Engraving: Its Origin, Processes, and HistoryDelaborde, Henri, comte
History
Engraving: Its Origin, Processes, and History
Delaborde, Henri, comte
Engravers -- Great Britain; Engraving -- Great Britain; Engraving -- History
When the eighteenth century opened, mezzotint had taken firm root
in England; Beckett and John Smith were in the plenitude of their
powers; Jean Simon, a Protestant refugee from France (born in Normandy,
1675), had taken refuge in England, and forsaking his original method
of line, had adopted that of mezzotint with great success, while G.
White was already giving the first indications of the advantages that
might be gained by the introduction of etching into the method. John
Faber, junior, was also establishing his reputation, not only by his
well-known portraits (which include the set of the Kit-cat Club[56]
and the Hampton Court beauties), but by many spirited fancy subjects
after Mercier, and above all by an admirable print after Frank Hals of
a man playing the guitar. Faber, the younger, was born in Holland in
1684, and brought to England when three years old by his father (also
an engraver in mezzotint, but completely overshadowed by his son); he
studied under Vanderbank, and was patronised by Kneller; his works
are peculiarly valuable as forming records of the painters--now so apt
to be carelessly passed by[57]--who lived between the time of Kneller
and the rise of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and all left work of value to
posterity.
The modern sharp division between painters and engravers was unknown
in those days; the painter was only too glad to avail himself of the
talent of the engraver to make his paintings known, and in many cases
keep alive and hand down to after generations a name which otherwise
might have died out and been forgotten. Painters of the present age
ignore the engraver, and prefer the more tangible money results to
be obtained from treating with a publisher for the purchase of their
copyrights, adopting in this respect the teaching conveyed in the witty
speech of Sir Godfrey Kneller, who, when reproached for his preference,
to other branches of painting, of the lucrative one of portraiture,
replied: "Painters of history make the dead live and do not begin to
live themselves till they are dead; I paint the living and they make
me live." Kneller might, however, have defended his practice on higher
grounds, for portraiture, though often ignorantly decried, tests the
powers of a great artist to the uttermost, and bequeaths to posterity a
legacy of as valuable work as it is in the power of man to accomplish.
It is interesting to note here that copyright in works of art was first
obtained on the behalf of engraving; Hogarth, painter and engraver,
finding that so many of his prints--which, numerously distributed,
could easily be pirated--were being copied, boldly and successfully
asserted his rights in the courts of law, and was the means of
obtaining from Parliament a Copyright Act to defend property in art.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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