck a death-blow
at line engraving. Wood engraving has, since the days of those pioneers of a new school,
the brothers Bewick,* advanced with rapid strides, and printing machinery has kept pace
* Ruskin says: "I know no drawing so subtle as Bewick's since the fifteenth century, except Holbein's and
Turner's."
with it ; and woodcuts, of a fineness and delicacy rivalling that of the productions from
steel plates (as in The Century, Harper's Magazine, Cassell's Magazine of Art, and
others), are produced at a price which places them within the reach of the many.
Mr. Ruskin explains the essential difference between metal and wood engraving in
very few words: "In metal engraving you cut ditches, fill them with ink, and press
your paper into them ; in wood engraving you leave ridges, rub the tops of them with
ink, and stamp them on your paper."
The utility of the art of engraving, or artistic reproduction of pictures, scarcely needs
to be insisted upon. Thousands of paintings have disappeared through carelessness,
accident, theft, the action of fire and water, or chemical defect in the original compo-
sition of the pigments, by which the colours, and even the form, have faded out of all
recognition. An engraving in black and white never fades: it is otherwise open to the
79 same