THE MEZZOTINT ENGRAVER HE mezzotint process is, in one respect, radically different from all other methods of engraving on metal plates. In line engraving, stipple or dotted work, aquatint, etching and drypoint, it is by the laying in of the black line or tone that the engraver produces his picture; but in mezzotint he begins with a solid black and makes his picture by supplying the white or the intermediate tones between black and white. The invention of this art, for nearly two centuries, had been claimed for Prince Rupert, the military hero who was born at Prague in 1619, but recent research demonstrates that the real inventor of the process was Ludwig Von Siegen, a soldier friend of Prince Rupert's. In the year 1839 an ingenious Frenchman discovered Von Siegen's original letter to the prince, describing to him the new method of engraving which he had invented. This letter was dated August, 1642. In any case it was Prince Rupert who introduced the new process into England, and so thoroughly did the English adopt and develop it that mezzotint engraving is still called by the French la manière anglaise; and from the middle of the eighteenth century to the early part of the nineteenth, plates were produced in England which, for beauty, richness, and genuine artistic value have never since been equaled except by Samuel Cousins himself. Of these eighteenth century mezzotinters some of the greatest names are MacArdell, Earlom, and Pether. It was of the Irish engraver, MacArdell, that Sir Joshua Reynolds made the generous declaration: "By this man I shall be immortalized!" Other mezzotinters who worked in the method of MacArdell and his contemporaries were William Ward, Doughty, Fisher, John Jones, and John Raphael Smith. This great tradition of the eighteenth century school of mezzotinting was most worthily carried on by Samuel W. Reynolds, who was born in 1773. An exhibition of this engraver's works would be a delight to all lovers of fine prints; and one of his chief claims to an assured place in the Temple of Fame is that he was the teacher of at least two veritable masters of mezzotint engraving-David Lucas and Samuel Cousins. The English painter, Constable (predecessor of the French landscape school of Corot, Théodore Rousseau, and Daubigny) soon appropriated David Lucas to his sevice, while Sir Thomas Lawrence the most eminent portrait painter after the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds most gladly availed himself of the subordinate genius of Samuel Cousins. Of this happy collaboration of a great portrait painter with a great engraver, we read in that standard book, Les Merveilles de la Gravure, by Duplessis, late curator of the great Paris collection of engravings: "Sir Thomas Lawrence met with one engraver, Samuel Cousins, who produced some masterpieces after his paintings. We may specially mention the portrait of Pope Pius VII- the best mezzotint of modern times. Thoroughly well instructed in his art, Cousins has in this portrait preserved all the life and grandeur of the original. He has managed the light with the greatest tact and has drawn the pontiff's head with a power unknown to most of his contemporaries." It must be remembered that in those good old days photography and modern "process" work were unknown; and if an eminent painter wished to have the essential part of his picture reproduced and multiplied he was obliged to employ the services of an expert engraver. Thus the painter and the engraver worked toward the same end, and the result is the existence of many masterpieces. We shall never again have any more of them, for photography, and mechanical processes founded on photography, have killed reproductive engraving. This sad circumstance has already greatly enhanced the value of the best of the old engravings so much so that several of the eighteenth century mezzotints have recently sold at auction in London at from £300 to £1200 sterling each; such prices for single prints being in many cases greater than the painter of the original received for the picture itself. And |