Line engraving
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- This article currently covers the history of line engraving until ca. 1910. Please extend it as needed, and remove this notice afterwards.
Early history
The art of line engraving has been practiced from the earliest ages. The prehistoric Aztec hatchet given to Humboldt in Mexico was just as truly engraved as a modern copper-plate which may convey a design by Flaxman; the Aztec engraving is ruder than the European, but it is the same art.Niellos
The important discovery which made line engraving one of the multiplying arts was the accidental discovery of how to print an incised line. This method was in fact known for some time before its real utility was suspected. The goldsmiths of Florence in the middle of the 15th century ornamented their works by means of engraving, after which they filled up the hollows produced by the burin with a black enamel made of silver, lead and sulphur. The resulting design, called a niello, was much higher contrast and thus much more visible.As this enamel was difficult to remove, goldsmiths developed alternate means of viewing their work while still in progress. They would take a sulphur cast of the work on a matrix of fine clay, and fill up the lines in the sulphur with lampblack, producing the desired high-contrast image.
Beginnings of printing
It was discovered later that a proof could be taken on damped paper by filling the engraved lines with ink and wiping it off the surface of the plate. Pressure was then applied to push the paper into the hollowed lines and fetch the ink out of them. This was the beginning of plate printing.
This a convenient way of proofing a niello, and saved the effort of producing a cast, but further implications went unexplored. Goldsmiths continued to engrave nielli to ornament plates and furniture; it was not until the 16th century that the new method of printing was implemented.
Early style
In early Italian and German prints, the line is used with such perfect simplicity of purpose that the methods of the artists are as obvious as if we saw them actually at work. In all these figures the outline is the primary focus, followed by the lines which mark the leading folds of the drapery. These are always really engravers' lines, such as may naturally be done with the burin, and they never imitate the freer line of the pencil or etching needle.Shading is used in the greatest moderation with thin straight strokes that never overpower the stronger organic lines of the design. In the early metal engraving the shading lines are often cross-hatched, whereas in the earliest woodcuts they are not; the reason being that when lines are incised they can as easily be crossed as not, whereas when they are reserved, the crossing involves much non-artistic labor.
Italy
Marcantonio, the engraver of Raphael, trained himself by copying German woodcuts into line engravings. Marcantonio was an engraver of remarkable power, and through him the real pure art of line-engraving reached its maturity. He retained much of the simplistic early Italian manner in his backgrounds, but his figures are boldly modelled in curved lines, crossing each other in the darker shades, but left single in the passages from dark to light, and breaking away in fine dots as they approach the light itself, which is of pure white paper. A new Italian school of engraving was born, which aside minute details for a broad, harmonious treatment.
Germany
The characteristics of early metal engraving in Germany are demonstrated in the works of Martin Schongauer (d. 1488) and Albert Durer (d. 1528). Schongauer used outline and shade as a unified element, and the shading, generally in curved lines, is far more masterly than the straight shading of Mantegna. Durer continued Schongauer's curved shading, with increasing manual delicacy and skill, and over-loaded his plates with quantities of living and inanimate objects; he applied the same intensity of study to everything.Peter Paul Reubens and the engravers he employed made marked technical developments in the field of engraving: he provided his engravers with drawings to guide them instead of his finished paintings, allowing them to discard the Italian outline and in its place substitute modeling. They definitively substituted broad masses for the minutely finished detail of northern schools, and they adopted a system of dark and light characteristic of engraving, which it rendered (according to Reubens#redirect ) more harmonious.
A flourishing art form: 17th and 18th centuries
In the 17th and 18th centuries, line engraving made no new development and instead flourished around the established techniques and principles. English and French artists began to use the technique, with England learning primarily from the Germans (led by Rubens) and France from the Italians (Raphael), though there was a good deal of cross-influence between all involved traditions.Sir Robert Strange, as many other English engravers, made it his study to soften and lose the outline, specifically in figure-engraving. Meanwhile, Gerard Audran (d. 1703) led the Renaissance school in perfecting the art of modeling with the burin.
A technological foe: the 19th century
In the 19th century, line engraving was both helped and hindered. The help came from the growth of public wealth, the increasing interest in art and the increase in the commerce of art, as exemplified by the career of such art dealers as Ernest Gambart, and the growing demand for illustrated books. The hinderance to line engraving came from the desire for cheaper and more rapid methods – a desire satisfied in various ways, but especially by etching and by various kinds of photography.
The record of the art of line engraving during the last quarter of the 19th century is one of continued decay. Technical improvements, it was hoped, might save the art, but by the beginning of the 20th century pictorial line engraving in England was practically non-existent. The disappearance of the art is due to the fact that that the public refuses to wait for several years for proofs (some important proofs took as long as 12 years to create) when they can obtain their plates more quickly by another method. The invention of steel-facing S copper plate enabled the engraver to proceed more quickly; but even in this case he can no more compete with the etcher than the mezzotint engraver can keep pace with the photogravure manufacturer.
If line-engraving still flourishes in France, it is due not a little to official encouragement and to intelligent fostering by collectors and connoisseurs. However, the class of the work has entirely changed, partly through the reduction of prices paid for it, partly through the change of taste and fashion, and partly, again, through the necessities of the situation. French engravers were therefore driven to simplify their work to satisfy the public's impatience. To compensate for loss of colour, the art developed in the direction of elegance and refinement.
In Italy, line engraving decayed just as it had in England, and outside Europe, line engraving can no longer be said to exist. Here and there a spasmodic attempt may be made to appeal to the artistic appreciation of a limited public, but generally, no attention is paid to these efforts. There are still a few who can engrave a head from a photograph or drawing, or a small engraving for book illustration or for book plates; there are more who are highly proficient in mechanical engraving for decorative purposes, but the engraving-machine is fast superseding this class.
Style
Nineteenth century line engraving, compared with previous work, had a more thorough and delicate rendering of local color, light and shade, and texture. Older engravers could draw just as correctly, but they either neglected these elements or admitted them sparingly, as opposed to the spirit of their art, but there is a certain sameness in pure line engraving more favorable to some forms and textures than to others.In the well-known prints from Rosa Bonheur, for example, the tone of the skies is achieved by machine-ruling, as is much undertone in the landscape. The fur of the animals is all etched, as are the foreground plants; the real burin work is used sparingly where most favorable to texture. Even in the exquisite engravings after J. M. W. Turner, which reached a degree of delicacy in light and shade far surpassing the work of the old masters, the engravers had recourse to etching, finishing with the burin and dry point. Turner, considered as important an influence on engraving as Raphael and Reubens, contributed much to the field in the direction of delicacy of tone.
The new French school of engraving had several distinctive characteristics, including the substitution of exquisite greys for the rich blacks of old, and simplicity of method coupled with extremely high elaboration. Their object is, as always, to secure the faithful transcript of the painter they reproduce while readily sacrificing the power of the old method, which, whatever its force and beauty, was easily acquired by mediocre artists of technical ability. The Belgian school of engraving elaborated an effective "mixed method" of graver-work and dry-point. The Stauffer-Bern method of using many fine lines to create tone had a certain advantage in modelling.
Plate vs block printing
- See main article at Block printing
There are certain differences between plate printing and block printing which affect the essentials of art. When paper is pushed into a line to fetch the ink out of it, the line may be considerably fine, and it will print all the same; but when the paper is only pressed upon a raised line, the line must have some appreciable thickness. A wood engraving, therefore, can never be so delicate as a plate engraving.
Again, not only does plate printing surpass block printing in delicacy, it also surpasses it in force and depth. A woodcut line cannot achieve the power of a deep line in a plate, since in block printing the line is only a blackened surface, whereas in plate printing it is cast with an additional thickness of printing ink.
Tools of the trade
The most important of the tools used in line-engraving is the burin, or graver, a bar of steel with one end fixed in a handle somewhat like a mushroom with one side cut away. The burin is shaped so that the sharpened cutting end takes the form of a lozenge, point downwards. The burin acts exactly like a plough: it makes a furrow and turns out a shaving of metal in the same way a plough turns the soil of a field. The burin, unlike a plough, is pushed through the material. This particular characteristic at once establishes a wide separation between it and all the other instruments employed in the arts of design, such as pencils, brushes, pens and etching needles.Example of burin engraving
The elements of engraving with the burin are evident in the engraving of letters, specifically the capital letter B. This letter consists of two perpendicular straight lines and four distinct curves. The engraver scratches these lines, reversed, very lightly with a sharp point or stylus. Next, the engraver cuts out the blacks (not the whites, as in wood engraving) with two different burins. First, the vertical black line is ploughed with the burin between the two scratched lines, then similarly some material is removed from the thickest parts of the two curves. Finally, the gradations from the thick middle of the curve to the thin points touching the vertical are worked out with a finer burin.The hollows are then filled with printing ink, the surplus ink is wiped from the smooth surface of the metal, damped paper is laid upon it and driven into the hollowed letter by the pressure of a revolving cylinder. The paper fetches the ink out, and the letter B is printed in intense black.
When the surface of a metal plate is sufficiently polished to be used for engraving, the slightest scratch upon it will print as a black line. An engraved plate from which visiting cards are printed is a good example of some elementary principles of engraving. It contains thin lines and thick ones, and a considerable variety of curves. An elaborate line engraving, if it is a pure line engraving and nothing else, willcontain only these simple elements in different combinations. The real line engraver is always engraving a line more or less broad and deep in one direction or another; he has no other business than this.
See also
External links
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