Delaborde Henri
Engraving: Its Origin, Processes, and History
By this act of homage he acquitted himself of a debt of gratitude to the minister who had favoured him ever since his arrival in Paris, and who, at Lebrun's request, had supplied the means of his sojourn in Italy. On Colbert's part it was only an act of justice to recall Audran to France, and to entrust him with the engraving of the lately finished series of the "Batailles d'Alexandre," for the great publication called the "Cabinet du Roi." To the engraver, then twenty-seven years old, a pension was granted, with a studio at the Gobelins, then the customary reward of talents brilliantly displayed. It may be added that six years (1672–1678) sufficed him to finish the stupendous task.
Treated as a friend, and almost on an equal footing, by Lebrun, who for no one else departed from the routine of his official supremacy, Audran exerted over the king's chief painter a considerable, if a secret, influence. In spite of all that has been said40 Lebrun was not the kind of man to openly question his own infallibility, nor to advertise his deference to the advice of an artist so much younger than himself, his pupil, so to speak, and consequently without the authority of any higher degree; yet he frequently consulted him, and took his advice, in private. Also (and this is significant) when the engravings of the "Batailles" appeared – engravings to a certain extent unfaithful, inasmuch as they differed decidedly from the originals – the fact that the painter made no complaint points to his recognition in Audran of the right to correct, and to his implicit submission to Audran's corrections.
In this respect Lebrun conducted himself as a man of the world, and one well able to understand the true interests of his reputation. He had everything to gain by giving full liberty to an engraver by whose perfect taste the blunders of his own were corrected, and who harmonised his frequently harsh and heavy colouring, and strengthened in modelling and design his often undecided expression of form. Thus the plates of the "Batailles," in addition to the high quality of the composition of the originals, present, alike in general aspect and in detail, a decision which belongs to Audran alone. Force and transparency of tone, largeness of effect, and, above all, a distinctly marked feeling for characteristic truths, are conspicuous in them. Not a single condition of art is imperfectly fulfilled. Marc Antonio himself drew with no more certainty; the Flemings themselves had no deeper knowledge of chiaroscuro; the French engravers, not excepting even Edelinck41 have never treated historical engraving with such ease and mäestria. In a word, none of the most famous engravers of Europe have been, we believe, so richly endowed with all artistic instincts, nor have better understood their use.
The "Batailles d'Alexandre" finished, Audran engraved Lesueur's "Martyre de Saint Protais;" several Poussins, amongst others the "Pyrrhus Sauvé," the "Femme Adultère," and the radiant "Triomphe de la Vérité," one of the most beautiful (if not the most beautiful) historical engravings ever published; and, after Mignard, the "Peste d'Égine," and the paintings in the cupola at Val-de-Grâce.
These several works, where elevation of taste and sentiment are no less triumphantly manifest than in the "Batailles" themselves, are also finished examples of engraving in the literal sense of the word. Audran disdained to flaunt his skill, and to surprise the eye by technical display, but he understood to the utmost all the secrets and resources of the craft, and employed them with more ability than any competitor. Associating engraving with etching, he deepened with powerful touches of the burin those strokes of the needle which had merely served to suggest outlines, masses of shadow, and half-tints. On occasion, short strokes, free as a pencil's, and seemingly drawn at random, with dots of different sizes, distributed with apparent carelessness, sufficed for the modelling of his forms; at others, he proceeded by a consistent system of cross-hatching. Here rough etching work is tumbled about (so to speak) in wild disorder; there a contrary effect is produced by nearly parallel furrows scooped in the metal with methodical exactness; but everywhere the choice and progress of the tools are based on conditions inherent in the nature of the several objects, and their relative positions and distances. Audran did not try to attract attention to any of the methods he employed; he made each heighten the effect of the other, and combined them all without parade of ease, and yet without confusion.
So many admirable works secured for Audran a fame such as Edelinck, as Nanteuil himself, had never obtained. The Academy of Painting, which had welcomed him after the publication of his first plates, elected him as one of its council in 1681. The school of engraving which he opened grew larger than any other, and many of his pupils became notable even in his company, and helped to increase the renown of the master who had trained them.42
Towards the close of his life Audran laid by the burin for the pen. Following Albert Dürer's example, he proposed to put together, in the form of treatises, his life-long observations on the art he had so successfully practised. Unfortunately, this task was interrupted by his death; and, excepting a "Recueil des Proportions du Corps Humain," nothing is left us of those teachings which the greatest engraver, not only of France, but perhaps of any school, had desired to hand on to posterity.
By their works, Nanteuil, Audran, and the other masters of the reign of Louis XIV., had popularised historical and portrait engraving in France. The taste for prints spread more and more, and amateurs began to make collections. At first they confined themselves to real masterpieces; after which they began to covet the complete achievement of peculiar engravers. The mania for rare prints became fashionable; and we learn from La Bruyère that, before the end of the century, some amateurs had already come to prefer engravings "presque pas tirées" – engravings "fitter to decorate the Petit-Pont or the Rue Neuve on a holiday than to be hoarded in a collection" – to the most perfect specimens of the art. Others were chiefly occupied with the bulk of their collections, and treasured up confused heaps of all sorts of plates, good, bad, and indifferent. Others there were who only cared about such as did not exceed a certain size; and it is told of one devotee of this faith that, inasmuch as he would harbour nothing in his portfolios but round engravings of exactly the same circumference, he was used to cut ruthlessly to his pattern whatever came into his hands. We must add that, side by side with such maniacs, intelligent men like the Abbé de Marolles and the Marquis de Béringhen increased their collections to good purpose, and were content to bring together the most important specimens of ancient engraving and such as best served to illustrate the more modern progress of the art.
In France, however, it was not only the best expressions of engraving that were considered. On the heels of the great engravers there followed a crowd of second-rate workmen. Besides history and portrait, every variety of print was published: domestic scenes, architecture and topography, costumes, fêtes, and public celebrations. The engraving of maps greatly improved under the direction of Adrian and Guillaume Sanson, sons of the famous Geographer in Ordinary to Louis XIII.
Jacques Gomboust, the king's Engineer in Ordinary for the "drawing up of plans of towns," published, as early as 1652, a map of Paris and its suburbs in nine sheets, much more exact and more carefully engraved than those of former reigns. Fashion plates were multiplied ad infinitum; and a periodical called Le Mercure Galant steadily produced new modes in apparel and personal ornaments. Certain collections also, destined to perpetuate the remembrance of the events of the reign, or the personal actions of the king, were published "by order, and at the expense of His Majesty," with a luxury justified at any rate by the importance of the artists participating in the work. The very almanacs bear the stamp of talent, and are not unfrequently inscribed with the names of celebrated engravers, such as Lepautre, François Spierre, Chauveau, Sébastien Leclerc, and De Poilly.
In the days of Henri IV. and Louis XIII. almanacs were printed on a single sheet, with a border sometimes of allegorical figures, but, more often, composed simply of the attributes of the seasons. It was under Louis XIV. that they at first appeared on larger paper, and then in several sheets, wherein were represented the most important events of the year, or, it might be, some ceremony or court fête. In one is pictured the Battle of Senef, or the signing of the Treaty of Nimeguen; in another, perhaps, the king is represented dancing the Strasbourg minuet, or offering a collation to ladies. Of course the majority of these prints are valueless in point of execution, and are, moreover, of an almost purely commercial character; but those which are poorest from an artistic point of view are still worthy of interest, since they afford indisputable information concerning the people and the habits and manners of the time.
Whilst many French artists were devoting themselves to the engraving of subjects of manners or domestic scenes, or to the illustration of books and almanacs, others were making satirical sketches of current events and popular persons. The engraving of caricatures, though it only dates from the middle of the seventeenth century, had been practised long before in France and other countries.
To say nothing of the "Danses macabres," a sort of religious, or at any rate philosophical, satire, we might mention certain caricatures published even before the Carracci in Italy; in the Low Countries in the time of Jerome Bosch and Breughel; in Germany in the reign of Maximilian II.; and finally in France, in the reign of Charles IX. But all these are either as stupidly licentious as those afterwards made upon Henri III. and his courtiers, or as heavily grotesque as those of the time of the League, towards the end of the reign of Henri IV.
When Louis XIII. came to the throne, the wit of the caricaturists was little keener, if we may judge by the coarse pictorial lazzi inspired by the disgrace and death of the Maréchal d'Ancre, and the Dutch and Spanish prints designed in ridicule of the French; but some years later, when Callot had introduced into the treatment of burlesque a keenness and delicacy which it could hardly have been expected to attain, the comic prints assumed under the burin of certain engravers an appearance of greater ingenuity and less brutality.
It is needless to remark that at the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV. – indeed, during the whole time of the Fronde and the foreign occupation of a part of French territory – it was Mazarin and the Spaniards who came in for all the epigrams. In the caricatures of the day the Spaniards were invariably represented with enormous ruffs, in tatters superbly worn, and, to complete the allusion to their poverty, with bunches of beetroot and onions at their belts. There is nothing particularly comic, nor especially refined, in the execution of the prints. In piquancy and truth, these jokes about Spanish manners and Spanish food recall those presently to be made in England about Frenchmen, who are there invariably represented as frog-eaters and dancing-masters. Yet comparing the facetiæ of that period with the exaggerated or obscene humours which preceded them, it seems as though the domain of caricature were even then being opened up to worthy precursors of the lively draughtsmen of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: in fact, as though some Attic salt were already penetrating to Bœotia.
This advance is visible in the satires published towards the end of the reign of Louis XIV. The "Procession Monacale," a set of twenty-four engravings which appeared in Holland (where many Protestants had taken refuge), attacked with considerable vigour the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the principal persons who had participated in that measure. Louvois, Mme. de Maintenon, and all the privy councillors of Louis XIV., are represented under the cowl, and with significant attributes. Even the king figures in this series of heroes of the New League; he is in a monk's frock like the others, but a sun, in allusion to his lofty device, serves for his face, and this hooded Phœbus bears in his hand a torch to light himself through the surrounding darkness. The prints that make up this set, as well as many more in the same style, are designed and engraved with a certain amount of spirit. They serve to prove that in the frivolous arts, as well as in the comic literature of the day, the object was to make "decent folk" laugh, and to keep joking within bounds. In a word, in comparison with former caricatures they are as the vaudevilles of the Italian comedy to the farces once played on the boards of strolling theatres.
Every sort of engraving being cultivated in France with more success than anywhere else, under Louis XIV. the trade in prints became one of the most flourishing branches of French industry. The great historical plates, it is true – those at any rate which, like the "Batailles d'Alexandre," were published at the king's cost – were chiefly sold in France, and were not often exported, save as presents to sovereigns and ambassadors. But portraits, domestic scenes, and fashion plates, were shipped off in thousands, and flooded all parts of Europe. Before the second half of the seventeenth century, the chief printsellers (for the most part engravers themselves and publishers of their own works) were established in Paris on the Quai de l'Horloge, or, like Abraham Bosse, in the interior of the Palace. Rather later than this, the most popular shops were to be found in the neighbourhood of the Church of St. Sèverin. If we examine the prints then published in Paris, we may count as many as thirty publishers living in the Rue St. Jacques alone, and amongst the number are many famous names: as Gérard Audran, "at the sign of the Two Golden Pillars;" François de Poilly, "at the sign of St. Benedict," and so forth.
Hence, we may mention, in passing, the mistake which attributes to engravers of the greatest talent the production of bad plates, to which they would never have put finger except to take proofs. For instance, the words "Gérard Audran excudit," to be found at the bottom of many such, do not mean that they were engraved by the master, but only published by him. Often, too, pseudonyms – not always in the best possible taste – concealed the name of the publisher and the place of publication: a precaution easily understood, as it was generally applied to obscenities, and particularly to those called "pièces à surprise," which were then becoming common, and continued to increase indefinitely during the following century. True art, however, is but little concerned with such curiosities; and it is best to look elsewhere for its manifestations.
The superior merit of the engraving of the masters of the French school had attracted numbers of foreign artists to Paris. Many took root there, amongst them Van Schuppen and the Flemings commissioned to engrave the "Victoires du Roi," painted by Van der Meulen; others, having finished their course of study, returned to their own countries, the missionaries of French doctrine and of French manner. The result of this united influence was an almost exact similarity in all the line engravings produced, by men of whatever nationality or from whatever originals. Thus, the portraits engraved by the German Johann Hainzelmann from Ulrich Mayer and Joachim Sandrart, scarcely differ from those he had formerly engraved from French artists: the "Michel Le Tellier," for instance, and the "Président Dufour." The historical plates published about the same time in Germany prove the same lively zeal in imitation. In them art appears as, so to speak, a French subject; and Gustave Ambling, Bartholomew Kilian43 and many more of their countrymen – pupils, like these two, of François de Poilly – might be classed amongst the engravers of the French school, if the style of their work were the only thing to be considered.
An examination of the prints published by Flemish and Dutch artists later than the school of Rubens and Van Dalen, would justify a like observation. We may fairly regard Van Schuppen only as a clever pupil of Nanteuil, and Cornelius Vermeulen as an imitator, less successful, but no less subservient. And when we turn to the Italian engravers of the seventeenth century, we find that, as a rule, their work is marked by so impersonal a physiognomy, is so much the outcome of certain preconceived and rigid conventions, that one could almost believe them inspired by the same mind, and done by the same hand.
Whilst French influence reigned almost supreme in Germany and the Low Countries, and Italian art became more and more the slave of routine, English engraving had not yet begun to feel the influence of the progress elsewhere achieved since the beginning of the century. The time was, however, at hand when, in the reign of Louis XV., London engravers who came to study in Paris should return to their own country to practise successfully the lessons they had learned. We must, therefore, presently turn to them; but, before speaking of the pupils, we must briefly mention the achievements of the masters, and narrate the story of French engraving in France after the death of the excellent artists of the age of Louis XIV.
CHAPTER VIII.
ENGRAVING IN FRANCE AND IN OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. NEW PROCESSES: STIPPLE, CRAYON, COLOUR, AND AQUATINT
Morin, Nanteuil, Masson, and the other portrait engravers of the period, in spite of the variety of their talent, left their immediate successors a similar body of doctrine and a common tradition. Now the works of the painter Rigaud, whose importance had considerably increased towards the end of the reign of Louis XIV., made certain modifications of this severe tradition necessary on the part of the artists employed to engrave them. Portraits, for the most part bust portraits, relieved against an almost naked background, were no longer in fashion. To render a crowd of accessories which, while enriching the composition, frequently encumbered it beyond measure, became the problem in engraving. It was successfully solved by Pierre Drevet, his son Pierre Imbert, and his nephew Claude Drevet, this last the author, amongst other plates now much prized, of a "Guillaume de Vintimille" and a "Count Zinzendorff."
The first of these three engravers – at Lyons the pupil of Germain Audran, and at Paris of Antoine Masson – engraved, with some few exceptions, only portraits, the best known of which are a full-length "Louis XIV.," "Louis XV. as a Child," "Cardinal Fleury," and "Count Toulouse;" they attest an extreme skill of hand, and a keen perception of the special characteristics of the originals. The second, the similarity of whose Christian name has often caused him to be mistaken for his father, showed himself from the first still more skilful and more certain of his own powers. He was only twenty-six when he finished his full-length "Bossuet," in which the precision of the handling, the exactness and brilliancy of the burin work, seem to indicate a talent already arrived at maturity. In this plate, indeed, and in some others by the same engraver – as the "Cardinal Dubois," the "Adrienne Lecouvreur," and others – there are parts, perhaps, that seem almost worthy of Nanteuil himself. It is impossible to imitate with greater nicety the richness of ermine, the delicacy of lace, and the polish and brilliancy of gilding; but the subtle delicacy of physiognomy, the elasticity of living flesh which animated the portraits of the earlier masters, will here be looked for in vain. Such work is the outcome of an art no longer supreme, albeit of a very high order still.
As much may be said of the best historical plates engraved in France under the Regency, and in the first years of Louis XV. The older manner, it is true, was still perceptible, but it was beginning to change, and was soon to be concealed more and more under a parade of craftsmanship amusingly self-conscious, and an elegance refined to the point of affectation.
The French engravers of the time of Louis XV. may be divided into two distinct groups: the one submitting to the authority of Rigaud, and partially preserving the tradition of the last century; the other, of greater numerical importance, and in some respects of greater ability, but, in imitation of Watteau and his followers, seeking success in attractiveness of subject, grace of handling, and the expression of a general prettiness, rather than in the faithful rendering of truth.
As we know, the manners of the time were not calculated to discourage a like tendency, which, indeed, grew more and more general amongst artists during the whole course of the eighteenth century, until it ended in a revolution, as radical in its way as the great political one: namely, the exclusive worship of a somewhat barren simplicity and of the antique narrowly understood.
In 1750 (that is to say, almost at the very time of the birth of David, the future reformer of the school) the public asked nothing more of art than a passing amusement. The immediate successors of Lebrun had brought the historical style into great disrepute. People had wearied of the pompous parade of allegory, the tyranny of splendour, the monotony of luxury; they took refuge in another extreme – in the exaggeration of grace and all the coquetries of sentiment. Pastorals, or would-be pastorals, and subjects for the most part mythological, took the place of heroic actions and academical apotheoses. They had not a whit more nature than these others, but they had at any rate more interest for the mind, and greater charm for the eye.
From the point of view of engraving alone, the prints published in France at this time are for the most part models of spirit and delicacy, as those of the Louis XIV. masters are of learned execution and vigorous conception. Moreover, under the frivolous forms affected by French engraving in the eighteenth century, something not unfrequently survives of the masterly skill and science of the older men. It is to be supposed that Laurent Cars remembered the example of Gérard Audran, and, in his own way, succeeded in perpetuating it when he engraved Lemoyne's "Hercule et Omphale," and "Délivrance d'Andromède." Even when he was reproducing such fantasies as the "Fête vénitienne" of Watteau, or scenes of plain family life, like Chardin's "Amusements de la Vie privée," and "La Serinette," he had the art of supplementing from his own taste whatever strength and dignity his originals might lack. Was it not, too, by appropriating the doctrine, or at least the method, of Audran – his free alliance of the burin with the needle – that Nicolas de Larmessin, Lebas, Lépicié, Aveline, Duflos, Dupuis, and others, produced their charming transcripts of Pater, Lancret, Boucher himself – in spite of his impertinences of manner and his unpleasant falseness of colour – and, above all, Watteau, of all the masters of the eighteenth century the best understood and the most brilliantly interpretated by the engravers? A while later, Greuze had the honour to occupy them most; and some among them, as Levasseur and Flipart, did not fail to acquit themselves with ability of a task rendered peculiarly difficult by the flaccid and laboured execution of the originals.
However summary our description of the progress of French engraving during the whole of the reign of Louis XV., or the early years of Louis XVI., it is scarcely possible not to mention, side by side with historical and genre engraving, the countless illustrations – of novels, fables, songs, and publications of every description – the general aspect of which so strongly bears witness to the fertility and grace of French art at that time. It is difficult to omit the names of those agreeable engravers of dainty subjects, not seldom of their own design: those poetæ minores, the vaudevillists of the burin, who, from the interpreters of Gravelot, Eisen, and Gabriel de St. Aubin to Choffard, from Cochin to Moreau, have left us so much work steeped in the richest, the most varied imagination, or informed by an exquisite natural perception. Ready and ingenious above all others, delicate even in their most capricious flights, witty before everything, they are artists whose accomplishment, in spite of its appearance of frivolity, is not to be matched for delicacy and science in the work of any other epoch, or the school of any other country.
Placed, in some sort, at an equal distance from the contemporary historical engravers and the engravers of illustrations, and divided, as it were, between the recollections of the past and the examples of the present, Ficquet, and some years later, Augustin de St. Aubin, produced the little portraits which are as popular now as then. The portraits of Ficquet are prized above all; though those of St. Aubin, in spite of their small size, exhibit a largeness and firmness of modelling not to be found in work that is sometimes preferred to them. What is more, Ficquet's plates are generally only reductions of prints already published by other engravers, Nanteuil, Edelinck, and the rest; whilst the portraits of St. Aubin have the merit of being directly taken from original pictures or drawings. As a rule, however, these portraits are relieved on a dead black ground, without gradation or variety of effect; and it is probably to the somewhat harsh and monotonous aspect thus produced that we must attribute the comparative disfavour with which they are regarded.
It is also permissible to suppose that Ficquet's almost microscopic prints, like those of his imitators, Savart and Grateloup, owe much of their popularity to their extreme finish. When the mind is not exercised in discerning the essential parts of an art, the eye is apt to look upon excessive neatness of workmanship as the certain evidence of perfection. As people insensible to the charm of painting fall confidingly into raptures over the pictures of Carlo Dolci, Gerard Dow, and Denner, so, it maybe, certain admirers of Ficquet esteem his talent in proportion to the exaggerated cleanness and carefulness of his plates. Yet his real merit does not entirely rest on such secondary considerations. Many of his small portraits, most of them intended as illustrations, are remarkable for firm drawing and delicate facial expression; and if the work were generally simpler and less crowded with half-tints, it might be classed, as miniature in line, with Petitot's enamels.
The analogy, however, can only be supported with regard to their talent; their dispositions differ in every point. The painter Petitot, a fervent Calvinist, whose life presents a curious contrast with the worldly character of his work, had the honour to attract the attention of Bossuet, who, it is said, attempted to convert him. He was imprisoned at For-l'Evêque after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and only quitted it to devote himself to solitude and study. Ficquet, for his part, took no interest whatever in religious questions, and gave up every spare moment to the pursuit of pleasure; he was, besides, for ever short of money, and was perpetually hunted by his creditors, who, weary of struggling, usually ended by installing him in their own houses to finish a plate for them.
It was in this way that he came to spend nearly two months at St. Cyr, in the very heart of which community he engraved his "Mme. de Maintenon," after Mignard. This portrait, paid for long previously to the last farthing, made no progress whatever; and the Mother Superior, having exhausted prayers and reproaches, and despairing of seeing it finished, addressed herself to the metropolitan. From him she obtained permission to introduce the artist into the convent, and to keep him there till the accomplishment of his task. But things went on no better. Ficquet, bored to death in his seclusion, simply slept out the time, and never touched his graver. One day he sent for the Superior, and told her that if he stayed at St. Cyr to all eternity, he could not work in the solitude they had made for him; amusement he must and would have, and in default of better, it must be the conversation of the nuns; he added, in a word, that he refused to finish the portrait unless some of them came every day to keep him company. His conditions were accepted; and to encourage him still further, some of the pupils accompanied the nuns, and played and sang to him in his room. At length the long-expected plate was ready; but Ficquet, disgusted with the work, destroyed it, and would only consent to begin again on the promise of instant liberty and a still larger sum. By these means the nuns of St. Cyr at last became possessed of the likeness of their foundress, and the little "Mme. de Maintenon" – which is perhaps Ficquet's masterpiece – made up to them for the strange exactions with which they had had to comply.
As the habit of employing etching in the execution of their works had gained ground among artists, the temptation to have recourse to this speedy process had vanquished one person after another, even those who seemed least likely to yield, whether from their position in society, or their former methods. There were soon as many amateur as professional engravers; and learning the use of the needle well enough to sketch a pastoral was soon as fashionable as turning a madrigal. Among the first to set the example was the Regent; he engraved a set of illustrations for an edition of "Daphnis et Chloe," and his initiative was followed by crowds of all ranks: great lords like the Duc de Chevreuse and the Marquis de Coigny; gentlemen of the gown, like the Président de Gravelle; financiers, scholars, and men of letters, like Watelet, Count Caylus, and D'Argenville.44 Court ladies and the wives of plain citizens joined the throng; from the Duchesse de Luynes and the Queen herself, to Mme. de Pompadour and Mme. Reboul (who afterwards married the painter Vien), there were scores of women who amused themselves by engraving, to say nothing of the many who made it a profession.