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UNIV. OF TORONTO LIBRARY
SPECIAL WINTER NUMBER OF "THE
DEPARTEMENTS ETRANGE
BUREAU DU STUDIO A PARIS: LIBRAIRIE OLLENDORFF
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CHAUSSE'E O'ANTIN.
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MANUFACTURING ARTISTS' COLOURMAN.
(Established over 120 years.)
WATER AND OIL COLOURS OF FINEST QUALITY GROUND ENTIRELY BY HAND.
Materials for PASTEL, MINIATURE, FRESCO,
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PUBLISHERS TO THEIR MAJESTIES THE KING AND QUEEN.
COLOUR MEZZOTINTS The Fine Art Society
PUBLISHERS OF HIGH-CLASS COLOUR MEZZOTINTS. THEIR LATEST ISSUES INCLUDE .
Reynolds' "Laughing Girl," "Duchess of Rutland," and "Countess of Salisbury."
Gainsborough's "Countess of Clarendon."
Rotnney's "Mrs. Newbury" and "The Duchess."
Lawrence's "Goody Two Shoes," and Opie's "Sleeping Venus."
Lely's "Countess de Grammont," and Greuze's "Orphans."
New Series of Reproduction in Colour from the Paintings of G. F. Watts.
ALSO A LARGE SELECTION OF ETCHINGS BY BRANGWYN, HAIG, HADEN, MENPES, SHORT, WALCOT AND WHISTLER.
THE FINE ART SOCIETY, ILLUSTRA?PEI!)ICCATTONOGUE ON
Expert Valuers, Restorers and Framemakers.
148 NEW BOND STREET, LONDON.
\
OLD ENGLISH COLOUR-PRINTS
TEXT BY
MALCOLM C. SALAMAN
(AUTHOR OF 4THE OLD ENGRAVERS OF ENGLAND')
EDITED BY CHARLES HOLME
.4V
MCMIX
OFFICES OF <THE STUDIO' LONDON, PARIS AND NEW YORK
PREFATORY NOTE.
THE Editor desires to express his thanks to the following Collectors who have kindly lent their prints for reproduction in this volume : — Mrs. Julia Frankau, Mr. Frederick Behrens, Major E. F. Coates, M.P., Mr. Basil Dighton, Mr. J. H. Edwards, and Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane, P.C., G.C.B. Also to Mr. Malcolm C. Salaman, who, in addition to contributing the letterpress, has rendered valuable assistance in the preparation of the work.
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Plate I. "Jane, Countess of Harrington, Lord Viscount
Petersham and the Hon. Lincoln Stanhope." Stipple-Engraving by F. Bartolozzi, R.A., after Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.
„ II. " Robinetta." Stipple-Engraving by John Jones,
after Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.
„ III. " Master Henry Hoare." Stipple-Engraving by
C. Wilkin, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.
„ — IV. " The Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Georgiana
Cavendish." Mezzotint-Engraving by Geo. Keating, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.
V. " The Mask." Stipple-Engraving by L. Schia- vonetti, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.
„ VI. "Bacchante "(Lady Hamilton). Stipple-Engrav-
ing by C. Knight, after George Romney.
„ VII. " Mrs. Jordan in the character of 'The Country
Girl1" ("The Romp"). Stipple-Engraving by John Ogborne, after George Romney.
„ VIII. " Hobbinol and Ganderetta." Stipple-Engraving
by P. W. Tomkins, after Thomas Gains- borough, R.A.
„ IX. "Countess of Oxford." Mezzotint-Engraving by
S. W. Reynolds, after J. Hoppner, R.A.
„ X. " Viscountess Andover." Stipple-Engraving by
C. Wilkin, after J. Hoppner, R.A.
» XI. "The Squire's Door." Stipple-Engraving by
B. Duterreau, after George Morland.
» XII. "The Farmer's Door." Stipple-Engraving by
B. Duterreau, after George Morland.
XIII. " A Visit to the Boarding School." Mezzotint-
Engraving by W. Ward, A.R.A., after George Morland.
XIV. " St. James's Park." Stipple-Engraving by F. D.
Soiron, after George Morland.
IV
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Plate XV. " A Tea Garden." Stipple-Engraving by F. D.
Soiron, after George Morland.
„ XVI. " The Lass of Livingstone." Stipple-Engraving
by T. Gaugain, after George Morland.
„ XVII. " Rustic Employment." Stipple-Engraving by
J. R. Smith, after George Morland.
XVIII. "The Soliloquy." Stipple-Engraving by and after William Ward, A.R.A.
XIX. " Harriet, Lady Cockerell as a Gipsy Woman." Stipple - Engraving by J. S. Agar, after Richard Cosway, R.A.
„ XX. "Lady Duncannon." Stipple - Engraving by
F. Bartolozzi, R.A., after John Downman, A.R.A.
XXI. "Cupid bound by Nymphs." Stipple-Engraving by W. W. Ryland, after Angelica KaufFman, R.A.
„ XXII. " Rinaldo and Armida." Stipple-Engraving by
Thos. Burke, after Angelica KaufFman, R.A.
„ XXIII. " Angelica KaufFman in the character of Design
listening to the Inspiration of Poetry." Stipple-Engraving by Thos. Burke, after Angelica KaufFman, R.A.
XXIV. "Love and Beauty "(Marchioness of Townshend). Stipple-Engraving by Thos. Cheesman, after Angelica KaufFman, R.A.
XXV. " Two Bunches a Penny, Primroses " (" Cries of London"). Stipple-Engraving by L. Schia- vonetti, after F. Wheatley, R.A.
XXVI. " Knives, Scissors and Razors to Grind" (" Cries of London ") . Stipple-Engraving by G. Ven- dramini, after F. Wheatley, R.A.
XXVII. "Mrs. Crewe." Stipple-Engraving by Thos. Watson, after Daniel Gardner.
XXVIII. "The Dance." Stipple-Engraving by F. Barto- lozzi, R.A., after H. W. Bunbury.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Plate XXIX.
XXX.
XXXI.
XXXII. XXXIII. XXXIV.
XXXV.
XXXVI. „ XXXVII. „ XXXVIII.
XXXIX.
,, A J_/.
" Morning Employments." Stipple-Engraving by P. W. Tomkins, after H. W. Bunbury.
" The Farm - Yard." Stipple - Engraving by William Nutter, after Henry Singleton.
" The Vicar of the Parish receiving his Tithes." Stipple-Engraving by Thos. Burke, after Henry Singleton.
" The English Dressing-Room." Stipple-Engrav- ing by P. W. Tomkins, after Chas. Ansell.
" The French Dressing-Room." Stipple-Engrav- ing by P. W. Tomkins, after Chas. Ansell.
"January "("The Months"). Stipple-Engraving by F. Bartolozzi, R.A., after Wm. Hamil- ton, R.A.
" Virtuous Love " (from Thomson's " Seasons "). Stipple-Engraving by F. Bartolozzi, R.A., after Wm. Hamilton, R.A.
" The Chanters." Stipple-Engraving by J. R. Smith, after Rev. Matthew W. Peters, R.A.
" Mdlle. Parisot." Stipple-Engraving by C. Turner, A.R.A., after J. J. Masquerier.
" Maria." Stipple-Engraving by P. W. Tomkins, after J. Russell, R.A.
" Commerce." Stipple-Engraving by M. Bovi, after J. B. Cipriani, R.A., and F. Barto- lozzi, R.A.
"The Love-Letter." Stipple-Engraving, pro- bably by Thos. Cheesman.
VI
OLD ENGLISH COLOUR-PRINTS
pictures we look at — his prints we read," said Charles Lamb, speaking with affectionate reverence of Hogarth. Now, after "reading" those wonderful Pro- gresses of the Rake and the Harlot, which had for him all the effect of books, intellectually vivid with human interest, let us suppose our beloved essayist looking at those " other pictures," Morland's " Story of Letitia " series, in John Raphael Smith's charming stipple-plates, colour-printed for choice, first issued while Lamb was hardly in his teens. Though they might not be, as in Hogarth's prints, " intense thinking faces," expressive of " permanent abiding ideas " in which he would read Letitia's world-old story, Lamb would doubtless look at these Morland prints with a difference. He would look at them with an interest awakened less by their not too poignant intention of dramatic pathos than by the charm of their simple pictorial appeal, heightened by the dainty persuasion of colour.
There is a fascination about eighteenth-century prints which tempts me in fancy to picture the gentle Elia stopping at every printseller's window that lay on his daily route to the East India House in Leadenhall Street. How many these were might "admit a wide solution," since he arrived invariably late at the office ; but Alderman Boydell's in Cheapside, where the engraving art could be seen in its dignified variety and beauty, and Mr. Carington Bowles's in St. Paul's Churchyard, with the humorous mezzotints, plain and coloured, must have stayed him long. Then, surely among the old colour-prints which charm us to-day there were some that would make their contemporary appeal to Elia's fancy, as he would linger among the curious crowd outside the windows of Mr. J. R. Smith in King Street, Covent Garden, or Mr. Macklin's Poet's Gallery in Fleet Street, Mr. Tomkins in Bond Street, or Mr. Colnaghi— Bartolozzi's "much-beloved Signor Colnaghi"-— in Pall Mall. Not arcadian scenes, perhaps, with "flocks of silly sheep," nor "boys as infant Bacchuses or Jupiters," nor even the beautiful ladies of rank and fashion ; but the Cries of London at Colnaghi's must have arrided so true a Londoner, and may we not imagine the relish with which Lamb would stop to look at the prints of the players ? The Downman Mrs. Siddons, say, or the Miss Farren, or that most joyous of Romney prints, Mrs. "Jordan as " The Romp" which would seem to give pictorial justification for Lamb's own vivid reminiscence of the actress, as his words lend almost the breath of life to the picture. Yet these had not then come to the dignity of " old prints," with a mellow lure of antique tone.
Their beautiful soft paper — -hand-made as a matter ot course, since there was no other — which we handle and hold up to the light with such sensitive reverence, was not yet grown venerable from the touch of long-vanished hands. They were as fresh as a busy industry of engravers, printers, and paper-makers could turn them out, and of a contemporary popularity that died early of a plethora.
What, then, is their peculiar charm for us to-day, those colour- prints of stipple or mezzotint engravings which pervaded the later years of the eighteenth century, and the earliest of the nineteenth ? No serious student, perhaps, would accord them a very high or important place in the history of art. Yet a pleasant little corner of their own they certainly merit, representing, as they do, a charac- teristic contemporary phase of popular taste, and of artistic activity, essentially English. Whatever may be thought of their intrinsic value as works of art, there is no denying their special appeal ot pictorial prettiness and sentiment and of dainty decorative charm. Nor, to judge from the recent records of the sale-rooms, would this appeal seem to be of any uncertain kind. It has lately been eloquent enough to compete with the claims of artistic works ot indisputable worth, and those collectors who have heard it for the first time only during the last ten years or so have had to pay highly for their belated responsiveness. Those, on the other hand, who listened long ago to the gentle appeal of the old English colour-prints, who listened before the market had heard it, and, loving them for their own pretty sakes, or their old-time illustra- tive interest, or their decorative accompaniment to Sheraton and Chippendale, would pick them up in the printsellers' shops for equitable sums that would now be regarded as " mere songs," can to-day look round their walls at the rare and brilliant impressions of prints which first charmed them twenty or thirty years ago, and smile contentedly at the inflated prices clamorous from Christie's. For nowadays the decorative legacy of the eighteenth century — a legacy of dignity, elegance, beauty, charm — seems to involve ever- increasing legacy duties, which must be paid ungrudgingly.
A collector, whose house is permeated with the charm and beauty of eighteenth-century arts and crafts, asked recently my advice as to what he should next begin to collect. I suggested the original pictures of the more accomplished and promising of our younger living painters, a comparatively inexpensive luxury. He shook his head, and, before the evening, a choice William Ward, exceptional in colour, had proved irresistible. Yes, it is a curious and noteworthy fact that the collector of old English colour-prints has rarely, if ever, any sympathy with modern art, however fine, however beautiful. He will frankly admit this, and, while he tells
you that he loves colour, you discover that it is only colour which has acquired the mellowing charm of time and old associations. So your colour-print collector will gladly buy a dainty drawing by Downman, delicately tinted on the back, or a pastel by J. R. Smith, somewhat purple, maybe, in the flesh-tints, while the sumptuous colouring of a Brangwyn will rouse in him no desire for possession, a Lavery's harmonies will stir him not at all, and the mystic beauty of tones in any Late Moonrise that a Clausen may paint will say to him little or nothing. But then, one may ask, why is he content with the simple colour-schemes of these dainty and engaging prints, when the old Japanese, and still older Chinese, colour-prints offer wonderful and beautiful harmonies that no English colour-printer ever dreamt of? And why, if we chance to meet this lover of colour at the National Gallery, do we find him, not revelling joyously in the marvellously rich, luminous tones of a Filippino Lippi, for example, or the glorious hues of a Titian, but quietly happy in front of, say, Morland's Inside of a Stable, or Reynolds's Snake in the Grass ? Well, we have only to pass a little while in his rooms, looking at his prints in their appropriate environment of beautiful old furniture, giving ourselves up to the pervading old-time atmo- sphere, and we shall begin to understand him and sympathise with his consistency. And, as the spell works, we shall find ourselves growing convinced that even a Venice set of Whistler etchings would seem decoratively incongruous amid those particular surroundings. For it is the spell, not of intrinsic artistic beauty, but of the eighteenth century that is upon us. It is the spell of a graceful period, compact of charm, elegance and sensibility, that these pretty old colour-prints, so typically English in subject and design, cast over us as we look at them. Thus they present themselves to us, not as so many mere engravings printed in varied hues, but rather as so many pictorial messages — whispered smilingly, some of them — from those years of ever- fascinating memory, when the newly-born Royal Academy was focussing the artistic taste and accomplishment of the English people, and Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney, were translating the typical transient beauty in terms of enduring art, while the great engravers were extending the painters' fame, and the furniture-makers and all the craftsmen were supporting them with a new and a classic grace ; when Johnson was talking stately, inspiring common-sense, Goldsmith was " writing like an angel," and Sheridan was " catching the manners living as they rose " ; when Fanny Burney was keeping her vivid diaries, and Walpole and Mrs. Delany were — we thank Providence — writing letters ; when the doings of the players at Drury Lane and Covent Garden, or the fashionable revellers at Ranelagh, Vauxhall, and the Pantheon, were as momentous to " the
town " as the debates at Westminster, and a lovely duchess could immortalise a parliamentary election with a democratic kiss. These prints, hinting of Fielding and Richardson, Goldsmith and Sterne, tell us that sentiment, romantic, rustic and domestic, had become as fashionable as wit and elegance, and far more popular ; while a spreading feeling for nature, awakened by the poetry of Thomson, Gray and Collins, and nurtured later by Cowper, Crabbe and Burns, was forming a popular taste quite out of sympathy with the cold academic formalism and trammelled feeling of the age of Pope.
These literary influences are important to consider for any true appreciation of these old colour-prints, which, being a reflex in every respect of the popular spirit and character of the period in which they were produced, no other period could have bequeathed to us exactly as they are. And it is especially interesting to remember this, for, from the widespread popularity of these very prints, we may trace, in the pictures their great vogue called for, the origin of that abiding despot of popular English art which Whistler has, in his whimsical way, defined as the " British Subject."
That the evolution of the colour-print, from its beginnings in chiaroscuro, can boast a long and fascinating history has been proved to admiration in the romantic and informing pages of Mrs. Frankau's " Eighteenth-Century Colour-Prints " — a pioneer volume ; but my present purpose is to tell the story only in so far as it concerns English art and taste.
Now, although during the seventeenth century we had in England a number of admirable and industrious engravers, we hear of no attempts among them to print engravings in anything but mono- chrome ; so that, if they heard of the colour-experiments of Hercules Seghers, the Dutch etcher, whom Rembrandt admired, as doubtless they did hear, considering how constant and friendly was their intercourse with the Dutch and Flemish painters and engravers, none apparently thought it worth while to pursue the idea. But, after all, Seghers merely printed his etchings in one colour on a tinted paper, which can hardly be described as real colour-printing ; and, if there had been any artistic value in the notion, would not the enterprising Hollar have attempted some use of it ? Nor were our English line-engravers moved by any rumours they may have heard, or specimens they may have seen, of the experiments in colour-printing, made somewhere about 1680, by Johannes Teyler, of Nymegen in Holland, a painter, engraver, mathematical professor and military engineer. His were unquestionably the first true colour-prints, being impressions taken from one plate, the engraved lines of which were carefully painted with inks of different hues ; and these prints may be seen in the British Museum, collected in all
their numerous variety in the interesting and absolutely unique volume which Teyler evidently, to judge from the ornately engraved title-page, designed to publish as " Opus Typochromaticum."
The experiment was of considerable interest, but one has only to look at these colour-printed line-engravings, with their crude juxtaposition of tints, to feel thankful that our English line- engravers were not lured from their allegiance to the black and white proper to their art. Doubtless they recognised that colour was opposed to the very spirit of the line-engraver's art, just as, a hundred years later, the stipple-engravers realised that it could often enhance the charm of their own. In the black and white ot a fine engraving there is a quality in the balancing of relative tones which in itself answers to the need of colour, which, in fact, suggests colour to the imagination ; so the beauty and dignity of the graven line in a master's hands must repel any adventitious chromatic aid. A Faithorne print, for instance, with its lines and cross-hatchings in colours is inconceivable ; although one might complacently imagine Francis Place and Gaywood having, not inappropriately, experimented with Barlow's birds and beasts after the manner of those in Teyler's book. If, however, there were any English engravings of that period on which Teyler's method of colour-printing might have been tried with any possibility of, at least, a popular success, they were surely Pierce Tempest's curious Cryes of the City of London, after " Old " Laroon's designs, which antedated by just over a hundred years the charming Wheatley " Cries," so familiar, so desirable, in coloured stipple. But this was not to be, and not until the new and facile mezzotint method had gradually over-shadowed in popularity the older and more laborious line-engraving was the first essay in colour-printing made in England. In the year 1719 came Jacob Christopher Le Blon with his new invention, which he called " Printing Paintings."
This invention was in effect a process of taking separate impressions, one over the other, from three plates of a desired picture, engraved in mezzotint, strengthened with line and etching, and severally inked each with the proportion of red, yellow, or blue, which, theorising according to Newton, Le Blon considered would go to make, when blended, the true colour-tones of any picture required. In fact, Le Blon practically anticipated the three- colour process of the present day; but in 1719 all the circumstances were against his success, bravely and indefatigably as he fought for it, influentially as he was supported.
Jacob Christopher Le Blon was a remarkable man, whose ingenious mind and restless, enthusiastic temperament led him through an artistic career of much adventure and many vicissitudes.
Born in Frankfort in 1667 — when Chinese artists were producing those marvels of colour-printing lately discovered by Mr. Lawrence Binyon in the British Museum — he studied painting and engraving for a while with Conrad Meyer, of Zurich, and subsequently in the studio of the famous Carlo Maratti at Rome, whither he had gone in 1696, in the suite of Count Martinetz, the French Ambassador. His studies seem to have been as desultory as his way of living. His friend Overbeck, however, recognising that Le Blon had talents which might develop with concentrated purpose, induced him in 1702 to settle down in Amsterdam and commence miniature-painter. The pictures in little which he did for snuff-boxes, bracelets, and rings, won him reputation and profit ; but the minute work affected his eyesight, and instead he turned to portrait-painting in oils. Then the idea came to him of imitating oil-paintings by the colour- printing process, based on Newton's theory of the three-colour com- position of light, as I have described. Experimenting with promising results on paintings of his own, he next attempted to reproduce the pictures of the Italian masters, from which, under Maratti's influence, he had learnt the secrets of colour. Without revealing his process, he showed his first " printed paintings " to several puzzled admirers, among them Prince Eugene of Savoy and, it is said, the famous Earl of Halifax, Newton's friend, who invented the National Debt and the Bank of England. But, sanguine as Le Blon was that there was a fortune in his invention, he could obtain for it neither a patent nor financial support, though he tried for these at Amsterdam, the Hague, and Paris.
His opportunity came, however, when he met with Colonel Sir John Guise. An enthusiastic connoisseur of art, a collector of pictures (he left his collection to Christchurch College, Oxford), an heroic soldier, with a turn for fantastic exaggeration and romancing, which moved even Horace Walpole to protest, and call him " madder than ever," Guise was just the man to be interested in the personality and the inventive schemes of Le Blon. Easily he persuaded the artist to come to London, and, through his intro- duction to many influential persons, he enlisted for Le Blon the personal interest of the King, who granted a royal patent, and per- mitted his own portrait to be done by the new process, of which this presentment of George I. is certainly one of the most successful examples, happiest in tone-harmony. Then, in 1721, a company was formed to work under the patent, with an establishment known as the " Picture Office," and Le Blon himself to direct operations. Everything promised well, the public credit had just been restored after the South Sea Bubble, the shares were taken up to a substan- tial extent, and for a time all went well. An interesting prospectus 6
was issued, with a list of colour-prints after pictures, chiefly sacred and mythological, by Maratti, Annibale Carracci, Titian, Correggio, Vandyck, some of them being identical in size with the original paintings, at such moderate prices as ten, twelve, and fifteen shillings. Lord Percival, Pope's friend, who, like Colonel Guise, had entered practically into the scheme, was enthusiastic about the results. Sending some of the prints, with the bill for them, to his brother, he wrote : " Our modern painters can't come near it with their colours, and if they attempt a copy make us pay as many guineas as now we pay shillings." Certainly, if we compare Le Blon's Madonna after Baroccio — priced fifteen shillings in the prospectus — for instance, with such an example of contemporary painting as that by Sir James Thornhill and his assistants, taken from a house in Leadenhall Street, and now at South Kensington, we may find some justification for Lord Percival's enthusiasm. For colour quality there is, perhaps, little to choose between them, but as a specimen of true colour-printing, and the first of its kind, that Madonna is wonderful, and I question whether, in the later years, there was any colour-printing of mezzotint to approach it in brilli- ance of tone. Then, however, accuracy of harmonies was assured by adopting Robert Laurie's method, approved in 1776, of printing from a single plate, warmed and lightly wiped after application of the coloured inks.
Discouragement soon fell upon the Picture Office. In March 1722 Lord Percival wrote: — "The picture project has suffered under a great deal of mismanagement, but yet improves much." In spite of that improvement, however, a meeting of shareholders was held under the chairmanship of Colonel Guise, and Le Blon's man- agement was severely questioned. The shareholders appear to have heckled him quite in the modern manner, and he replied excitedly to every hostile statement that it was false. But there was no getting away from figures. At a cost of £5,000 Le Blon had pro- duced 4,000 copies of his prints — these were from twenty-five plates — which, if all had been sold at the prices fixed, would have pro- duced a net loss of £2,000. Even Colonel Guise could hardly consider these as satisfactory business methods, and the company had already been reorganised, with a new manager named Guine, who had introduced a cheaper and more profitable way of pro- ducing the prints. It was all to no purpose. Prints to the value of only £600 were sold at an expenditure of £9,000, while the tapestry-weaving branch of the business — also Le Blon's scheme — showed an even more disproportionate result. Bankruptcy followed as a matter of course, and Le Blon narrowly escaped imprisonment.
The colour-printing of engravings, though artistically promising,
while still experimental, had certainly proved a financial failure, but Le Blon, nothing daunted, sought to explain and justify his prin- ciples and his practice in a little book, called " Coloritto, or the Harmony of Colouring in Painting, reduced to mechanical prac- tice, under easy precepts, and infallible rules." This he dedicated to Sir Robert Walpole, hoping, perhaps, that the First Lord of the Treasury, who had just restored the nation's credit, might do some- thing for an inventive artist's. Next he was privileged to submit his inventions to the august notice of the Royal Society. Le Blon had always his opportunities, as well as his rebuffs from fortune, but his faith in himself and his ideas was unswerving ; moreover, he had the gift of transmitting this faith to others. At last a scheme for imitat- ing Raphael's cartoons in tapestry, carried on at works in Chelsea, led to further financial disaster and discredit, and Le Blon was obliged to fly from England.
In Paris he resumed his colour-printing, inspiring and influencing many disciples and imitators, among them Jacques Fabian Gautier D'Agoty, who afterwards claimed to have invented Le Blon's process, and transmitted it to his sons. In Paris, in 1741, Le Blon died, very, very poor, but still working upon his copper-plates. It was doubt- less during Le Blon's last years in Paris that Horace Walpole met him. " He was a Fleming (sic), and very far from young when I knew him, but of surprising vivacity and volubility, and with a head admir- ably mechanic ; but an universal projector, and with, at least, one of the qualities that attend that vocation, either a dupe or a cheat : I think the former, though, as most of his projects ended in the air, the sufferers believed the latter. As he was much an enthusiast, perhaps like most enthusiasts he was both one and t'other." As a matter of fact, Le Blon was neither a dupe nor a cheat ; he was simply a pioneer with all the courage of his imagination and invention ; and no less an authority than Herr Hans W. Singer, of Vienna, has con- sidered him, with all his failures and shortcomings, of sufficient artistic importance to be worthy of a monograph.
If, by a more judicious selection of pictures for copying, Le Blon had been able to create a popular demand, and so ensure general encouragement for his venture, how different might have been the story of colour-printing, how much fuller its annals. For Le Blon's ultimate failure was not owing to the comparative impossibility or getting infallibly the required harmonies of his tones with only the three cardinal colours, and the necessity to add a fourth plate with a qualifying black, or to the difficulty in achieving the exactness of register essential to the perfect fusing of the tones of several plates. Those were serious obstacles, certainly, hindering complete artistic success ; but, judging from the surprising excellence of the best ot 8
Le Blon's actual achievements, they would doubtless have been surmounted for all practical purposes. The real cause of the failure was, I suggest, that the pictures actually reproduced made no appeal to the people of England, consequently there was no public demand for the prints. It was a close time for the fine arts in this country. The day of the public picture-exhibition was nearing, but it had not yet arrived. The aristocratic collector and the fashionable connoisseur represented the taste of the country, for popular taste there was none. Romance and sentiment were quite out of fashion, and the literature of the day was entirely opposed to them. Nor were there any living painters with even one touch of nature. The reign of George I. was indeed a depressing time for the graphic arts. Society, heavily bewigged and monstrously behooped, was too much concerned with its pastimes and intrigues, its affectations, caprices and extravagances, to cultivate any taste or care for beauty. Kent, the absurdly fashion- able architect, was ruling in place of the immortal Wren, and Kneller was so long and so assuredly the pictorial idol of the country that Pope, its poet-in-chief, could actually write of him that "great Nature fear'd he might outvie her works." Then, all else of pictorial art meant either Thornhill's wearisome ceilings and stair- cases, or the stiff and tasteless portraiture, with stereotyped posture, of the lesser Knellers, such as Jonathan Richardson, Highmore, and Jervas, whom Pope made even more ridiculous by his praises.
With only such painters as these to interpret, what chance had even such admirable engravers as John Smith, George White, John Simon, Faber, Peter Pelham, whose mezzotints even were beginning to wane in favour for lack of pictorial interest ? It is no great wonder then that, seeing Le Blon's failure, in spite of all his influence and achievement, the engravers in mezzotint were not eager to try the principles of his " Coloritto " in their own practice, and so colour- printing suffered a set-back in this country. But Le Blon's prints are of great value to-day. What, then, has become of those 9,000 copies printed by the Picture Office ? The >T6oo worth sold before the bankruptcy must have represented about a thousand, yet these impressions from Le Blon's fifty-plates are of extreme rarity even in the museums of the world, and it has been suggested by Herr Singer, and also by Mr. A. M. Hind, in his valuable " History of Engraving and Etching," that many copies of the large prints, varnished over, may be hanging in old houses under the guise of oil paintings, thus fulfilling their original purpose. It is an interesting conjecture, and how plausible one may judge from the varnished copies in the British Museum.
Le Blon's really important venture inspired no imitators in England, but it was followed by a few experimental attempts to
embellish engravings with colour. These were chiefly adaptations of the old chiaroscuro method, surface-colour being obtained by using several wood-blocks in combination with engraved copper-plates. Arthur Pond and Charles Knapton, painters both, imitated a number of drawings in this manner, the designs being etched ; while, some years earlier, Elisha Kirkall ("bounteous Kirkall" of the "Dunciad") had successfully used the coloured wood-blocks with mezzotint plates, strengthened with etched and graven lines. His pupil, J. B. Jackson, however, engraved only wood for his remarkable prints. But these experiments were merely sporadic ; they led to nothing important and continuous in the way of colour-printing.
Meanwhile, the prints of Hogarth, with their marvellous pic- torial invention, mordant satire, and moral illumination, took the fancy of the town without the lure of colour, and cultivated in the popular mind a new sense of picture, concerned with the live human interest of the passing hour. Other line-engravers, too, — Vivares, Woollett, Ravenet, Major, Strange, — with more masterly handling of the graver, were, through the new appeal of landscape, or the beauties of Rembrandt and the Italian masters, or the homely humours of Dutch genre ^ winning back the popular favour for their art.
Though the call for the colour-print had not yet arrived, the way was preparing for it. With this widening public interest in pictorial art, a dainty sense of tone was awakened by the porcelain now efflorescing all over the country. Then, when Reynolds was bringing all the graces to his easel, the urbane influence for beauty spread from the master's painting-room at 47, Leicester Fields — as the Square was then called — to all the printshops in town And the year — 1764 — that saw the death of Hogarth was the year in which Francesco Bartolozzi came to England, bringing with him into the engraving-world fresh influences of grace and delicacy which gradually ripened for colour.
II.
The sentimental mood for the storied picture was now being fostered by the universal reading of the novel, which in its mid- eighteenth-century form gave its readers new experiences in the presentation of actual contemporary life, with analysis of their feelings, and cultivation of their sensibilities. Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe, Sophia Western and Amelia, Olivia, Maria, were as living in interest as any of the beautiful high-born ladies whose portraits in mezzotint, translated from the canvasses of the great painters, appealed from the printsellers' windows in all the monochrome beauty of their medium. The public, steeped now in sentiment, wanted to see their imaginary heroines in picture : nor had they
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long to wait. The Royal Academy had become a vital factor in forming public taste, and the printsellers' shops were its mirrors. But not all its members and exhibitors were Gainsboroughs and Reynoldses. There were, for instance, Angelica Kauffman and Cipriani, with their seductive Italian graces of design ; there was Bartolozzi, with his beautiful draughtsmanship, and his brilliant facile craft on the copper-plate, but the medium that should bring these into familiar touch with popular taste was still to seek. However, it was at hand, and the man who found this medium, and brought it to the service of popular art, was William Wynne Ryland, " engraver to the King."
Whether the so-called crayon method of engraving, in imitation of soft chalk drawings, was invented by Jean Charles Francois, or Gilles Demarteau, or Louis Bonnet — all three claimed the credit of it — it was, at all events, from Francois, whose claim had obtained official recognition, that Ryland, the pupil of Ravenet and Le Bas, and, in a measure, of Boucher, learned the method while he was still a student in Paris. Only later in his career, however, long after he had left behind him his student days in Paris and Rome, and achieved prosperity in London as a line-engraver and print- seller, with royal patronage, and with social success as a man of fashion and pleasure, did he remember the process that Francois had imparted to him. Then, in his necessity, when his extrava- gances had brought him to bankruptcy, he called the dotted crayon manner to memory, and saw in stipple-engraving, if suitably employed, a possible asset of importance. Compared with line and even with mezzotint it was a very easy and rapid way of engraving, and though, of course, it could not compare with either in nobility, richness and brilliance of effect, Ryland realised that its soft rendering of tones by artistically balanced masses of dots might be adapted to dainty and delicate drawings. The most fortunate opportunity for proving this was at hand. He had some personal acquaintance with Angelica Kauffman, whom Lady Wentworth had brought to London some ten years before, and whose beauty, talents and personal charm had meanwhile made her a fashionable artistic idol, with Society and its beauties flocking to her studio to be painted or to buy her pictures. Having first tested his stippling with his own designs, gracefully French in manner, which he published soon afterwards as "Domestic Employments," Ryland suggested the idea of stipple-engraving to the sympathetic young painter. When he had experimented with one or two of her draw- ings, she gladly recognised that stipple was the very medium for the interpretation of her work to the public. The first prints sold "like wildfire," and so satisfied was Ryland of the profitable
b n
prospect, that, on the strength of it, he promptly re-established himself in a printselling business at 159, Strand. His confidence was amply justified, the public being quick to show their appre- ciation of the new method, introduced as it was with all the persuasion of the fair Angelica's graceful, fanciful designs of classic story and allegory. This was in 1775, and within a very short time Ryland found that, rapidly as she designed and he engraved, he could scarcely keep pace with the demand for these prints, which, the more readily to crave the popular fancy, he printed in red ink, to imitate red chalk, later to be known as the " Bartolozzi red."
Ryland had called Bartolozzi into consultation, and the gifted Italian engraver, with his greater mastery of technique, his delicate sense of beauty, and his finer artistic perceptions, had seen all that might be done with the new way of stipple ; he saw also its limita- tions. With enthusiasm Bartolozzi and Ryland had worked together till they had evolved from the crayon manner of Francois a process of engraving which proved so happily suited to the classes of fanciful and sentimental prints now fast becoming the vogue, that it simply jumped into a popularity which no other medium of the engraver's art had ever attained.
The stipple method may be thus described. The copper-plate was covered with an etching-ground, on to which the outlined picture was transferred from paper. Then the contours of the design were lightly etched in a series of dots, all the dark and middle shadows being rendered by larger or more closely etched dots, the later engravers using even minute groups of dots. This accom- plished, the acid was next applied with very great care, and all the etched dots bitten in. The waxen ground was then removed from the plate, and the work with the dry-point and the curved stipple- graver was commenced. With these tools the lighter shadows were accomplished, and the bitten portions of the picture were deepened and strengthened wherever required, to attain greater fulness or brilliance of effect.
Engraving in dots was, of course, no new thing ; as an accessory to line-engraving it had often been called into service by the earlier artists. Giulio Campagnola, Albert Diirer, Agostino Veneziano, Ottavio Leoni, for example, had used it ; we frequently find it employed by our own seventeenth-century line-men the better to suggest flesh-tones, and Ludwig von Siegen, in describing his invention of mezzotint in 1642, includes the "dotted manner" among the known forms of engraving. Then there was the opus mallei^ or method of punching dots in the plate with a mallet and awl, which was successfully practised by Jan Lutma, of Amsterdam, late in the seventeenth century. This may be considered the true
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precursor of stipple, just as the harpsichord, with the same key- board, but a different manner of producing the notes, was the precursor of the pianoforte ; but it must have been a very laborious process, and Lutma found few imitators.
Under the aegis of Ryland and Bartolozzi, however, and with the inspiration of Angelica Kauffman's " harmonious but shackled fancy," as a contemporary critic put it, for its initial impetus, stipple was developed as a separate and distinctive branch of the engraver's art. Its popularity was now to be further enhanced by the gentle and persuasive aid of colour. Ryland had seen many specimens of colour-printing in Paris, when he was with Francois and with Boucher ; he now bethought him that, just as the public fancy had been captured by red-chalk imitations, so might it be enchanted by engraved representations of water-colour drawings actually printed in colours. Angelica KaufFman and Bartolozzi eagerly encouraged the idea, and the two engravers, after many experiments, determined the best process of colouring and printing from the plates. Apparently they rejected the multi-plate method tried six years previously by that interesting artist Captain William Baillie ; and Ryland's earliest colour-prints were partially tinted only with red and blue. Mrs. Frankau tells us, on the authority of a tradition handed down in his old age from James Minasi, one of Bartolozzi's most trusted pupils, that an Alsatian named Seigneuer was responsible for all the earlier colour-printed impres- sions of Ryland's and Bartolozzi's stipples after Angelica Kauffman and Cipriani, that then he set up on his own account as a colour- printer, much recommended by Bartolozzi, and largely employed by the publishers, and that his printing may be traced, though un- signed, by a transparency of tone due to the use of a certain vitreous white which he imported in a dry state from Paris. Minasi must, of course, have been a perfect mine of Bartolozzi traditions, but when my father in his boyhood knew him and his musical son, the distinguished engraver would talk of nothing but music, for in 1829, with steel plates superseding the copper, and lithography tri- umphant, there seemed no prospect that the coloured stipples, already some time out of fashion, would eighty years later be inspiring curiosity as to how they were done. One sees, of course, many feeble colour-prints of the period, which or old the undiscriminating public accepted as readily as to-day they buy, for " old prints," modern cheap foreign reproductions which would disgrace a six- penny "summer number." On the other hand, the really fine examples of the old-time colour-printing, combined with brilliant engraving — and, of course, only fine things are the true collector's desiderata, irrespective of margins and " state " letterings, and other
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foolish fads — are certainly works of art, though a very delicate art of limited compass.
These colour-prints were done with a single printing, and the plate had to be freshly inked for each impression. The printer would have a water-colour drawing to work from, and having decided upon the dominant tint, with this he would ink over the whole engraved surface of the plate. Then he would wipe it almost entirely out of the incisions and punctures on the copper which had retained it, leaving just a sufficient harmonising ground-tint for the various coloured inks, carefully selected as to tints, which were next applied in the exact order and degree to ensure the right har- monies. All this required the nicest care directed by a very subtle sense of colour. Most difficult of all, and reserved for the last stage of the inking, was adding the flesh-tints, an operation of extreme delicacy. Then, before putting the plate in the printing-press, it had to be warmed to the exact degree of sensitiveness which should help the colours to fuse with tenderness and softness, without losing any brilliant quality of tone. This was not the least anxious part of the work, needing highly-trained artistic sensibility on the part of the printer. How artistically important this matter of warming the plates must have been in printing a combination of coloured inks may be judged when I say that I have been privileged to watch Whistler warming his etched plates ready for the printing- press, and seen him actually quivering with excited sensibility as the plate seemed to respond sensitively to the exigence of his. own exquisite sense of tone. But, of course, no eighteenth-century colour-prints, however charming in tone, suggest that there were any Whistlers engaged in the printing of them. Perhaps that is why our modern master of the copper-plate never cared for these dainty things, as he did greatly care for Japanese colour-prints. The old printers, however, had their own definite manner of work, and their own tricks of experience for producing pleasing and brilliant effects. By the dusting of a little dry colour on to the moist, here and there, during the printing process, they could heighten tones, or by very, very lightly dragging a piece of muslin over the surface of the plate they could persuade the tints to a more tender and harmonious intimacy. Of course, when the plate was printed, the colour was taken only by the dots and lines of the engraving, the white paper peeping between. . If would-be buyers of colour-prints would only remember this simple fact, and examine the stippling closely to see whether it really shows the colour, they would not so constantly be deceived into buying entirely hand-coloured prints. Whether the old printers and engravers authorised and sponsored the touching-up of the prints with water-colour which one almost invariably finds.,.
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at least to some slight extent, even in the best examples, with rare exceptions, it is impossible to determine. At all events, it is pre- sumable that the eyes and lips were touched up before the prints left the publishers' shops.
It must not be supposed, however, that colour had ousted from public favour the print in monochrome. As a matter of fact, it was usually only after the proofs and earlier brilliant impressions in monochrome had been worked off, and the plate was beginning to look a little worn, that the aid of colour was called in to give the print a fresh lease of popularity. Indeed, with mezzotint a slightly worn plate generally took the colours most effectively. This is why one sees so very seldom an engraver's proof in colours, the extreme rarity of its appearance making always a red-letter moment at Christie's. Therefore, in spite of the ever-widening vogue of the colour-print, it was always the artist and engraver that counted, while the printer in colours was scarcely ever named. And the new industry of stipple-engraving may be said to have been, in its first days of popularity, monopolised almost by Ryland and Bartolozzi, in association with Angelica Kauffman and John Baptist Cipriani.
Cipriani had, by his elegant and tasteful designs, won immediate favour on his arrival in England, and even the Lord Mayor's coach was decorated with panels of his painting. His style prepared the way for Angelica Kauffman, and together they soon brought a new pictorial element to the service of home-decoration. Their grace- ful rhythmic treatment of classic fables was just what the brothers Adam wanted for their decorative schemes, and the two Italian artists were extensively employed to paint panels for walls and ceil- ings. In time the fair Angelica outdistanced Cipriani in popularity, and, painting panels for cabinets, commodes, pier-table tops, and other pieces of decorative furniture, her taste was soon dominating that of the fashionable world. No wonder then that, when Ryland and Bartolozzi, through the medium of their facile and adaptable engravings, made her charming, if not flawlessly drawn, compositions readily accessible, the public eagerly bought them, and, framing them, generally without any margin, according to their own oval and circular forms, found them the very mural adornments that the prevailing Adam taste seemed to suggest. In monochrome or in colours, the prints, with their refined and fluent fancies, pictured from Horace, Ovid, Virgil, Homer, and Angelica's beautiful face and figure vivid in several, had an extraordinarily wide appeal. They flattered the fashionable culture of the day, when to quote Horace familiarly in ordinary conversation was almost a patent of gentility. On the continent they were even copied for the decora- tion of porcelain.
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For Ryland this meant another spell of prosperity : it also meant disaster. His constant thirst for pleasure, and his ambition to shine as a fine gentleman, stimulated by such easy and seemingly inex- haustible means of money-making, led him into fatal extravagances. Accused of forging a bill, instead of facing the charge, of which he protested his innocence, he stupidly hid himself and tried ineffectu- ally to cut his own throat. After that, some flimsy evidence pro- cured his condemnation, and, as William Blake, looking in Ryland's face, had predicted years before, he was hanged at Tyburn in 1783.
They could have done no worse to a highwayman ; and, after all, by the introduction of stipple-engraving Ryland had certainly increased the people's stock of harmless pleasure. In his own stip- pling there was a delicacy of touch, a smoothness of effect, equal to Bartolozzi's, but with less tenderness and suppleness of tone. Evidently he formed his style to suit the designs of Angelica Kauffman, which it rendered with appreciation of their refinement. This will be seen in the charming Cupid bound to a Tree by Nymphs, among our illus- trations, and many other pleasing plates, such as Venus presenting Helen to Paris, Beauty crowned by Love, "The "Judgment of Paris, Ludit Amabiliter, O Venus Regina, Olim Truncus, Dormio Innocuus, Juno Cestum, Maria, from Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," for which Miss Benwell, the painter, is said to have sat ; Patience and Perseverance ; Morning Amusement, a fanciful portrait of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, embroidering at a tambour-frame, and wearing the Turkish costume which she so graphically describes in one of her letters, and in which Kneller had painted her at the instigation of Pope ; fancy portraits, too, of the adventurous Lady Hester Stanhope, and Mary, Duchess of Richmond.
Although Angelica Kauffman had Bartolozzi and his numerous disciples — which meant, of course, most of the best stipple-engravers of the day — at the service of her prolific pencil, her favourite of all was Thomas Burke. In this she proved her sound judgment, for certainly no other stipple-engraver, not Bartolozzi himself, could equal Burke's poetic feeling upon the copper, or surpass him in his artistic mastery of the medium. After studying, it is believed, at the art school of the Royal Dublin Society, he came to London to learn mezzotint-engraving under his talented countryman, John Dixon, who was winning reputation as one of Reynolds's ablest " immortalisers," to borrow the master's own word. Burke soon showed that he could scrape a mezzotint with the best of them, but the pupil's manner developed on his own lines, differing from the master's in a more tender and luminous touch, a greater suavity of tone. These qualities are patent in his beautiful rendering of Angelica Kauffman's Telema chus at the Court of Sparta, and it was only 16
natural that they should suggest his adopting the stipple method. The technique he learnt from Ryland, and unquestionably he " bettered the instruction." The painter's sense of effect, which Dixon had taught him to translate into mezzotint, was of incalcu- lable value to him in his use of the new medium, for, by an individual manner of infinitely close stippling suggestive of the rich broad tone-surfaces of mezzotint, he achieved, perhaps, the most brilliant and beautiful effects that stipple-engraving has ever produced. Burke, in fact, was an artist, who, seeing a picture, realised how to interpret it on the copper-plate with the just expression of all its tone-beauties. There is a glow about his engraving which shows the art of stipple at the very summit of its possibilities, and, happily, brilliant impressions of several of his plates were printed in colours. Thus, in such beautiful prints as Lady Rushout and Daughter, Rinaldo and Armida, A Flower painted by Varelst, Angelica Kaufman as Design listening to the Inspiration of Poetry, Cupid and Ganymede, Jupiter and Calisto, Cupid binding Aglaia, Una and Abra, to name, perhaps, the gems among Burke's KaufFman prints, is shown what artistic results could be compassed when stipple-engraving and colour-printing met at their best. If, however, Angelica's engaging fantasies inspired Burke to his masterpieces, not less exquisite was his rendering of Plimer's miniatures of the Rushout daughters, while his art could interpret with equal charm the homely idyllic picture, as may be seen in the pretty Favourite Chickens — Saturday Morning — Going to Market, after the popular W. R. Bigg, and The Vicar of the Parish receiving his Tithes, after Singleton. But there are pictures by the masters one would like Burke to have engraved. The strange thing is that he did not do them.
Most of the engravers were now wooing the facile and profitable popularity of the stipple method and the colour-print, and all the favourite painters of the day, from the President of the Royal Academy to the lady amateur, were taking advantage of the fashion. The constancy and infinitude of the demand were so alluring, and the popular taste, never artistically very exacting, had been flattered and coaxed into a mood which seemed very easy to please. It asked only for the pretty thing.
Sir Joshua Reynolds, seeing, doubtless, what delicious and popu- lar things Bartolozzi had made of Cipriani's Cupids and Graces, was readily induced to lend himself, in the lighter phases of his art, to the copper-plates of the stipple-engravers, pleasantly assisted by the colour-printer. Still leaving the more dignified and pictorially elaborate examples of his brush, the beautiful, elegant, full-length portraits of lovely and distinguished women and notable men, to the gracious interpretation of mezzotint, which had served him
so nobly and faithfully, he found that, in the hands or such artists on copper as Bartolozzi, John Jones, Caroline Watson, Wilkin, Cheesman, Dickinson, Nutter, Schiavonetti, Marcuard, Thomas Watson, John Peter Simon, Grozer, Collyer, J. R. Smith, the delicate art of stipple could express all the sweetness, tenderness, and grace he intended in the pictures he enjoyed to paint of children and of girlish beauty. So we have such delightful prints, both in monochrome and in colours, as the Hon. Anne Eingham and Lavinia, Countess Spencer, Lady Betty Foster, The Countess of Harrington and Children, Lady Smyth and her Children, Lord Burghersh, Hon. Leicester Stanhope, Simplicity (Miss Gwatkin), The Peniston Lamb Children, all of Bartolozzi's best ; Lady Cockburn and her Children, and Master Henry Hoare, the Hon. Mrs. Stanhope as " Contemplation," Lady Beau- champ (afterwards Countess of Hertford), A Bacchante (Mrs. Hartley, the actress, and her child), the Spencer children in The Mask, and The Fortune Tellers, Miss Elizabeth Beauclerc (Lady Diana's daughter and Topham Beauclerc's) as " Una," Muscipula, Robinetta, Felina, Collina, The Sleeping Girl, Infancy, Lady Catherine Manners, The Reverie, Lord Grantham and his Brothers, Mrs. Sheridan as " St. Cecilia," Maternal Affection (Lady Melbourne and child), Perdita (Mrs. Robinson), Mrs. Abington as " Roxalana," The Age of Innocence, The Infant Academy, The Snake in the Grass — but the list is endless. All collectors of colour-prints know how desirable these Reynolds' stipples are to charm their walls withal, but almost unique must be the collector who can also hang among them Keating's joyous mezzotint of Reynolds's famous portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire and her baby daughter, printed in colours. This is one of those rare examples which, with J. R. Smith's Bacchante and Nature (Lady Hamilton), Henry Meyer's Nature too, some of the Morland prints by the Wards, Smith, and Keating ; S. W. Reynolds's Countess of Oxford, J. R. Smith's Mrs. Bouverie, and a few other important Hoppner prints, C. Turner's Penn Family, after Reynolds, Smith's Synnot Children, after Wright of Derby, and Mrs. Robinson, after Romney, prove that, in the hands of an engraver with a painter's eye, mezzotint could respond to the coloured inks as harmoniously and charmingly as stipple.
Gainsborough — at least, the Gainsborough of unapproachable mastery and inimitable beauty, the greatest glory of our eighteenth century art — seems to have been beyond the colour-printer's ambi- tion. With the exception of the Hobbinol ana Ganderetta (Tomkins), reproduced here, and the Lavinia (Bartolozzi), both of which were painted for Macklin's "British Poets," I doubt if anything important of Gainsborough's was reproduced in coloured stipple, and, of course, these things cannot be said adequately to represent 18
the master ; while, as to mezzotint, W. Whiston Barney's version of Gainsborough's Duchess of Devonshire was, I understand, printed in colours, though impressions are extremely rare. Romney's exquisite art, on the other hand, with its gracious simplicity of beauty, lent itself more readily to the colour-printed copper-plate. Among the numberless tinted engravings with which the small- paned windows of the eighteenth-century print-shops were crowded, none ingratiated themselves more with the connoisseurs than the Romneys. So, in any representative collections of colour-prints to-day, among the finest and most greatly prized examples must be the lovely Emma and Serena (Miss Sneyd) of John Jones, Mrs. Jordan as " The Romp" of Ogborne, Miss Lucy Vernon as " The Seamstress" and Lady Hamilton as " The Spinster " of Cheesman, the beautiful Emma also as a " Bacchante " by Knight, as " Sensibility " by Earlom, and as '•'•Nature" in the two mezzotint versions, just mentioned, by J. R. Smith and Henry Meyer.
Of course the pictorial miniatures of the fashionable Richard Cosway, with their light, bright scheme of draughtsmanship, their dainty tints, their soft and sinuous graces, their delicate decision of character, were exceedingly happy in the stipple-engraver's hands. In colour the prints had a charm of reticence which was peculiarly persuasive. Several of the most engaging were done by the artistic Conde, such as Mrs. Bouverie, Mrs. Tickell, Mrs. Jackson, Mrs. Fitzherbert, Mrs. Robinson as " Melania" and the beautiful youth Horace Beckford ; J. S. Agar did delicately Harriet, Lady Cockerell, as a Gipsy Woman, Lady Heathcote, and Mrs. Duff"; Cardon, with his distinguished touch, engraved the charming Madame Recamier, Schiavonetti the Mrs. Maria Cosway and Michel and Isabella Ogincsy, Bartolozzi the Mrs. Harding, Mariano Bovi the Lady Diana Sinclair, and Charles White the pretty Infancy (Lord Radnor's children). Only less fashionable than Cosway's were the miniatures of Samuel Shelley. In portrait-manner, and in fanciful compo- sition, Reynolds was his model and inspiration, but the result, in spite of high finish and a certain charm of elegance, was a very little Reynolds, for Shelley's drawing generally left something for criticism. Naturally, miniature-painting found happy interpreta- tion in coloured stipple, and Shelley was fortunate in his engravers, especially Caroline Watson, with her exquisite delicacy and brilliantly minute finish, and William Nutter, who was equally at home with the styles of many painters.
An artist whose dainty and original manner oi portraiture, enjoying a great vogue in its day, was also particularly well suited to the tinted stipple was John Downman. A man of interesting personality and individual talent, he began, as a pupil and favourite
'9
of Benjamin West, to take himself seriously and ambitiously as an " historical painter," to borrow a definition of the period. Indeed, after he had won a fashionable reputation for the singular charm and style of his portraits, and become an A.R.A., we find a contemporary critic of the Royal Academy exhibition of 1796 confessing surprise at seeing a scriptural subject painted with such exceptional care and simplicity of expression by " a hand accustomed to delineate the polished and artificial beauties of a great metropolis." But it was to these portrait-drawings that the artist owed his popularity, and these and the engravings of them, neglected for three-quarters of a century, are the things that to-day make Downman a name to conjure with among collectors. His portraits, exceptionally happy in their sug- gestion of spontaneous impression and genial intuition of character, were drawn with pencil, or with finely-pointed black chalk or char- coal. The light tinting of hair, cheeks, lips and eyes, with the more definite colouring, in the case of the female portraits, of an invariable sash and ribbon on a white dress, was effected in a manner peculiar to himself. Instead of the usual way, the colour was put on the back of the drawing, and showed through the specially thin paper he used with softened effect. How he happened upon this method of tinting his drawings is rather a romantic story. Seized by the press- gang and taken to sea, about the beginning of the American War of Independence, he was kept abroad for nearly two years, and when, at last, he managed to return to England he found his wife and children in a state of destitution at Cambridge. There his happy gift of portraiture brought him a livelihood. One day he left by chance a drawing face downward upon the table, and one of his children began daubing some pink paint on what was seemingly a blank piece of paper. Downman, finding his drawing with daubs upon the back, perceived delicate tints upon the face, and so he looked with a dis- coverer's eye, and thought the thing out ; and the novel way he had accidentally found of transparently tinting his drawings proved his way to prosperity. It introduced him into the houses of the socially great, to the royal palace even, and the fashionable beauties of the day, as well as those who would have liked to be fashionable beauties, and the favourite actresses, all readily offered their countenances to Downman's charming pencil, knowing it would lend them the air of happy young girls. Of course there was a willing market for prints from these gladsome and novel presentations of faces which the people seemed never to tire of; so among the collector's prizes to-day are the Mrs. Siddons by Tomkins, the Duchess of Devonshire and the Viscountess Duncannon by Bartolozzi, Lady Elizabeth Foster by Caroline Watson, Miss Farren (Countess of Derby) by Collyer, and Frances Kemb/e by John Jones.
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The social reign of the Court beauties lasted over a long period, and survived many changes of fashion, from the macaroni absurdities and monstrous headdresses to the simple muslin gown and the straw " picture " hat. The days of " those goddesses the Gunnings " seemed to have come again when the three rival Duchesses, Devon- shire, Rutland, and Gordon, were the autocrats of " the ton" ruling the modish world not only with the sovereignty of their beauty, elegance, wit and charm, but with the fascinating audacity of their innovations and the outvieing heights of their feathers.
" Come, Paris, leave your hills and dells, You'll scorn your dowdy goddesses, If you once see our English belles, For all their gowns and boddtces. Here's Juno Devon all sublime ; Minerva Gordon's wit and eyes ; Sweet Rutland, Venus in her prime ; You'll die before you give the prize."
So sang the enthusiastic poet ; though the " satirical rogues " who wrote squibs and drew caricatures were not quite so kind, and a writer in the " Morning Post," with a whimsical turn for statistics, actually drew up a " Scale of Bon Ton," showing, in a round dozen of the leading beauties of the day the relative propor- tions in which they possessed beauty, figure, elegance, wit, sense, grace, expression, sensibility, and principles. It is an amusing list, in which we find the lovely Mrs. Crewe, for instance, credited with almost the maximum for beauty, but no grace at all ; the Countess of Jersey with plenty of beauty, grace and expression, but neither sense nor principles ; the Duchess of Devonshire with more prin- ciples than beauty, and more figure than either ; her Grace or. Gordon with her elegance at zero, and the Countess of Barrymorc supreme in all the feminine attractions.
When personal gossip about these fashionable beauties was rampant upon every tongue ; when the first appearance of one of them in a new mode was enough to ensure her being enviously or admiringly mobbed in the Mall, naturally the portrait-prints in colour responded to the general curiosity. But there was a public which, having other pictorial fancies than portraiture, even pretty faces could not satisfy without the association of sentiment and story. So there were painters who, recognising this, furnished the engravers with the popular subject-picture. It was well for their link with posterity that they did so, for how many of them would be remembered to-day were it not for these prints ? One of the most prominent was William Redmore Bigg, who won a great
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popularity by painting, with the imagination ot a country parson, simple incidents of rustic and domestic life, charged with the most obvious sentiment. The people took these pictures to their hearts, and they were a gold-mine to the engravers. As to their artistic qualities we have little opportunity of judging to-day except through the familiar prints. These are innumerable, and they all have a conventional prettiness. In colours the most pleasing, perhaps, are the Saturday Morning of Burke, the Saturday Evening and Sunday Morning of Nutter ; Dulce Domum and Black Monday of John Jones ; Romps and Truants of William Ward ; Shelling Peas and The Hop Picker of Tomkins ; College Breakfast, College Supper, and Rural Misfortunes of Ogborne, The Sailor Boy's Return and The Shipwrecked Sailor Boy of Gaugain.
Then there was William Hamilton, a prolific and prevalent artist. Sent to Italy in his youth by Robert Adam, the architect, he returned with a sort of Italianate style of storied design, classical, historical, allegorical, conventional ; but, happily, he developed a light, pretty and decorative manner of treating simple familiar subjects, which was pleasing alike to engravers and public. The charming plates from Thomson's Seasons, engraved by Tomkins and Bartolozzi ; the graceful set of The Months by Bartolozzi and Gardiner ; the idyllic Morning and Evening by Tomkins, with Noon and Night by Delattre, the numerous designs of children at play, such as Summer's Amusement, Winter's Amusement, How Smooth, Brother ! feel again, The Castle in Danger, by Gaugain ; Breaking-up and The Masquerade by Nutter ; Blind Man's Buff and Sea-Saw, Children feeding Fowls, Children playing with a Bird, by Knight ; Playing at Hot Cockles, and others by Bartolozzi : these are among the prettiest colour-prints of the period and the most valued to-day — especially The Months, Hamilton's work just synchronised with the popular vogue for the coloured stipple, and without those prints how much should we know of an artist so esteemed in his day and so industrious ? One might almost ask the same of Francis Wheatley, whose popularity also survives but through the engraver's medium. It was only after his return from Dublin, where he might have continued to the end as a prosperous portrait-painter had not Dublin society discovered that the lady it had welcomed as Mrs. Wheatley was somebody else's wife, that Wheatley began painting those idealised urban, rustic, and domestic subjects, which gave him such contemporary vogue and led to his prompt admission among the Royal Academicians. Had he never painted anything else he would always be remembered by his thirteen Cries of London, published by Colnaghi at intervals between 1793 and 1797, and so familiar to us through the accomplished copper-plates of the Schiavonetti brothers, Vendramini, Gaugain 22
and Cardon, though, alas! so wretchedly hackneyed through the innumerable paltry reproductions. But what a fascinating, inter- esting set of prints it is ! How redolent of old lavender ! How clean, serene, and country-town-like the London streets appear ; how sweet and fragrant they seem to smell ; how idyllic the life in them ! As one looks at these prints one can almost fancy one hears the old cries echoing through those quiet Georgian streets. Perhaps the London streets of 1795 were not quite so dainty as Wheatley's sympathetic pencil makes them look to have been. But, remember, that in those days lovely ladies in muslin frocks and printed calicoes of the new fashion, who had sat to Reynolds, and whose portraits were in the print-shop windows, were still being carried in the leisurely sedan-chair, and there were many pretty airs and graces to be seen ; while in those streets, too, the youthful Turner was seeing atmosphere and feeling his graphic way to immortality, and young Charles Lamb was walking about, " lending his heart with usury " to all the humanity he saw in those very streets which these Wheatley prints keep so fragrant. Of the numberless other colour-prints after Wheatley perhaps the most valued to-day are, in mezzotint, The Disaster, The Soldiers Return and The Sailors Return, by William Ward, The Smitten Clown, by S. W. Reynolds ; in stipple, the Summer and Winter of the Bartolozzi "Season" set, of which Westall did the Spring and Autumn ; The Cottage Door and The School Door, by Keating ; Setting out to the Fair and The Fairings, by J. Eginton, and the pretty Little Turkey Cock by Delattre, all admirable examples of the kind of art that made Wheatley's reputation.
The pleasant uninspired rusticities and sentimentalities of Henry Singleton were so popular as to engage the abilities of some of the leading engravers, who must certainly have made the best of them for the colour-printer, since Singleton's colouring was accounted poor even in his own day. Among the most taking examples we have Nutter's pretty pair The Farmyard and The Ale-house Door, Burke's Vicar of the Parish, Eginton's Ballad- Singer, Knight's British Plenty and Scarcity in India, some children subjects by Meadows and Benedetti, and E. Scott's Lingo and Cowslip, which shows that genuinely comic actor, John Edwin, and that audaciously eccentric and adventurous actress, Mrs. Wells, in O'Keefe's notorious Hay- market farce, "The Agreeable Surprise," a group which Downman also pictured, though with infinitely more spirit and character.
Subjects dealing with childhood were still greatly in demand, but the public now wanted the children to be more grown-up, and more mundane than the cupids and cherubim of Cipriani, or the Baby Loves and Bacchanals of Lady Diana Beauclerc, so admired by Horace Walpole, and so much flattered by the engravings of Barto-
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lozzi, Tomkins and Bovi. The prolific Richard Westall was not behind his brother Academicians in adapting his inspiration to the market, so, combining rural fancy, as required, with the sentiment of child-life, he made many a parlour look homelier with his pleasant, plausible picturings. When the charm of the engraving glossed over the weaknesses, and colour-printing added its enticing advocacy under Westall's personal direction, we can find some justification for their popularity in such prints as Nutter's The Rosebud, The Sensitive Plant, and Cupid Sleeping ; Josi's Innocent Mischief, Innocent Revenge, and Schiavonetti's The Ghost, a pretty but unequal companion to The Mask of Reynolds.
Although at this productive period of the colour-print William Blake's "Songs of Innocence" were issued, with their sweetly pictured pages of uniquely printed colour, and their magic sim- plicity of poetry, every page having " the smell of April," as Swinburne said, it does not appear that they exercised any imagina- tive influence on the artists who were producing children-subjects for the popular prints. Yet certainly poetic sentiment informed the grace and charm which were the characteristics of Thomas Stothard, whose prodigiously industrious and productive pencil dominated in a great measure the book-illustration of the day. Five thousand designs are credited to him, and Blake himself engraved some of these in stipple; but our present concern with Stothard is in such engaging colour-prints as Knight's Fifth of November, Feeding Chickens, The Dunce Disgraced, The Scholar Rewarded, Coming from School, and Buffet the Bear, Runaway Love, Rosina, Flora, and the popular Sweet Poll of Plymouth, Nutter's First Bite, and Just Breeched; Strutt's Nursd at Home and Nurs'd Abroad, and others of more adult interest too numerous to mention.
Another popular favourite with the buyers of colour-prints was the Rev. Matthew William Peters, the only clergyman who ever wore the dignities of the Royal Academy, though, as a matter of fact, it was only after he had attained full academic honours that he took holy orders. Eventually, after some successful years with portraiture and fancy subjects, he resigned his R. A. 'ship ; but it must be said that while he was painting for popularity there was a good deal of the " world and the flesh" about his pictures, albeit his was a very winsome view of both, to wit, the seductively pretty Sylvia and Lydia, by Dickinson ; White's Love and The Enraptured Touth ; John Peter Simon's Much Ado about Nothing; Hogg's Sophia, and J. R. Smith's The Chanters. The Three Holy Children in Simon's print, however, shows Peters more as we may imagine him in the light of a " converted " Royal Academician — converted to be chap- lain to George " Florizel," Prince of Wales. 24
John Russell, whose gracious portraits in pastel appealed to fashion with the special charm of their uncommon medium, also found happy interpretation on the copper-plate, especially from the delicate graver of P. W. Tomkins. The most attractive examples in colours are the charming Maria, Maternal Love (Mrs. Morgan and child), and Children Feeding Chickens, Colly er's Mrs. Fitzherbert is also one of the most desirable among the numerous Russell colour-prints. When the engravings of Charles Ansell's Death of a Racehorse in 1784 had an immense sale, none presumably would have believed that, a hundred and twenty-five years later, collectors would hold him in high regard, not for the horses that made him famous, but for four dainty little drawings of domestic " interiors," thoroughly representative of their period, preserved in P. W. Tomkins's stipple prints, especially charming and rare in colours. Tomkins engraved other things of Ansell's, Knight also ; but the set of The English Fireside and The French Fireside, The English Dressing-Room and The French Dressing-Room (the two latter reproduced here), if really fine in colour, must be a prize in the choicest collection. As these prints give us intimate glimpses into the home-life of the "smart set" of the period, so, thanks to the pictorial sense of that vivacious artist Edward Dayes, we are able to see just how the fashionable world comported itself in the parks. An Airing in Hyde Park and The Promenade in St. yameis Park, the one engraved by Gaugain, the other by Soiron, are alive with contemporary social and pictorial interest, and in colours they are rare to seek. Social interest, too, flavours chiefly the name of Henry William Bunbury. Classed gene- rally with the caricaturists, among whom, even in that period of forcible and unrestricted caricature, he was certainly one of the most spontaneously humorous as he was the most refined, he had, like his brother caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson, his days of grace. In those days he did, not with flawless drawing perhaps, but with a vivid feeling for beauty, some charming things, which the engravers turned to good account in colour. Among these are Morning Employments by Tomkins, The Song and The Dance by Bartolozzi, The Modern Graces by Scott, and Black-eyed Susan by Dickinson.
From his popular task of whipping with genial graphic satire the social follies and foibles of the day, Bunbury's pencil would on occasion "lightly turn to thoughts of love," as in A Tale of Love, so artistically engraved by J. K. Sherwin ; and it was in this mood that his discourse on love and romance would somewhat shock Fanny Burney. She did not think it quite nice in a Court equerry, who was also a husband and a father, to dilate so rhapsodically on such topics ; but he adored "The Sorrows of Werther," which she told him she could not read ; and, after all, was he not the devoted husband or
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Catherine Horneck, Goldsmith's "Little Comedy" ? Rowlandson had not, of course, Bunbury's culture and refinement, but with all his rollicking Rabelaisian humour, he had faultless draughtsmanship with, when he chose, a daintiness of touch and a magic grace of curve. Among his countless coloured plates, however, those that can be accepted as true colour-prints can be numbered almost on one hand. Opera Boxes and the interesting and vivid Vauxhall, spiritedly engraved by Pollard, and capitally aquatinted by Francis Jukes, were not, as generally supposed, actually printed in colours ; but The Syrens and Narcissa, both things of voluptuous charm, are etched and stippled and veritably colour-printed in part. With very few exceptions, Rowlandson's prints were only etched by him, then aquatinted and coloured by other hands, he supplying a tinted drawing.
When the mantle of the fashionable portrait-painter had slipped naturally from the shoulders of Reynolds to those of John Hoppner, and the older beauties were not as young as they used to be, and a new set of beautiful young women had meanwhile grown up, the curious public called for the new faces. So Hoppner, already finely interpreted by the best mezzotint men, now readily allied himself with Charles Wilkin, a portrait-painter in oil and miniature of some repute, who, as a very talented and individual stipple-engraver, had won his spurs with Sir Joshua, notably in his rich engraving of the famous Lady Cockburn and her Children. The new venture was A Select Series of Portraits of Ladies of Rank and Fashion. These, ch arming and desirable in monochrome, are delightful, but very rare, in colour. Seven of the portraits were done by Hoppner, and show him in most gracious vein : these are Viscountesses St. Asaph and Andover, Countess of Euston, the new Duchess of Rutland, Lady Charlotte Campbell, Lady Langham, and Lady Charlotte Duncombe. The other three are from the spirited pencil of the engraver himself — Ladies Gertrude Villiers, Catherine Howard and Gertrude Fitz- patrick, who as a child had sat to Reynolds for his Collina. Hoppner's Hon. Mrs. Paget as Psyche is also a charming coloured stipple, engraved by Henry Meyer. The colour-printed mezzotint seems to have found exceptional favour with Hoppner, for in that medium we have the lovely Countess of Oxford — a choice example — and Mrs. Whitbread, by S. W. Reynolds ; J. R. Smith's Sophia Western and Mrs. Bouierie, with an engaging suggestion of pastel ; Charles Turner's Lady Cholmondeley and Child; John Jones's Mrs. "Joraan as " Hippolyta" ; John Young's Lady Charlotte Greville, Mrs. Hoppner as " Eliza," Mrs. Orby Hunter, the Godsall children (The Setting Sun), and Lady Lambton and Children (one of them Lawrence's Master Lambtori) ; William Ward's pretty Salad Girl, Mrs. Benis;ell, and The Daughters 26
of Sir Thomas Frank/ana, so well known in monochrome, but so exceedingly rare in colour ; James Ward's Juvenile Retirement (the Douglas children) ; Children Bathing (Hoppner's own) ; Mrs. Hibbert, and the graceful Miranda (Mrs. Michael Angelo Taylor), of which only one impression is known in colours, exquisite in quality, that in the very choice collection of Mr. Frederick Behrens.
Although Hoppner's pre-eminence among the portrait-painters was so long established, it was seriously challenged in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1790 by the portrait of An Actress from the brush of a painter only twenty-one years of age, who was destined to preside over the Academy and become the most fashionable painter of his day. This was Thomas Lawrence, and the portrait was that of the popular and beautiful Miss Elizabeth Farren — Countess of Derby seven years later — in her fur-lined white cloak and muff, which was engraved by Charles Knight, with finishing touches by Bartolozzi, who signed it, and is now one of the most desired of colour-prints, as it is one of the most constantly reproduced.
The acknowledged beauties, however, did not monopolise the " placidness of content or consciousness of superiority," which Dr. Johnson, so Johnsonianly, held was necessary to " expand the human face to its full expression." Happily there were artists to see everywhere dainty and charming women who could be attractively pictured with the artistic sense of nature and actuality, perhaps even more picturesquely for not being able always to keep their temperaments out of their faces and attitudes. One of these artists was also an eminent engraver, and at the same time an extensive printseller and publisher, with always one eye to his art and the other to the main chance. John Raphael Smith loomed very large in the London print-world of the later eighteenth cen- tury, because he had not only the artistic ability to do the thing popularly wanted, but also the commercial intuition as to what would be likely to please the public in its varying fancies. A master of mezzotint, and monarch among the translators of Gains- borough, Reynolds and Romney, he used with lighter touch the same medium for engraving many of his own vivacious picturings of contemporary social scenes, with their manners and fashions very much alive. A generous, convivial, cheerful liver himself, filling every hour with the activities of art, commerce and pleasure, J. R. Smith had the vivid pictorial eye for what was gay and pleasing in the life around him. Also he possessed an instinctive sense of fashion. Therefore, in the numerous attractive drawings of pretty women in varied attitudes of busy idleness, we get a more real impression of the fashions of the passing hour than even the stately canvasses of Sir Joshua could give us with all their artistic
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defiance of the modistes. Smith would engrave these himself in stipple suggesting crayon effects, with the original artist's freedom, and the mezzotinter's broad handling of tones ; or he would entrust them to other engravers. Being a painter, he used colour on his plates judiciously, and among the most highly-prized colour-prints of the period J. R. Smith's spirited engravings hold quite an individual place. To name, perhaps, the most characteristic : A Loisir; Black, Brown and Fair; Maid; Wife; Widow, and What you Will; A Christmas Holiday; Flirtilla and Narcissa; The Fortune Tellers; The Mirror, Serena and Flirtilla; Thoughts on a Single Life, with its companion, Thoughts on Matrimony, engraved quite as well by William Ward, at whose hands The Widow's Tale makes a charming appearance in coloured mezzotint. In this medium also The Promenade at Carlisle House enjoys an elusive existence. Then there are Smith's Lecture on Gadding and The Moralist, stippled by Nutter, and his Credulous Lady and the Astrologer, by Simon. But not even his own designs inspired his mezzotint-scraper to finer results than the splendid Almeria (Mrs. Meynott), after Opie, or his stipple-graver to surer beauty than in his Mrs. Mills, after Engelheart, or his Snake in the Grass, after Reynolds, or those charming and familiar Morland prints Delia in Town and Delia in the Country, Rustic Employment and Rural Amusement, and the Letitia set, of course in their original form.
J. R. Smith's was a dominating personality, and his influence on his talented pupil, William Ward, was very strong. He taught him by example, paying him the compliment of engraving in mezzotint and charmingly colour-printing his pupil's felicitous, Morlandish picture, The Visit to the Grandfather. He certainly made him work, and the results show not only in the innumerable fine plates which Ward produced in mezzotint and stipple after various painters, but in his own dainty drawings of charming femininity. These, such as the well-known Louisa, Alinda, Lucy of Leinster, Almeida, The Soliloquy, Hesitation, Louisa Mildmay, and The Cyprian Votary, were all translated to the copper with a verve and charm, produced by an exact understanding of the artistic economies of the stippled crayon manner, unsurpassed, perhaps not equalled, by any other engraver. When finely tinted, they show the colour-printer's craft at its daintiest, and their collector's taste at its highest. In the same genre are Private Amusement (" Reflection ") and Public Amusement ("Temptation"), engraved by Ward after Ramberg — a favourite pair. But very different, of course, in cha- racter are his fine mezzotints of the rural pictures of his talented, irascible younger brother James. Of these, perhaps, the best prints in colours are The Citizen's Retreat, Selling Rabbits, Compassionate 28
Children, The Haymakers, Outside of a Country Ale-house, Summer and Winter, and the well-known Vegetable Market, the companion to which, A Poultry Market, was finely engraved by James Ward him- self, whose own attractive plates of The Rocking Horse and Rustic Felicity and A Cottager going to Market and A Cottager returning from Market, have also been printed in colours. William Ward's popular fame as an engraver, however, will doubtless rest mainly on his innumerable transcripts in stipple and mezzotint of the pictures of his brother-in-law, that natural artist, that dissolute, happy-go-lucky vagabond, that homely, facile painter of genius, George Morland.
In exploiting Morland as he did, John Raphael Smith proved . his unerring instinct for the right popular thing. He was answering an unconscious call for artistic virility and freshness of vision. The prints of the widest public appeal, however simple their intentions in rusticity or domesticity of subject, were merely repeating pictorial conventions, illustrating stereotyped sentiments. Bigg, Hamilton, Wheatley, Singleton, Westall, they were all doing pleasing, pretty things enough, and the public were buying the prints, and hanging them on the walls of their homes, without even suspecting that Nature as the true inspiration of art had but little to do with all this picture-making. Then came Morland, with his natural instinct for the true, the simple picture, his free and facile art, his charming wizardry of the palette, his happy, unaffected realism. The others had been idealising the commonplace ; Morland knew that nothing is commonplace if seen and treated with relative truth. J. R. Smith saw, both as artist and prosperous publisher of prints, that here at last was a virile genius that could charm the people's love of pictures to a clearer understanding of beauty through a true pictorial vision of nature.
It was a curious coincidence that just about the same time an obscure publisher in Kilmarnock had given the Scotch lovers of song the means of recognising in the natural lyric note of Burns a reviving impulse for English poetry. Here in Morland was a Burns on canvas, a Burns who sang with his paint-brush, who could put the moods of Green Grow the Rashes, O, or My Nannie, O, or The Jolly Beggars, into enduring pigments as the poet had put them into immortal song. And Morland's simple pictures are classic to-day, because in them, irrespective of subject, is the painter's true poetry of form and colour.
Always susceptible to the ready comradeship, in the first conscious- ness of his brilliant easy powers, with his artistic ambitions bound up in his joy of living, Morland came quickly under the influence of Smith's convivial yet energising personality. The publisher, urged by the public's clamorous response, stimulated him to a prolific
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activity, and, with such engravers as Smith himself and the Wards to interpret him with masterly understanding and sympathy, and all the other engravers of note eager to do the same, Morland soon commanded the market — or, at least, his exploiters did. It seemed that Morland could do everything the public appeared to want, so, before he developed into the Morland exclusively of the stable and the farmyard and picturesque vagabondage, he challenged the popular genre painters on their own ground, and beat them with the magic simplicity of nature. Could the domestic Bigg do any- thing in his own line as charmingly life-like as A Visit to the Child at Nurse and A Visit to the Boarding School ? Look at William Ward's mezzotints of these pictures in colour, and then compare with their sweet actuality of scene and sentiment the same engraver's version of Bigg's The Birth of an Heir, with its scenic posturing and senti mentality. Then, what colour-prints of children could Hamilton or Stothard ever have designed to compare, for true suggestion of the bright buoyancy of childhood, with such gems as Ward's mezzotints Chilaren Birds-nesting, Juvenile Navigators, Blind Mans Buff, The Kite Entangled ; Keating's Playing at Soldiers, and Nurse and Children in a Field ; Dayes' Children Nutting, and Tomkins's stipple Children Feeding Goats. Morland enjoyed to let the children of the neigh- bourhood play and romp about his studio, and thus he could paint them naturally, with no self-consciousness on their parts and happy sympathy on his.
No wonder all the engravers were agog to make copper-plates from his quickly finished paintings. That charming spontaneity of picturesque impression, with luminous harmony of tones, which distinguishes all Morland's pictures, even those painted in his least repu- table days of hand-to-mouth living, is reflected in the best engravings of his multitudinous works. Of those printed in colours one may attempt a selection from the point of view of especially fine quality and rarity. Among the stipples, therefore, must be named again J. R. Smith's Rustic Employment and Rural Amusement, Delia in Town and Delia in the Country, and the famous Story of Letitia series — Domestic Happiness, The Elopement, The Virtuous Parent, Dressing for the Masquerade, The Tavern Door, and The Fair Penitent (re-issued in 1 8 1 1 with the ample costumes of 1786 incongruously altered to the current slim Empire fashion, upsetting, of course, the pictorial balance of design). Then there are Constancy (Mrs. Ward), Variety (Mrs. Morland), and Morning ; Thoughts on Amusement for the Evening — a very rare oval — by William Ward ; Louisa, a pair of large ovals, The Lass of Livingstone, and HOIV Sweet to meet with Love's Return, the famous Dancing Dogs, and Guinea Pigs, all by T. Gaugain (the last pair re-issued by Phillipe) ; The Tea Garden and St. James's Park, by F. D. Soiron ; The Squire's
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Door and The Farmer s Door, by Duterreau ; The Farmer's Visit to his Married Daughter in Town, by W. Bond, and The Visit Returned in the Country, by Nutter ; Industry and Idleness (Mrs. Morland), by Knight, and The Fair Seducer, and The Discovery, by E. J. Dumee.
Many of Morland's pictures on the mezzotint plates seem to have justified the colour-printer, but innumerable Morland prints were coloured by hand entirely or in part, and it is said that J. R. Smith employed his young pupil Joseph Mallord William Turner upon this work. I doubt, however, if even Mr. Rawlinson could detect Turner's hand upon a Morland print, therefore we must be content to distinguish the finest and rarest of the mezzo- tints actually printed in colours. To those already named we may add The Angling Party by Keating, and The Anglers Repast by William Ward, to whom we are also indebted for The Coquette at her Toilet, The Pledge of Love (" Contemplating the Miniature ") ; Contemplation ("Caroline of Lichfield "), very rare, and exquisitely suggestive of the original in Mr. Thomas Barratt's wonderful Morland collection ; Cottagers, Travellers, The Thatcher, First of September — Morning, First of September — Evening, Inside of a Country Ale-house, The Public-House Door, The Effects of Extravagance and Idleness, The Turnpike Gate, The Sportsman's Return, and The Farmer's Stable, Morland's National Gallery masterpiece ; The Return from Market, a beautiful thing, and Feeding the Pigs, by J. R. Smith ; Sunset: a View in Leicestershire, by James Ward; Summer and Winter by W. Barnard ; Morning, or the Benevolent Sportsman ; Evening, or the Sportsman's Return, by J. Grozer, and Selling Cherries and Shelling Peas, a very rare pair, etched and mezzotinted by E. Bell. Then there is " The Deserter " set, by Keating, Enlisting a Recruit, Recruit deserted and detected hiding in his wife's room, The Deserter handcuffed and conveyed to a court martial, The Deserter pardoned and restored to his family; a set of pictures studied with realism resulting from one of Morland's characteristic adventures, possible, perhaps, only in the eighteenth century. Snipe Shooting, one of a set of four, by G. Catton, Jun., must not be forgotten ; it is of particular interest as showing aquatint in effective combination with stipple and etching. How important a place Morland fills in the history of eighteenth-century prints, one realises only when, looking over a collection like Mr. Thomas Barratt's at Hampstead, where the colour-prints are to be seen in their multitude, one attempts to note down a few gems, and finds a long list has quickly accumulated.
III.
Bartolozzi had come to England as an acknowledged master of line-engraving, rival even of the splendid Sir Robert Strange, and
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the spontaneous charm and fluent beauty of his incomparable etchings after Guercino, and the lovely lines of his Clytie and his Silence after Annibale Carracci, had simply astonished the connoisseurs. His accomplished and prolific etching-point and graver carried an un- accustomed grace and delicacy into many a channel of the engraving industry. The benefit concert-ticket of the humblest musician was engraved as finely and brilliantly as the diploma of the Royal Academy, while the book-illustration of the day was largely en- riched by the easy charm of his touch. Then, as we have seen, the little art of stipple came almost like a fairy-gift to his ready hand, so opportune was the moment. Bartolozzi's sweet caressing sense of beauty found inevitable expression through the gentle possibilities of the medium, and the public became eagerly responsive. With the encouragement of a popularity daily on the increase, and the appreciation of his brother artists, he produced those charming stipple-prints which are among the masterpieces of the method, and make, for many people, the name of Bartolozzi synonymous with " beautiful old colour-prints."
He was still the true artist, doing worthy things, interpreting beauty with an elusive magic of charm all his own. Pupils flocked to his studio ; among them engravers of repute, who realised that the new and easy stipple was going to prove more remunerative than the laborious line-method, or even mezzotint. Pupils, too, there were who learnt from Bartolozzi so well, that they equalled their master while yet in their pupilage, as he admitted, either with generous praise, or by the ambiguous method of signing their plates with his own name. Unfortunately for his reputation this was a practice that grew upon him, for, since the name of Bartolozzi had a distinct market value, he appended it sometimes to prints quite unworthy of its bearer. For the modern collector this, of course, involves frequent snares and delusions.
Bartolozzi has been called the Achilles of eighteenth-century engraving, and certainly his productiveness and his influence were on quite an heroic scale ; nor was the vulnerable heel wanting to complete the simile. This was his spendthrift love of epicurean living, which gradually dulled his artistic conscience until it made no attempt to distinguish between the demands of art and a commercial popularity. Luxurious in his habits, free with his hospitality, gene- rous to a fault with his purse, he looked with a satisfied eye on the ever-expanding market for the coloured stipple-print, which prac- tically he had created, or, at least, auspicated with beautiful offerings. And as he saw that the public would now accept almost anything tendered to it in the name of a colour-print, however meretricious the design or poor the engraving, he seems to have sacrificed artistic
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scruples to the constant need of money-making. If his purse was a sieve, the popular craze for colour-prints must keep on filling it. So Bartolozzi, the great and famous engraver, whose sure draughtsman- ship had long been as a leaning-staff to the printsellers and many an artist, actually encouraged vain but incompetent amateurs, several of them quite pleasant ladies with pretty ideas, to make feeble, mawkish designs, which perhaps he would correct in drawing, before giving them to often half-fledged engravers, and turning them upon the market in poorly, hurriedly stippled plates, specious in coloured inks.
As his best pupils, Tomkins, Cheesman, Schiavonetti, Ogbornc, Marcuard, left him, and set up as independent engravers, Barto- lozzi's studio, with its innumerable workers, gradually developed into little more than a factory for turning out popular prints as rapidly as possible. This hurry for the market seems, however, to have affected not only Bartolozzi and his engravers, but the printselling world generally. The art critic of the " Monthly Mirror " for 1796, while blaming the printsellers as the cause, protested against the " slovenly and imperfect manner " in which so many prints were being turned out, declaring, moreover, that this was influencing the painters to an indifference about the execution of such works as were intended for prints, making them " contented to satisfy the print or bookseller with the mere effect of light and shade."
Earlier than this, however, Sir Robert Strange, who hated Bar- tolozzi, and for whom line-engraving alone represented the dignity of the engraver's art, had predicted a sort of artistic debacle through the popularity of stipple-engraving. " From the nature of the opera- tion," he wrote, "and the extreme facility with which it is executed, it has got into the hands of every boy, of every printseller in town, of every manufacturer of prints, however ignorant and unskilful. I call them manufacturers, because the general run of such pro- ductions does not in reality merit the appellation of works of art and must ultimately tend to depreciate the fine arts in general, to glut the public, and to vitiate the growing taste of the nation. This art, if so it may be called, is in itself extremely limited, admits of little variety, and is susceptible of no improvement." Naturally, the great line-engraver, who had worked for his fame through long arduous years, was vexed to see the very effects of soft flesh tones, which he produced to admiration with laborious mastery of point and graver, rendered so easily by stipple, and even more popu- larly appreciated. Yet there was a good deal of truth in his protest. The public was in time glutted, not with finely engraved colour-prints, but with inferior stippling of weak designs, much of it crudely coloured by hand, or printed with no sense of art ; but the fine arts in general were not in the least depreciated through such things.
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And now the charming little art has, at its old-time best, found enthusiastic lovers again, while the noble beauty of line-engraving is to-day appreciated by only the limited few. If Strange could but re-visit the glimpses of Christie's, it would more than astonish him to see there none of his own superb line-engravings after the great Italian masters, but to hear the keen bidding for his old rival Bartolozzi's best colour-prints after Reynolds, or the Downman Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Duncannon, the Cipriani infants, Contentment, Friendship, the Hamilton Months, or Miss Benwell's St. James's and St. Giles's Beauties, or the Orange Girl.
Not a little surprised would Strange be if also he could hear how the modern collector values the work of Bartolozzi's most distinguished pupils in that same art which he in his day regarded so contemptuously. Of these, Peltro William Tomkins was Barto- lozzi's own favourite. "He is my son in the art," said the master, always generous with praise of good work; "he can do all I can in this way, and I hope he will do more." Tomkins inherited the graphic tendency from his father, William Tomkins, A.R.A., a landscape painter ; but, of course, it was from Bartolozzi he learnt the sweetness and grace of draughtsmanship which distinguish his copper-plates, whether in the engraving of his own pretty fanciful designs of children, such as He Sleeps, Innocent Play, The Wanton Trick, or the pictures of other artists. His close-grained stippling, too, had that same soft and tender rotundity of tone we find in the authentic works of the master, and of course it was peculiarly adapt- able to the simple tints of the eighteenth-century colour-printer. A few of Tomkins's most attractive prints will be found among the illustrations to this volume, others I have named in speaking of the painters. The extent of his work was enormous, and it always had charm ; so the collector can choose many appealing things without exhausting the list of Tomkins's capital prints. Engraver to the Queen and drawing-master to the Princesses, he seems to have been a favourite with the lady artists and amateurs, whose drawings frequently employed his graver, such as Julia Conyers, Princess Elizabeth, Lady Templetown, Lady Edward Bentinck, Miss Drax, and, of course, they all demanded colour as a sort of prescriptive right. Among his more serious work were some good plates after the old masters, as those in Tresham's "British Gallery of Pictures," rather brilliant in colour. On a Virgin and Child ana1 St. John, after Raphael, engraved and published by Tomkins at Fulham in 1789, I find " Printed in colour by C. Floquet," which suggests an amicable understanding between engraver and printer ; for the colourist was rarely credited with his share in the old colour-prints.
Thomas Cheesman's engravings have at their best the tree and
34
easy charm ot the artist accustomed to express his own conceptions. In his youth he lodged with Hogarth's widow, through whose influence he was entrusted with the engraving of The Last Stake. The work must have been a liberal education. Stippling, strengthened with etching, he learnt from Bartolozzi, and how he excelled in it may be seen in such charming prints as Romney's Spinster and Seamstress, Angelica Kauffman's Marchioness of Toivnshend and Child (Love and Beauty], Reynolds's Reverie, his own Maternal Affection, and others of his graceful designs. Robert S. Marcuard was another of Barto- lozzi's best pupils, and his fine engraving of his master's portrait, after Reynolds, has a richness of tone and distinction of character rarely seen in stipple-plates, but found also in Marcuard's transcripts of others among Reynolds's male portraits. He appears to have strengthened his stippling of shadows with etching to a more than usual extent, a practice suggested, perhaps, by his work in mezzotint.
Several noteworthy prints by Charles Knight have already been named. He was quite a valuable engraver of remarkable industry, and so studiously did he assimilate the Bartolozzi methods, while lacking only the master's inimitable delicacy, that he could be trusted to execute important plates which needed but Bartolozzi's own finishing touches to make them worthy of his name. These the master would unhesitatingly sign for publication, as in the case of the famous Miss Farren after Lawrence. The brilliant etching, with all the preliminary work, was Knight's ; yet it is known as Barto- lozzi's print. But to the various acknowledged prints of Knight's already mentioned one may add, as good examples in colours, Cupid Disarmed, and Cupid's Revenge after Miss Benwell, and The Valentine and The Wedding Ring after Ansell.
John Ogborne and William Nutter learnt line-engraving from that interesting engraver and valuable antiquarian, Joseph Strutt, a pupil himself of Ryland ; then they went to Bartolozzi to acquire the stipple-method, through which they both achieved distinction, Nutter adding to Bartolozzi's teaching the broader influence of J. R. Smith's. John Keyse Sherwin's natural gifts were influenced to an easy grace in Bartolozzi's studio, and we owe to him a few charm- ing stipples in colour; but his brief and brilliant career, ruined by vanity, dandyism, and fashionable favour, belongs to the story ot line-engraving, in which it fills a lively and interesting page. Another talented individuality among the group of Bartolozzi's disciples was Edmund Scott, who did some very engaging stipples in colour, of which a few have been named. His work was much favoured by the popular painters.
Naturally Bartolozzi's European reputation, and rumours of the rapidity with which money could be made by the stipple method,
35
attracted to his studio a number of pupils from the Continent, where, till the war began in 1793, there was a very large and constant trade in English prints. Several fine collections, by the way, were made at the time, and some of these are still intact, notably one in Weimar. Among the foreign pupils were, of course, several Italians, of whom the most important were Luigi Schiavonetti and Giovanni Ven- dramini, whose names are familiar chiefly through their charming plates in the Cries of London series. Schiavonetti, however, was brilliant also in etching and line-work, and not less artistic than his stipples were his engravings of Blake's beautiful illustrations to Blair's poem, The Grave. Vendramini was personally so popular that he was induced to take over Bartolozzi's business and his house at North End, Fulham, when the old man in 1802, seeing the waning of the public taste for his prints, accepted a royal invitation to Portugal, where they gave him a knighthood and a pension, and where he went on engraving and teaching till, close on ninety years of age and in straitened circumstances, he died in 1815. James Minasi, an engraver of taste, I have already mentioned as one ot Bartolozzi's favourite pupils, devoted to the end. His cousin, Mariano Bovi was another, and a very artistic touch he had, as may be seen in his many engravings of Lady Diana Beauclerc's fantastic infantile groups, and the charming decorative frieze after Cipriani, reproduced here. Other notable Italian disciples were Pietro Bettelini and Michel Benedetti. Russia, which was always ready at that time to encourage the prolonged visits of English artists, sent Bartolozzi an assimilative pupil in Gabriel Scorodoomoff, who did several pretty colour-prints. Of the French pupils, John Peter Simon had perhaps the most artistic sense of the medium, and he will always be esteemed for his brilliant engraving of Reynolds's Heads of Angels — a beautiful print in colours. Jean Marie Delattre, when once he had learnt stipple, became the master's right-hand man, " forwarding " many of his plates to a considerable extent, touching up and correcting the work of less competent pupils, and turning out a number of good prints of his own. Other Frenchmen there were, too, among the stipple-engravers who, though not actually pupils of Bartolozzi, could not help reflecting his influence. Chief among these were Thomas Gaugain, F. D. Soiron, and B. Duterreau, all of whom are represented among our illustrations by charming prints after Morland. Gaugain began his artistic life as a student of painting with Richard Houston, the eminent mezzotint-engraver, and this training seems to have lent a valuable quality of tone to his engraving. The last and rarest plate of the Cries of London — Turnips and Carrots — was his.
John Conde was an ideal engraver ot Cosway's miniatures,
36
which he rendered with a touch of the utmost refinement and taste, and an exquisite sense of their adaptabilities to the copper. Scarcely less successful in this field was Schiavonetti's gifted Flemish pupil, Anthony Cardon, and it was doubtless through his master's influence that he, too, was engaged upon the Cries of London.
But the Bartolozzi influence was not quite supreme. No en- graver, for instance, used the stipple method with more originality or more truly pictorial effect than John Jones, who was, of course, one of the glories of the great English school of mezzotint. At his best only to be compared for beauty with Burke, his was a broader conception of the delicate medium ; and, gauging its artistic capacity to a nicety, he understood exactly how to balance breadth and depth of tone with the fine shades, while avoiding that ten- dency to monotony of smoothness which characterised even the best of the Bartolozzi school. His manner was quite his own, strong in its refined simplicity, artistic in its reticence, and among the most beautiful and individual colour-prints in stipple, few are comparable with those that Jones did after Romney, Reynolds and Downman. His exquisite Serena-was one of the prints we had hoped to have included among our illustrations. Scarcely less distinctive in stipple than Jones, J. R. Smith and William Ward, was that other great artist in mezzotint, Thomas Watson, whose stippling had the large pictorial feeling. Naturally he was happy with Reynolds, as in the lovely Una, while in the Mrs. Crewe and Mrs. Wilbraham^ he made the very best of Daniel Gardner, who appears to have learnt all he could from Sir Joshua.
Of the stipple-engravers who made pretty and attractive colour- prints their name is legion, while these pages are necessarily limited. So I must regretfully leave but barely named such notable stipplers as Joseph Collyer, with his vigorous touch ; Francis Hayward, whose Mrs. Siddons as the " Tragic Muse" is so well known ; William Bond ; the versatile Robert Pollard ; R. M. Meadows ; the dainty John S. Agar ; those three fine mezzotinters, Charles Turner* Richard Earlom, and William Dickinson, whose Duchess of Devon- shire and Viscountess Duncannon has often the high distinction of pairing with Burke's Lady Rushout and Daughter ; the brothers Facius ; Caroline Watson, with her exquisite finish whether in pure stipple or in " mixed " methods ; Joseph Grozer ; Christian Josi, to whom we are indebted for more than his engraving, in his valuable publication of Ploos Van Amstel's interesting second pioneering series of aquatints printed in colour, Collection dy Imitations des Dessinsy twenty-three years after Van Amstel's death ; John Eginton ; Charles White, a favourite engraver of the lady artists ; James Hogg, whose Handmaid after Walton is as charming as its companion, The Tobacco
37
Box ; Robert Thew ; R. M. Paye ; and William Blake, whose sure immortality is quite independent of such artistic stippling as his Mrs. Q. after Huet Villiers, and his two Morland prints.
The war with France, closing important markets for English engravings, had a depressing influence on the production of prints, and the early years of the nineteenth century saw fresh vagaries in the popular taste. Even the Morlands were neglected. The coarse political and social caricatures of James Gillray — once Bartolozzi's pupil — and of Thomas Rowlandson were intriguing and titillating the town with their robustious humours and audacious licence. Yet Adam Buck was strangely in favour ; his inadequate drawings of babies and slender women in Empire gowns, which a contem- porary writer describes as " happily combining the taste of the antique with that of the modern," suited the spurious classic fashion of the time. These were engraved, some partly stippled, partly aquatinted, by Freeman, J. C. Stadler, Roberts and even Cheesman. Artistically negligible, the excellence of their colour-printing alone can excuse any demand at the present day for such pretty-pretty trifles as The Darling Asleep, The Darling Awake, The Darling Dancing, and so on. In their own day, notwithstanding their passing vogue, they sounded the knell of the stippled colour-print.
Coloured aquatints were now becoming the rage. That this charming and delicate process, producing various gradations ot tone by successive " bitings " with acid through a porous, resinous ground, might long before have competed with stipple, may be judged by the delightful pair of colour-printed aquatints, Courtship and Matrimony, by Francis Jukes after W. Williams, published in 1787 by J. R. Smith. But, invented in France about 1750 by Jean Baptiste Prince, practised a little later with colour by Ploos Van Amstel, and introduced to England in 1775 by Paul Sandby for the treatment of landscape, it was a long while before the pictorial capacities of aquatint were adequately understood and extended. In the artistic hands of the Daniells, the Havells, J. C. Stadler, J. Bluck, J. Sutherland and F. C. Lewis, it became, particularly under the asgis of Ackermann, a most popular medium for colour, especially in the sporting and coaching prints which the Regency spirit brought so extensively into demand. Then in turn came litho- graphy, with its ease of method and its sweet, soft graces, bringing colour too ; and R. J. Lane was the new hero of the printsellers, while for long years Bartolozzi and his brother stipplers on the copper-plate were shelved, neglected, forgotten, and Morland prints were scarcely saleable. To-day they have come into their own again — their own, and perhaps a little bit over.
38
NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS.
COUNTESS OF HARRINGTON AND HER CHILDREN (Plate I.). Sir Joshua painted her twice also as Miss Fleming. — ROBINETTA (Plate II.). The Hon. Anna Tollemache was the original of this picture, of which Reynolds painted three versions : that in the National Gallery, Lord Lonsdale's, and Lord Tollemache's, from which Jones made his engraving, dedicating it to the picture's then owner the Hon. William Tollemache. — MASTER HENRY HOARE (Plate III.). The only son of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bart., F.R.S., the well-known antiquarian and historian of Wiltshire. — DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE AND CHILD (Plate IV.). One of Sir Joshua Reynolds's thirteen exhibits in the Royal Academy of 1786, when Walpole depreciated it. Here is the famous duchess in that tender mother-mood in which Coleridge apostrophised her so exquisitely. The chubby baby, when she grew up, very properly married the son and heir of that Earl of Carlisle who in graceful verse had championed her mother's introduction of the fashion of feathers. -- THE MASK (Plate V.). Part of the "Duke of Marlborough and family," which Sir Joshua painted in 1777. The little Ladies Charlotte and Anne Spencer, being taken into the room at Blenheim where Sir Joshua sat at his easel, the youngest drew back, clutching at her nurse's gown, crying " I won't be painted ! " a natural action which appealed irresistibly to Reynolds. And little Lady Anne, as Countess of Shaftesbury, lived until 1865, the last survivor of all Sir Joshua Reynolds's countless sitters.
BACCHANTE (Emma, Lady Hamilton) (Plate VI.). Painted in 1784 for Sir William Hamilton, when, of course, there was no thought of the marriage. The price was 50 guineas, just about a fifth of what a brilliant impression of the print in colours would fetch to-day. The Hon. Charles Greville, Sir William's nephew and Emma's lover at the time, seems to have negotiated the business, for he wrote, in October 1784 to his uncle, who was then in Naples : " Let me know how the Bacchante is to be paid. The dog was ugly, and I made him paint it again." Later Greville wrote : " Emma's picture shall be sent by the first ship. I wish Romney yet to mend the dog." The picture is said to have been lost at sea, on its way back from Naples, but at Greville's sale in 1 8 1 o, the Bacchante — in that case a replica of the lost canvas — was catalogued as "Diana, original of the well-known engraved picture," and bought by Mr. Chamberlayne for 130 guineas. — MRS. JORDAN IN THE CHARACTER OF "THE COUNTRY GIRL " (Plate VII.). It was as Peggy in Garrick's comedy " The Country Girl," adapted from Wycherly's " Country Wife," that Dorothy Jordan first appeared at
39
Drury Lane in 1785, and immediately bewitched the public with the natural, irresistible joyousness of her acting and the lovable charm of her personality. In the following year she gave Romney thirteen sittings for this picture. At the first he could not satisfy himself as to the best pose for her. After many tries she pre- tended to be tired of the business, and, jumping up from her chair, in the hoydenish manner and tone of Peggy, she said, "Well, I'm a-going." "Stay!" cried Romney; "that's just what I want." And at once he began to sketch her for this picture. It was bought in 1791 for 70 guineas by the Duke of Clarence, afterwards King William IV., and thereby, of course, hangs the well-known tale of a twenty years' love, ten children, and unhappy separation. The print, first published as The Romp at 55., may now fetch, if fine in colour, like Major Coates's copy, as much as £200. — HOBBINOL AND GANDERETTA (Plate VIII.). William Somerville's "Hobbinol" was a mock-heroic poem on rural games, which Mr. Gosse describes as "ridiculous." — COUNTESS OF OXFORD (Plate IX.). This is in the National Gallery ; but Hoppner exhibited an earlier portrait in 1797. Jane Scott, daughter of a Hampshire vicar, married, in her twentieth year, the fifth Earl of Oxford, whom Byron described as " equally contemptible in mind and body " ; but then, she and the poet were lovers when she was forty and he about twenty-five. " The autumn of a beauty like hers is prefer- able to the spring in others," he said in after years. " I never felt a stronger passion, which," he did not forget to add, " she returned with equal ardour." It was on Lady Oxford's notepaper that Byron wrote his final letter to Lady Caroline Lamb, and this in the very year in which, it now appears, he revived his boyish passion for Mary Chaworth. — VISCOUNTESS ANDOVER (Plate X.). Eldest daughter of William Coke, of Holkham, the famous agriculturist, so long M.P. for Norfolk, and later Earl of Leicester.
ST. JAMES'S PARK (Plate XIV.). M. Grosley, a Frenchman, describes this scene in his "Tour of London," 1772: "Agreeably to this rural simplicity, most of these cows are driven about noon and evening to the gate which leads from the park to the quarter of Whitehall. Tied to posts at the extremity of the grass plots, they swill passengers with their milk, which, being drawn from their udders upon the spot, is served, with all the cleanliness peculiar to the English, in little mugs at the rate of a penny a mug." — A TEA GARDEN (Plate XV.). Bagnigge House had been the country residence of Nell Gwyn, and in 1757 the then tenant accidentally discovered a chalybeate spring in his grounds, which two years later he turned to profit. Bagnigge Wells then developed a tea-garden, with arbours, ponds with fountains and gold-fish, a bun-house, 40
music, and a reputation tor the amorous rendezvous. The place was very popular, and much favoured, especially on Sundays, by the would-be fashionable wives of well-to-do city-folk. In the character of "Madam Fussock" Colman took this off in his prologue to Garrick's Drury Lane farce, " Bon Ton ; or High Life above Stairs," 1776. — THE LASS OF LIVINGSTONE (Plate XVI.). A popular old Scotch song, words by Allan Ramsay. There is also an older version, "The Bonnie Lass o' Liviston," associated with an actual person who kept a public-house in the parish of Livingstone.
LADY COCKERELL AS A GIPSY WOMAN (Plate XIX.). One of the beautiful daughters of Sir John and Lady Rushout, whose miniatures are, perhaps, Plimer's masterpieces. — LADY DUNCANNON (Plate XX.). One of the "Portraits of Four Ladies of Quality," exhibited by Downman at the Royal Academy in 1788. There are also colour-prints of Viscountess Duncannon after Lavinia, Countess Spencer and Cosway, and, with her more famous sister, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, after Angelica Kauffman ; while they both figure, with other fashionable beauties, in J. K. Sherwin's picture " The Finding of Moses," also in Rowlandson's " Vauxhall," and two prints in which the same artist celebrated their trium- phant share in the Westminster election of 1784, when it was said that " two such lovely portraits had never before appeared on a canvass." The Countess of Bessborough, as she became, was the mother of Lady Caroline Lamb. Her distinguished grandson, Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane, kindly lent the print reproduced here.
RINALDO AND ARMiDA (Plate XXII.). The enchantment of Rinaldo, the Christian Knight, by Armida, the beautiful Oriental sorceress, in Tasso's " Gerusalemme Liberata." LOVE AND BEAUTY : MARCHIONESS OF TOWNSHEND (Plate XXIV.). One of the three beautiful daughters of Sir William Montgomery immortalised by Reynolds on the large canvas now in the National Gallery, called "The Graces decorating a terminal figure of Hymen." She married the distinguished general who finished the battle ot Quebec when Wolfe had fallen.
Two BUNCHES A PENNY, PRIMROSES (Plate XXV.). KNIVES, SCISSORS AND RAZORS TO GRIND (Plate XXVI.). Numbers i and 6 of the CRIES OF LONDON. The other plates are : 2, Milk below, Maids. 3, Sweet China Oranges. 4, Do you ivant any Matches ? 5, New Mackerel. 7, Fresh Gathered Peas. 8, Duke Cherries. 9, Strawberries. \ o, Old Chairs to Mend. 1 1 , A new Love-song. 12, Hotspice Gingerbread, two plates. 13, Turnips and Carrots. There are still in existence two or three paintings of similar character by Wheatley — one depicting a man selling copper kettles — which would suggest, besides the belated publication of the
41
thirteenth plate, that it was originally intended to issue a larger number of the "Cries" than those we know, had the public en- couragement warranted it. The colour-printing of the earliest impressions was superlatively fine, and in the original pink board- wrappers these are, of course, extremely rare, and would realize to-day as much as a thousand pounds.
MRS. CREWE (Plate XX VII.). The famous beauty, FulkeGreville's daughter. It was to her house in Lower Grosvenor Street that the triumphant " true blues " — the Prince of Wales among them — crowded in the evening to toast Fox's victory at Westminster. Reynolds has perpetuated Mrs. Crewe's rare beauty on three can- vasses, and Sheridan in dedicating to her " The School for Scandal " did reverence to her mind as well as her features. Fox poetised in her praise, and Fanny Burney said " She is certainly the most com- pletely a beauty of any woman I ever saw ! She uglifies everything near her."- -THE DANCE (Plate XXVIII.). The tradition, lately repeated in book and periodical, which gives the figures in this print as those of the Gunning sisters, is obviously absurd. When Bunbury was an infant in arms the beauty of the Gunnings first took the town by storm; next year Maria became a countess, Elizabeth a duchess, and, when this print was done the one had been dead twenty-two years, the other already widowed and "double duchessed," as Horace Walpole put it. — MORNING EMPLOYMENTS (Plate XXIX.). The name on the harpsichord should obviously be Jacobus Kirkman ; there was no Thomas. The instrument with the double keyboard is exactly like that in my own possession, which Dr. Burney selected from Jacob Kirkman's shop in 1768. When a fashionable craze for the guitar was sending the makers of harpsichords and spinets very near to bankruptcy, Kirkman bought up all his own fine instruments, which the ladies were practically "giving away" for guitars; then he purchased a lot of cheap guitars and presented them to milliners' girls and street-singers, so that they were twanged everywhere and became vulgar, the ladies bought harpsichords again, and he made a large fortune.
MADEMOISELLE PARISOT (Plate XXXVII.). A noted dancer in the opera ballets at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket. There is a beautiful mezzotint of her, dated 1797, by J. R. Smith after A. W. Devis. This is very rare, and in colours extremely so. Mdlle. Parisot also figures as one of the three dancers in Gillray's caricature " Operatical Reform, or La Danse a 1'Eveque," published in 1798 to ridicule the Bishop of Durham's protest against the scanty attire of the ballet-dancers. — MARIA (Plate XXXVIII.). Maria of Moulines, in Sterne's " Sentimental Journey."
MALCOLM C. SALAMAN. 42
Jt\
LES ANCIENNES
GRAVURES ANGLAISES
IE IsT C O TJ L IE TJ IR, S
« Nous regardons les tableaux des autres, mais nous lisons ses gravures », a dit Charles Lamb en parlant d'Hogarth avec un affectueux respect. Et maintenant, apr£s avoir <i lu » ces extraordinaires aventures The Rake and the Harlot qui avaient, pour notre sympathique ecri- vain, tout 1'attrait d'un livre, et qui sont pleines d'intere't humain, supposons qu'il regarde les « autres tableaux », la serie de Morland, Histoire de Letitia, dans les charmantes planches gravees par John Raphal Smith, quelques-unes coloriees et qui furent mises en vente quand Lamb n'avait pas vingt ans. Elles ne seront peut-Stre pas comme les gravures d'Hogarth, « des figures d'une pensee intense », faisant songer a des « idees profondement durables », dans lesquelles il lira la vieille histoite de Letitia. Lamb regardera certainement ces gravures de Morland, mais avec une dif- ference. II les regardera avec un interet eveille moins par 1'intention dramatique que par le charme de leur grace picturale si simple, rehaussee d'une jolie suggestion de couleur.
I,(s gravures du xvme sificle ont une fascination qui UK- iait rever a 1'aimable Elia : je le vois s'arretant a la devanture de tous les marchands de gravures qui se trouvent sur son chemin quand il se rend aux bureaux de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales dans Leadenhall street. Us sont nombreux, cela est certain, car il arrive toujours en retard 4 son bureau, mais songez qu'il a et£ rctenu par Alderman Boydell, dans Cheapside, chez qui 1'art de la gravure se voit dans toute sa variete et sa beaute; ou par M. Cariugton Bowie, de Saint Paul's Chur- chyard, qui possdde de spirituelles mezzotintes en noir et en couleurs. Et la, parmi ces anciennes impressions en cou- eurs qui nous charment aujourd'hui, il y en avait quel
ques-unes qui plaisaient a la fantaisie de leur contempo- rain Elia flanant au milieu de la foule curieuse qui encom- brait les etalages de M. J.-R. Smith, dans Kingstreet Covent Garden, ou les galeries de M. Macklin dans Fleet- street, ou celles de M. Tomkins dans Bond-street ou de M. Colnaghi • — le trds cher signor Colnaghi — de Barto- lozzi.
Ce n'est pas, peut-6tre, les bergers d'Arcadie entoures de leurs moutons, ni les Bacchus ou les Jupiters enfants, ni mdme les belles dames de la noblesse ou de la mode, mais les Cris de Londres qui attiraient, chez Colnaghi, le vrai Londonien, et nous pouvons nous imaginer le plaisir avec lequel Lamb s'arre'tait pour regarder les gravures representant les artistes, Mistress Siddons, de Downman, ou Miss Farren, ou encore cette gravure de Romney, la plus gaie de toutes, Mistress Jordan dans The Romp, qui semble justifier le souvenir si net que Lamb avait gard£ de cette actrice, comme ce qu'il en a dit semble donner un souffle de vie au portrait. Mais a 1'epoque que nous supposons, ces tirages n'ont pas encore etc eleves a la dignite de gravures anciennes que le temps a si bien adou- cies. Leur beau papier doux fabrique k la main, — on ne connaissait pas d'autre procede — ce papier que nous touchons, que nous presentons & la lumidre avec respect, n'avait pas encore cet air venerable que lui a donne le toucher de mains depuis longtemps en poussidre. Ces gra- vures avaient toute la fralcheur qu'un monde affaire de graveurs, d'imprimeurs, de fabricants de papier pouvait leur donner, de concert avec une popularite du moment qui devait mourir vite de plethore.
Quel est done ce charme particulier qu'ont pour nous ces tirages en couleurs de gravures a la pointe ou en mez-
1
zotinte des dernieres annees du xvni mencement du xixe?
A les etudier serieusement, peut-etre ne leur accorde- rons-nous pas une ire's haute ni tr£s importante place dans 1'histoire de 1'art, raais elles meritent un joli petit coin bien a elles qui represente -la phase caracteristique du gout populaire d'une epoque et d'une activite artistique essen- tiellement anglaise. Quel que soit le jugement porte sur leur valeur intrins^que, en tant qu'ceuvres d'art, on ne peut nier leur caractSre special de jolie peinture et leur joli charme decoratif.
Et ce caractere parait bien certain si nous en jugeons d'apres les prix atteints en ventes publiques. Us ont ete assez eleves en ces derniers temps pour egaler les demandes d'ceuvres d'art d'une valeur indiscutee et les collection- neurs qui en ont entendu parler pour la premiere fois seu- lement en ces dix dernieres annees ou environ, ont en a payer cher le retard de leur gout.
Quant a ceux qui ont ecoute il y a longtemps le gra- cieux appel des anciennes gravures anglaises, qui 1'ont ecoute avant que le marche 1'ait entendu, ceux qui, les aimant pour elles- memes ou pour 1'interet que presentaient ces images d'autrefois, ou encore parce qu'elles faisaient bien avec un mobilier Sheraton ou Chippendale, ont su les acheter pour un prix raisonnable — ce qu'on appelle- rait aujourd'hui une bouchee de pain — ceux-la peuvent contempler sur leurs murs les rares et superbes tirages qui les charmerent pour la premiere fois il y a vingt ou trente ans, et sourire en pensant aux prix exageres atteints chez Christie. Car, aujourd'hui, le legs decoratif du xviii6 siScle, legs de tenue, d'elegance et de beaute, semble necessiter des droits de succession qu'il faut payer sans murmurer. Un collectionneur dont la maison respire le charme et la beaute des arts et metiers du xvni" siecle me consultait dernierement sur ce qu'il devrait collectionner dorena- vant. Je lui recommandai les tableaux originaux des meil- leurs de nos jeunes peintres d'avenir : ce serait un luxe comparativement peu dispendieux. II hocha la tete, et le soir n'etait pas venu qu'il n'avait pu resister a 1'acquisi- tion d'un William Ward, d'un colons exceptionnel. Car c'est un fait curieux et a noter que le collectionneur de vieilles estampes anglaises a rarement de gout — s'il en a jamais — pour 1'art moderne si joli, si interessant cepen- dant. II n'hesite pas a le reconnaitre et quand il vous dit qu'il aime la couleur, comprenez qu'il s'agit seulement de la couleur adoucie par le charme du temps et des vieilles associations. Aussi votre collectionneur d'estampes ache'- tera-t-il avec joie une jolie gravure de Downman ou un pastel de J.-R. Smith, un peu pourpre d.ans les tons de chair, mais le somptueux coloris d'un Brangwyn ne lui donnera aucune envie de possession, les harmonies d'un Lavery ue le frapperont pas, la mysterieuse beaute de tons du Late Moonrise d'un Clausen ne lui dira rien. Mais alors, demandera-t-on, pourquoi se contenter des simples thdmes de couleur de ces gracieuses estampes, alors que les vieilles estampes japouaises, les estampes chinoises plus vieilles encore, leur offreut de belles, d'etonnantes harmo- nies auxquelles aucun imprimeur en couleurs d'Angleterre n'a jamais songe? Bt pourquoi, quand nous rencontrons
2
Les anciennes gravures anglaises en couleurs
siecle et du com-
notre collectionneur a la National Gallery, ne le trouvons- nous pas s'extasiant devant les toiles si riches, si lumi- neuses de tons d'un Filippino Lippi, par exemple, ou les merveilleux coloris d'un Titien, mais parfaitement heureux devant VInttrieur d'une etable, de Morland, par exemple, ou Le Serpent dans I'herbe de Reynolds?
Parcourons son appartement, regardons ses estampes dans leur milieu si approprie de beaux meubles anciens qui nous transportent dans une atmosphere d'autrefois et alors nous commencerons a le comprendre et a gouter sa perseverance. Au fur et a mesure de I'enchantement, nous comprendrons qu'une suite de vues de Venise par Whistler serait elle-meme deplacee, au point de vue decoratif, au milieu de tout le reste. Car ce qui nous tient, c'est le charme, non de la beaute d'art en elle-m£me, rnais du xviii6 siecle. C'est I'enchantement de cette gracieuse epoque, pleine de charme, d'elegance et de simplicite, que ces jolies estampes d'autrefois, si anglaises de sujets et de dessin nous rappellent quand nous les regardons. Elles nous paraissent non pas de simples gravures imprimees en cou- leurs variees, mais plutot des temoins en peinture, dont quelques-uns nous sourient, de ces annees d'autrefois si charmantes ou 1' Academic royale qui venait de naitre tra- duisait la beaute typique transitoire en un art durable, alors que les graveurs repaudaient la renommee du peintre, que les fabricants de meubles et tous les artisans leur ve- naient en aide avec une grace nouvelle et classique, ou Johnson parlait le langage du bon sens, ou Goldsmith « ecrivait comme un ange », et Sheridan notait les mauieres a mesure qu'elles prenaient naissance, ou Fanny Burney tenait son journal si plein de vie, ou Walpole et Mrs Delany (graces a Dieu) s'ecrivaient des lettres, ou ce que faisaient les actrices de Drury Lane ou de Covent Garden et les gens a la mode du Ranelagh, du Vauxhall et du Pantheon, avaient autant d'importance a la ville que les debats du Parlement, c'etait I'epoque ou une jolie duchesse inimor- talisait une election avec un baiser democratiquc. Ces estampes qui s'inspiraient de Fielding, de Richardson, de Goldsmith et de Sterne nous apprennent que le roman- tique, la campagne, I'interieur etaient a la mode autant que 1'esprit et 1'elegance et bien plus populaire. A cote, un sentiment de plus en plus grand pour la nature, eveille par la poesie de Thomson, Gray et Collins, alimente plus tard par Cooper, Crabbe et Burns, formait le gout populaire tout a fait en opposition avec le froid forma- lisme academique et les sentiments compliques du temps de Pope.
Ces influences litteraires sont importantes a considerer pour se faire une idee juste de ces anciennes estampes en couleurs, reflet exact de 1'esprit et du caractere de I'epoque qui les a produites et qu' aucune autre epoque n'aurait pu nous legueraussi exactement ; il ne faut pas oublier cela, car la grande popularite de ces estampes nous permet de remonter a 1'origine du despotisme de 1'art populaire anglais que Whistler avait 1'habitude d'appeler ironiquement le « sujet britannique ».
V evolution de 1'impression en couleurs depuis ses com- mencements en clair-obscur a une longue et interessante histoire, ainsi que 1'a si bien rnontre Mme Frankaus dans
Les anciennes gmvttres anglaises en couleurs
taiupt-s en couleurs (hi xviir .siiVle » un volume <le premier ordre; je lie veux faire ici que leur histoirc au PC lint de vue de 1'art et du gout anglais.
Pendant le xviic siecle, nous avons cu, en Angleterre. un urand nombre d'admirables et ingenieux graveurs, cepen- dant aucun d'eux n'essaya de tirer ses gravurcs autremcnt qu'en monochrome : s'ils entemlirent parler des essais en couleurs d'Hercules Seghers, le gravcur hollandais que Krmtirandt admirait — et il est fort probable qu'ils en en- tendirent parler car les rapports etaient constants et aiuicaux entre les graveurs et les peintres hollandais et flaniands, — aucun ne parait avoir pense que 1'idee valut la pei tie d'etre suivie. Et d'ailleurs, Seghers imprima ses gravures en une seule couleur sur papier, teintee, ce qui peut a peine s'appeler une veritable impression en couleurs.
S'il y avait eu la quelque valeur artistique, 1'eutreprenant Hollar n'aurait-il pas cherche a 1'utiliser? Nos graveurs an- glais ne furent troubles ni par ce qu'ils purent entendre ni par ce qu'ils purent voir des experiences d'impression en couleurs faites en 1680, par Joyannes Teyler, de Nimegue en Hollande, qui fut peintre, graveur, professeur de mathematiques et ingenieur militaire. II fut certaine- ment le premier imprimeur en couleurs, ses tirages etaient faits avec une seule planche, dont les traits graves etaient soigneusement recouverts d'eucre de tons differents. On peut voir ces tirages si varies au British Museum dans 1'interessant et unique volume que Teyler, a en juger par son titre grave, avait 1'intention de publier sous le nom d' « Opus Typochromaticum ».
L'essai avait un interet enorme, mais il suffit de jcter un coup d'ceil sur ces tirages en couleurs, avec leur juxtaposi- tion crue de tons pour feliciter les graveurs anglais de n'avoir pas abandonne le blanc et noir qui convenait a leur art. Us reconnaissaient sans doute que la couleur etait opposee au veritable esprit de 1'art du graveur, comme, un siecle plus tard, les graveurs au pointille comprirent que cette methode pourrait souvent augmenter le charme de leur ceuvre. Dans le blanc et noir d'une jolie gravure, il y a un balancement de tons relatifs qui remplace la couleur, qui, en fait, suggdre la couleur a 1'imagination : ainsi la beaute et la tcnue du trait grave par la main d'un maitre ecarte toute intervention chromatique. Une estampe de Faithorne, par exemple, avec ses traits et ses hachures serait inconcevable en couleurs et, par centre, on peut facilement imaginer Francis Place et Gaywood faisant des experiences avec les oiseaux et les betes de Barlow, d'apres la maniere indiquee par Teyler dans son livre. Toutefois, s'il y avait a cette epoque un graveur anglais capable d'essayer la methode de Teyler avec chance de succes, tout au moins de succes populaire, c'est assurement Pierce Tempest avec ses Cris de la CM de Londres d'apres les dessins du « Vieux » Laroon, preredant d'un siecle les charmants Cris de Wheatley, si simples, si recherches en pointe coloree, mais il n'en fut rirn <t le premier essai de tirage en couleur, en Angleterre, out lieu seulement lorsque la methode nouvelle et facile de la mez/otinte cut eclipse peu a peu la gravure au trait, plus vieille et plus compliquee. En 1719, parut Jacob Christopher Le Blon avec sa nouvelle invention qu'il appela « Peintures imprimees ».
Cette invention t'tait, en effet, un precede consistent a reproduire un tableau quelconque en impressions separees, 1'une sur 1'autre, avec trois planches gravees en mezzotinte, renforcees avec des traits et des hachures et plusieurs fois encrees, chacune avec la proportion de rouge, de jaune ou de bleu, que, conformement a la theorie de Newton, Le Blon cstimait produire une fois melanges les vrais tons de couleur d'un tableau. En fait, Le Blon avait decouvert pratique- ment le precede actuel des trois couleurs, mais, en 1719, tout etait contre lui.
Jacob Christopher Le Blon etait un homme remarquable qui, avec un esprit ingenieux et sans cesse en eveil, un ca- ractere enthousiaste, cut une carriere artistique traversee de beaucoup d'aventures et de vicissitudes. Le Blon naquit a Francfort, en 1667, a 1'epoque od les artistes chinois produisaient ces merveilleuses estampes en couleur decou- vertes dans le Bristih museum par M. Lawrence. II etudia pendant quelque temps la peinture et la gravure aupres de Conrad Meyer, de Zurich, puis ensuite, dans 1'atelier du fameux Carlo Maratti, a Rome ou il etait alle en 1696, a la suite du Comte Martinetz, 1'ambassadeur de France, ses etudes semblent avoir ete aussi decousues que son genre de vie. Son ami Overbeck, trouvant cependant que Le Blon avait des talents qui pourraient se developper avec un es- prit de suite, lui persuada d'aller s'installer a Amsterdam en 7702 et de se faire peintre miniaturiste. Les miniatures qu'il fit pour des tabatieres, des bracelets et des bagues lui valurent reputation et profit, mais ce travail de minia- ture abimait ses yeux et il se mit a faire de la peinture de portraits. C'est alors que 1'idee lui vint d'imiter les pein- tures a 1'huile par le precede de 1'impression en couleurs, bas£ sur la theorie newtonienne de la composition de la lu- miere en trois couleurs dont nous avons parle. Apres quel- ques essais reussis avec ses propres peintures, il essaya de re- produire les peintures des mattres italiens, dont il avait penetre les secrets de couleur quand il etait chez Maratti. Sans reveler son secret, il montra ses premieres peinture imprimees a plusieurs admirateurs fort etonnes, parmi les- quels, le Prince Eugene de Savoie et, dit-on, aussi le Comte d'Halifax, 1'ami de Newton qui crea la Dette nationale et la Banque d'Angleterre.
Le Blon etait convaincu qu'il y avait une fortune dans son invention, mais il ne put cependant obtenir ni un brevet ni un appui financier qu'il alia demander a Amsterdam, a la Haye et a Paris.
La chance lui vint en faisant la connaissance du colonel sir John Guise. Grand amateur d'art, collectionneur de tableaux (il laissa sa galerie a Christchurch, College d' Ox- ford), soldat heroique avec une pointe de fantaisie, d'exageration et de romantique qui faisait dire a Horace Walpole en protestant : i II est plus fou que jamais », Guise etait tout a fait 1'homme capable de s'interesser a Le Blon et a ses projets d'invention. II n'eut pas de peine a persuader a 1'artiste de venir a Londres; il le presenta a nombre de personnages influents, il parvint meme a interesser le roi qui lui donna un brevet et lui permit de faire son portrait par le nouveau precede ; ce portrait de George I est certaine- ment un des meilleurs de Le Blon et nn des plus harmonieux comme ton.
Les anciennes gravures anglaises en couleurs
En 1721, une societe se formait pour exploiter le brevet, elle prit le titre de « Bureau de Peinture » avec Le Blon, comme directeur. Tout s'annoncait bien; a ce moment le credit public se relevait, les actions se plafaient et pendant un temps tout marcha bien. On lan$a un interessant pros- pectus avec une liste des tirages en couleurs d'apres des peintures — sujets sacres ou mythologiques — de Maratti, Annibal Carrache, le Titien, le Correge, Van Dyck dont quelques-uns etaient exactement de meme dimension que les originaux aux prix moderes de dix, douze et quinze shillings. Lord Percival, ami de Pope qui s'etait interesse a 1'affaire comme le colonel Guise, s'enthousiasmait sur les resultats a venir; il ecrivait : « Nos peintres modernes ne peuvent pas approcher de cela avec leurs couleurs et s'ils en font 1'essai, ils nous font payer autant de guinees que nous payons de shillings. » Sans doute, si nous compa- rons la Madone d'apres Baroccio executee par Le Blon au prix de quinze shillings avec une peinture contempo- raine de sir James Thorn hill et de ses assistants comme celle qui se trouvait a Leadenhall street et qui a ete trans- portee au South Kensington, nous comprenons, en une certaine mesure, 1'enthousiasme de Lord Percival. Au point de vue du coloris, il serait difficile de faire un choix, mais comme specimen d'une veritable impression en couleurs, la premiere de ce genre, cette Madone est etonnante et je me demande si plus tard on a fait une impression en couleurs qui approche de celle-la, pour le brillant des tons.
Enfin, la precision des harmonies fut assuree par 1' adop- tion de la methode de Robert Laurie, approuvee en 1776, qui consistait a imprimer avec une seule planche, chauffee et legerement frottee apres application des encres de cou- leurs.
A roffice de peinture, on ne tarda pas a se decourager. En mars 1722, lord Percival ecrit : « L' affaire des peintures a souffert d'une tres mauvaise administration, mais elle s'ameliore beaucoup. » Malgre ce progres, cependant, une reunion d'actionnaires, sous la presidence du colonel Guise, cut lieu, dans laquelle 1' administration de Le Blon fut severement critiquee. Les actionnaires paraissent 1' avoir traite a la moderne : a chaque reproche, il se defendit avec vivacite, mais que repondre a des chiffres? Au prix de 125,000 francs, Le Blon avait tire 4,000 exemplaires — d'apres vingt-cinq planches — et, si tout eut ete vendu .aux prix fixes, la perte eut encore ete de 50,000 francs.
Le colonel Guise, lui-meme, ne pouvait considerer ce resultat comme un succes commercial. La Societe fut reor- ganisee cependant avec un nouveau directeur, nomme Guine, qui avait trouve un moyen. plus economique et plus profitable pour faire des impressions. Cela ne servit a rien. On vendit des estampes pour 15,000 francs : elles avaient coute 225,000 francs. Une autre affaire de tapisseries, aussi de 1'invention de Le Blon, eut des resultats plus, deplorables encore. II fallut en arriver a la banqueroute, et Le Blon eut grand'peine a echapper a la prison.
Le tirage en couleurs des gravures, plein de promesses au point de vue de 1'art, avait ete pratiquement un insucces financier, mais Le Blon, que rien ne decourageait, voulut expliquer et justifier ses principes et leur application dans un petit ouvrage qu'il appela : Coloritto ou VHarmonie des
couleurs dans la Peinture, ramenee a la pratique meca- nique, d'apres des principes facileset des regies infaillibles. Le traite etait dedie a Sir Robert Walpole; 1'auteur espe- rait sans doute que le premier lord de la Tresorerie, qui venait de restaurer le credit national, ferait peut-etre quelque chose pour un artiste inventif. Peu a'prds, il fut autorise a soumettre ses inventions a 1'auguste Societe royale. Le Blon avait toujours ainsi des coups de fortune, mais sa foi en lui-meme etait inebranlable et, de plus, il avait le don de la faire partager aux autres. Enfin un essai qui cousistait a reproduire en tapisserie les cartons de Raphael aboutit a un desastre financier et Le Blon dut s'enfuir d'Angleterre.
II vint a Paris, reprit ses impressions en couleurs, ins- pira et dirigea nombre d'eleves et d'imitateurs, parrni les- quels Jacques Fabian Gautier d'Agoty qui, par la suite, pretendit avoir invente le precede de Le Blon et le transmit a ses enfants. Le Blon mourut a Paris en 1741, trds pauvre, mais travaillant toujours a ses planches de cuivre. C'est certainement pendant les dernieres annees du sejour de Le Blon a Paris, que Horace Walpole fit sa connaissance. « II etait Flamand et bien loin de la jeunesse quand je le connus, mais il avait une vivacite et une volubilite sur- prenantes, avec une tete admirablement faite pour la mecanique, mais homme a projets universels et avec au moins une des deux qualites que possedent les gens qu ont cette vocation : il etait ou dupe ou voleur. Je crois qu'il etait dupe, mais comme toutes ses inventions se sont evanouies dans 1'air, ceux qui en ont souffert 1'ont traite de voleur. Comme il etait trds enthousiaste, peut-etre fut-il, comme tous les enthousiastes, a la fois 1'une et 1' autre. » De fait, Le Blon ne fut ni dupe ni voleur; il etait un homme d' avant-garde et il avait tout le courage de son imagina- tion et de ses inventions. Une autorite comme M. Hans W. Singer, de Vienne, 1'a juge, malgre ses insuccfis et ses fautes, comme ayant une importance artistique assez grande pour meriter une monographic. p Si par un choix plus judicieux des tableaux a copier, Le Blon avait pu creer un public d'acheteurs et assurer de la sorte le succes de sa tentative, comme 1'histoire de 1'estampe en couleurs aurait ete differente et plus com- plete ! Car le dernier insucces de Le Blon ne tenait pas a 1'impossibilite d'obtenir, d'une facon infaillible, les harmo- nies necessaires avec les trois couleurs de tons cardinales et la necessite d'ajouter une quatrieme planche avec un noir approprie, ni a la difficulte d'obtenir exactement le registre essentiel a la fonte des tons des differentes plan- ches : sans doute, c'etait la de serieux obstacles, qui s'op- posaient a un succes artistique complet, mais a en juger d'apres la valeur des oeuvres les mieux reussies de Le Blon, on serait arrive a les surmonter. La veritable cause de 1'insucces fut, suivant moi, que les reproductions de tableaux n'interesserent pas le public anglais et que, par consequent, on ne les acheta pas. C'etait un mauvais moment pour les beaux-arts d'Angleterre. Le jour ou les expositions publiques de peinture allaient s'ouvrir etait proche, mais 'n'etait pas encore arrive. L'aristocrate col- lectionneur et 1'amateur a la mode representaient seuls le gout du pays, car de gout public il n'y en avait pas. L'ima-
Les anciennes gravures anglaises en couleurs
gination, le sentiment n'etaient nullenieut a la mode, la litterature du jour y etait tout a fait opposec. Lcs peintres vivants n'etaient pas le uioius du monde en contact avcc la nature. Le regne do George I" fut une epoque de depres- sion pour les arts grapliiques. La societe eufermee et monstrucuscment encerclee avail trop a s'occuper de ses plaisirs, de ses intrigues, de ses affectations, de ses caprices, de ses extravagances pour s'interesser ou s'occuper de beaute. Kent, 1'absurde architecte a la mode, etait maitre a la place de 1'immortel Wren, et Knell etait depuis si long- temps 1'idole du pays que Pope, son poete en chef osait dire de lui que « la gramle Nature craignait qu'il ne sur- passat son oeuvre ». Ajoutez que 1'art de la peinture u'avait rien a faire avec les ennuyeux plafonds et escaliers de Thornhill, ou avec les portraits figes et sans gout, aux poses stereotypees des sous-knellers, comnie Jonathan Richardson, Highmore ct Jervas que Pope, par ses eloges, a rc-ndus plus ridicules encore.
Qu'auraicnt pu faire, s'ils n'avaient eu que ces pcintres a interpreter, des admirables graveurs comnie John Smith, George white, John Simon, Faber, Peter Pelhain, dont les rnezzotintes meme commencaient a perdre de leur faveur par manque d'interet de sujets ! Aussi ne faut-il pas s'eton- ner qu'apres les insuccds de Le Blon, les graveurs en mez- zotinte n'aient pas ete trds empresses a niettre en pra- tique les principes du Coloritto. Les impressions en cou- leurs subirent done en Angleterre un temps d'arret.
Aujourd'hui, les tirages de Le Blon ont une grande valeur. Que sont devenues les 9,000 epreuves tirees par 1'Office de peinture? Les 15,000 francs de tirage vendus avaiit la banqueroute en representcnt un autre millier, et cependant les impressions de Le Blon sont extremement rares, meme dans les collections publiques M. Hans Singer ot M. Hind, auteur d'une iniportante 6tude sur la gravure, pensent que beaucoup de ces estampes vernies sont accro- chees dans d'anciennes maisons ou elles passent pour des peintures a 1'huile, ce que voulait leur inventeur. C'est une hypothese inU-rossante et fort plausible, quand on regarde les exernplaires vernis du British Museum.
La tentative vraiment importante de Le Blon ne fut pas renouvelee en Angleterre, mais on fit quelques essais pour embellir les gravures avec des couleurs. C'etait la, on somme, uue adaptation de la vieille methode de clair- obscur, la surface coloree etant obtenue au moyen de plu- sieurs blocs de bois combines avec des planches de cuivre .uravd-s. Arthur Pond et Charles Knapton, peintres tous deux, imiterent de cette facon un certain nombre de des- sins graves; quelques annees auparavant, Elisha Kirkall, la a genereuse Kirkall » de la Dunciade, s" etait servie avec succes de bois avec de la couleur, et planches de mezzo- tinte rehaussees de traits graves. Son elfive, J. -B.Jackson, ne grava que du bois pour ses remarquables tirages, mais ces experiences ne durdrent pas et n'aboutirent a rien d'important ni de suivi en impressions de couleur.
Pendant ce temps, les morveilleuscs trouvailles d'Ho- garth, leur satire mordante, leur eclat moral, avaient seduit la ville, sans le secours de la couleur, eveillant dans 1'esprit du public un nouveau sous de la peinture relatif a la vie humaine <lu moment, rf'autres graveurs au trait, aussi, —
Vivares, Woollett, Ravcnet, Major, Strange — avec plus d'habilete dans le inanicment du burin — arrivorent a conquerir pour leur art la faveur du public, grace au nou- veau gout du paysage, aux beautes de Rembrandt et des maitros italiens et de rhumour de la peinture de genre hol- laudaise.
Le moment de 1'estampe en couleurs n'etait pas encore venu, mais il etait proche.
Avec rinteret du public pour la peinture, on voyait percer un sens des tons grace a la porcelaine qui etait en pleine floraison dans le pays. Pendant que Reynolds ame- nait toutes les graces a son chevalet, son influence se repandait de son atelier, 47 Leicester Fields — c'est ainsi que s'appelait alors le square — dans toutes les boutiques de marchands d'estampes. L'annee 1764, qui vit la mort d'Hogarth, fut 1'annee ou Francesco Bartolozzi vint en Angleterre, apportant avec lui, dans le monde de la gra- vure, de nouvelles raisons de grace et de delicatesse en faveur de la couleur.
II
Le gout pour la peinture d'histoire etait alors encourage par 1'engouement general pour le roman qui, dans sa forme du milieu du xville sidclc fournit a ses lecteurs de nouvelles recherches dans la presentation de la vie contemporaine avec analyse des sentiments et culture de la sensibilite. Pamela et Clarisse Harlowe, Sophie Western et Amelie, Olivia et Maria avaient un interet aussi vivant que les belles grandes dames dont les portraits a la manidre noire, d'apre's les toiles des grands peintres, attiraient 1'attention a la devanture du marchand dans toute la beaute mono- chrome de leur precede. Le public, alors plein de sentiment, voulait voir en peinture ses heroines imaginaires, il n'eut pas longtemps a attendre. L' Academic royale etait devenue un facteur important dans la formation du gout public et les boutiques d'estampes etaient ses miroirs. Mais tous ses membres et exposants n'etaient pas des Gainsborough ou des Reynolds. II y avait, par exemple, Angelica Kauffman et Cipriani avec leur grace seduisante de dessin; et aussi Bar- tolozzi avec son beau dessin, son habilete de metier pour graver le cuivre : mais le precede qui les mettrait en contact familier avec le gout populaire etait encore a trouver; il etait copendant bien pres et celui qui le decouvrit et qui le mit au service de 1'art populaire fut William-Wynne Ryland, « graveur du Roi ».
Que la soi-disant methode de gravure au crayon, imitee des dessins au crayon mou fut 1'invention de Jean-Charles Francois ou de Gilles Demarteau ou de Louis Bonnet — tous trois la revendiqu£rent — ce fut, en tout cas, de Fran- cois, dont les droits avaient obtenu une reconnaissance officielle, que Ryland, eleve de Ravenet et de Le Bas et un peu aussi de Boucher, apprit la methode pendant qu'il etudiait a Paris. Ce fut plus tard cependant qu'il se souvint du precede que Franjois lui avait appris : il avait alors laisse bien loin derridre lui les jours d' etudes a Paris et a Rome ; il avait trouve le succes a Londres, comme graveur
5
Les anciennes gravures anglaises en couleurs
et marchand d'estampes, il avail le patronage du roi, et, en outre, les succ£s mondains d'un homme de plaisir a la mode. Un jour, dans la necessite, quand ses extravagances 1'eu- rent conduit a la banqueroute il se souvint de la methode au pointille et il y vit un moyen important de ressources. Compare a la gravure au trait ou meme a la mezzotinte, c'etait un moyen commode et rapide de gravure et bien qu'il ue put etre compare aux deux autres methodes, en no- blesse, richesse et brillant effet, Ryland comprit que les dou- ceurs de tons, grace aux masses de points artistiquement balancees, pouvaient s' adapter aux dessins fins et delicats. II put, trSs heureuseineut, en f aire la preuve. II etait lie avec Angelica Kauffmann que Lady Wentworth avait amenee a Londres, dix ans auparavant ; la beaute, les talents et les charmes personnels d' Angelica en avaient fait 1'artiste a la mode; la societe mondaine s'empressait a la porte de son atelier pour se faire peindre ou pour acheter un tableau.
Ryland, aprds avoir essaye d'abord son precede avec un de ses propres dessins, tres francais de caractere, qu'il publia peu aprSs, sous le titre de Domestic Employments, engagea la jeune artiste a faire de la gravure au pointille. II fit 1'experience avec un ou deux dessins d' Angelica Kauff- man qui reconuut avec joie que le pointille etait le veritable precede pour 1'interpretation de ses ceuvres. Les premieres estampes se vendirent « comme du pain » et Ryland fut si satisfait du profit a venir qu'il s'installa aussitot dans une nouvelle boutique au n° 159 dans le Strand. Sa confiance fut amplement justifiee, le public s'empressa de temoigner sa satisfaction du nouveau precede qui se presentait avec les gracieux dessins d'histoire et d'allegorie de la belle Ange- lica. Ceci se passait en 1775 et, au bout de quelque temps, Ryland constata que malgre la rapidite avec laquelle Ange- lica dessinait, et lui gravait, il ne pouvait pas suffire aux demandes de ces estampes; pour satisfaire plus vite legout du public il les tirait a 1'encre rouge pour imiter la sanguine, ce qu'on nomma plus tard « le rouge Bartolozzi ».
Ryland avait appele Bartolozzi en consultation et 1'lta- Hen, si bien doue avec sa technique magistrale, son sens delicat de la beaute, ses perceptions d'artiste si fines, avait vu tout ce qu'on pouvait tirer du nouveau precede, il avait egalement vu ou il devait s'arreter. Bartolozzi et Ryland travailleTent ensemble avec ardeur jusqu'a ce qu'ils eussent tire du precede de Francois, une methode de gra- vure qui fut si heureusement applicable aux estampes de fantaisie ou de sentiment si vite devenues a la mode, qu'elle eut bientot un succds que nulle autre methode de gravure n'avait obtenu.
II nous faut maintenant decrire cette methode.
La planche de cuivre etait enduite d'une couche de vernis sur lequel le graveur tracait son dessin. Puis les contours etaient legerement tailles en une serie de points, tous les noirs et les ombres moyennes etaient rendus par des points plus grands ou plus rapproches; les derniers graveurs employaient des groupes tres fins de points. Cela fait, on versait I'eau-forte avec grand soin, et 1'on faisait mordre tous les points graves. La couche de vernis etait alors enle- vee, et alors commen9ait 1'oauvre de la pointe seiche et du burin courbe, avec lesquels on produisait les ombres 6
claires; les parties mordues etaient creusees et renforcees quand il le fallait, pour obtenir plus d'effet.
La gravure au pointille n'etait pas chose nouvelle. Les premiers artistes s'en etaient servis comme accessoire de la gravure au burin. Giulo Campagnola, Albert Diirer, Agostino Veneziano, Ottavio Leoni, 1'avaieut employee, et aussi uos graveurs du xvne siecle quand ils veulent suggerer les tons de chair : Ludwig von Siegen en decrivant son in- vention de la mezzotinte, en 1642, comprend la maniere pointillee au nombre des precedes connus de gravure.
II y avait alors I'opus mallei ou methode qui consistait a frapper des points sur la planche avec un maillet et une aldne et qui fut pratiquee avec succes par Jan Lutma d' Amsterdam a la fin du xvne siecle. C'est la le veritable precurseur du pointille, tout comme 1'hapsichorde avec le meme diapason, mais une maniere differente de produire les notes, a precede le piano, mais c'etait un precede tres complique et Lutma eut peu d'imitateurs.
Sous la conduite de Ryland, et de Bartolozzi, et grace a 1'inspiration de la « fantaisie harmonieuse mais enchainee » d' Angelica Kauffmann, comme 1'a dit un contemporain, la gravure au pointille se developpa comme une tranche separee et distinctive de la gravure. II fallait maintenant que son succes fut augmente parl'adjonction de la couleur. Rylaud en avait vu nombre de specimens a Paris, quand il etait avec Frangois et Boucher; il s'en souvint : le public avait ete charme par les imitations de sanguine, il admire- rait plus encore les representations d' aquarelles en couleurs. Angelica Kauffman et Bartolozzi encouragement beaucoup cette idee et les deux graveurs, aprcSs bien des experiences, fixe'rent le meilleur precede pour tirer en coureurs, leurs planches. Apparemment ils ecarterent la methode a plu- sieurs planches employees six ans. auparavant par 1'interes- sant artiste qu' etait le capitaiue William Baillierlespremiers tirages de Ryland etaient partiellement colories avec du rouge ou du bleu seulement. MraFrankau nous dit, surl'au- torite d'une tradition rapportee par James Minasi, un des plus fideles eleves de Bartolozzi, qu'un Alsacien, nomme Sei- gneuer, fit tous les premiers tirages en couleur des gravures de Ryland et de Bartolozzi, d'aprds Angelica Kauffman et Cipriani; qu'il s'installa ensuite a son compte comme im- primeur en couleurs, tres recommande par Bartolozzi, et fort employe par les editeurs. Ses tirages, quoique non si- gnes, se reconnaissaient a une transparence de tons due a 1'usage d'un certain blanc vitreux qu'il avait apporte de France a 1'etat sec.
Minasi a pu reproduire exactement une tradition de Bar- tolozzi, mais lorsque mon pere dans sa jeunesse le connut, ainsi que son fils le musicien, le distingue graveur ne voulait parler de rien d'autre que de musique, car, en 1829, avec les planches d'acier remplacant le cuivre, avec la lithogra- phic triomphante, il ne semblait pas que pour les gravures en couleurs qui n'etaient plus a la mode on dut jamais se preoccuper de savoir comment elles avaient ete faites. On connait nombre de tirages en couleurs de cette epoque qui sont tres mediocreset que le public accepta aussifacilement qu'aujourd'hui il achete comme « estampes auciennes » des reproductions niodernes qui feraieiit honte a un numero d'ete a douze sous.
Les anciennes gravures anglaises en couleurs
Ii'autre part, les exempliiires vrainu-nt beaux de ti anciens se combinaut avec une belle gravure — les belles choses sont recherchees du collectionneur sans s'occuper des marges, des « etats » et autres ridicules marries — sont ccrtaincnient des oeuvres d'art, art tres delicat et limite.
Ces impressions ell couleurs out ele faites avec une seule planche qui devait etre encree apres chaque tirage. L'im- priineur a une aquarelle comme module et, aprds avoir fixe la ti inte dominante, il peut encrer toute la surface gravee dc la planche, puis il 1'essuie presque entierement, de m. micro a enlever presque tout ce qui se trouve d'encre dans les incisions et le pointille du cuivre; il n'en laisse qu'un fund harnionieux pour les differentes encres soigneusement choisies quant aux teintes qu'on appliquera ensuite dans 1'ordre et le degre exacts pour obtenir une harmonic par- faitc. Tout cela exige un trds grand soin et un tres grand sens de la couleur. La partie la plus difficile, et reservee au dernier encrage, consiste a ajouter les tons de chair, operation d'une extreme delicatesse. Puis la planche est raise sous la presse, elle a ete chauffee au degre, exactement necessaire pour operer la meilleure fonte des couleurs avec tcndrcsse et douceur sans rien perdre du brillant des tons. tail pas la partie la inoins difficile de 1'oeuvre : elle exigeait de 1'imprimeur une connaissance complete de la matiere. L'importance de ce travail de chauffe apparaitra quand j'aurai dit que j'ai eu 1'honneur de voir Whistler chauffer lui-mSme ses planches pour un tirage et que je 1'ai vu trembler d'emotion quand la planche parut repondre aux exigences de son sens exquis des tons. Mais, bien entendu, aucune impression en couleurs du xvme sidcle, HI eharmante qu'elle soit, ne fait songer qu'elle a eu Whistler pour imprimeur. C'est peut-etre pour cela que notre maitre moderne en gravure sur cuivre n'a jamais apprecie ces jolies estampes japonaises, Les anciens impri- meurs cependaut avaient leur facon a eux de travailler et leurs procedes pour obteuir des effets agreables ou brillants. in -..lupoudrant un peu de couleur sdche sur la couleur luimide, par-ci, par-la, pendant le tirage, on arrivait a ren- fon-er les tons ou encore, en passant tres legdrement un morceau de mousseline sur la surface de la planche, on par- veuait a donner aux teintes plus d'intimite tendre et har- monieuse. Bien entendu, quand la planche etait imprimee, la couleur etait retenue seulement par les points et les inci- sions de la gravure, le papier blanc apparaissant entre eux. Si les soi-disaiit connaisseurs d'estampes en couleurs vou- laient bien se rappeler cela et examiner de pr£s le pointille pour voir s'il uioutre reellement la couleur, ils ne seraieut pas si souvent trompes en achetant des epreuves entiere- ment coloriees a la main. Jusqu'a quel point les anciens imprimeurs autoriserent-ils les retouches des estampes avec 1'aquarelle que Ton retrouve presque toujours, fut-ce tri-s pen, et mcinc dans les meilleurs tirages, c'est ce qu'il est impossible de determiner. Eu tout cas, il est presumable que les yeux ct les levres etaient retouches avant de quitter la boutique du marchaud.
II ne faudrait pas supposer cependant que le tirage en couleurs avail supplante dans la faveur du public le tirage en monochrome. En realite, c'elail generaleiuent apr&> le tirage d'epreuves monochromes, quand la planche com-
iiii-iic, .lit a paraitre usee que Ton recourait a 1'aide de la couleur, pour donner a 1'estanipe nn regain de popularite. Et, de fait, dans la mezzotinte, une planche legereinent usee prend mieux la couleur. C'est pour cela qu'on voit si rarement une epreuve de graveur en couleurs : la rarete de son apparition en fait un jour de fdte a la salle des ventes. Ainsi, malgre la vogue sans cesse croissante des tirages en couleurs, ce furent toujours 1'artiste et le graveur qui comptaient; 1'imprimeur en couleurs etait rarement noinme. Et la nouvelle Industrie de la gravure au pointille fut, pourrait-on dire, monopolist, aux jours de sa prospe- rite, par Ryland et Bartolozzi associes a Angelica Kauff- man et a Jean-Baptiste Cipriani.
Cipriani avait, par ses dessins elegants et pleins de gout, gagne la faveur du public, des son arrivee en Angleterre : le carrosse du lord-maire fut meme decore avec des pan- neaux de lui. Son style preparait la route a Angelica Kauff- man et, tous les deux, ils trouverent un nouvel element de peinture a mettre au service de la decoration des interieurs. La facon gracieuse et bien balancee avec laquelle ils inter- pretaient les fables classiques etait bien ce que les freres Adam demandaient pour leurs travaux de decoration et les deux artistes italiens furent trgs occupes a peiudre des pan- neaux pour des nuirs et des plafonds. Avec le temps, la popularite de la belle Angelica depassa celle de Cipriani; dans la peinture de panneaux de meubles, bureaux, com- modes, dessus de console, son gout dirigea la mode. II ne faut done pas s'etonner, que, lorsque Ryland et Bartolozzi, au moyen de leurs procedes faciles, rendaient accessibles au public ses compositions charmantes, sinon sans defaut, le public les achetat avec empressement et les encadrant generalement sans marges, soit en ovale, soit en rond, en fit des ornements de murs que le gout d'Adam seniblait suggerer. Monochromes ou en couleurs, avec leur fine fan- taisie, faites d'aprds Horace, Ovide, Virgile, Homere, ces estampes sur lesquelles se voyait parfois la belle figure d' Angelica, si vivante, etaient 1'objet d'un extraordinaire engouement. Elles flattaient la culture a la mode. Citcr Horace, dans la conversation ordinaire, etait alors presque un brevet de bonne compagnie. Sur le continent, on les copia souvent pour decorer la porcelaine. Pour Ryland, c'etait une 6re nouvelle de prosperite, ce fut aussi sa mine; sa perpetuelle soif de plaisir, son ambition de passer pour un gentilhomme, tout cela stimule encore par la facilite qu'il avait de gagner de 1'argent, le poussfirent a de fatales extravagances. Accuse de faux, au lieu de faire face a 1'ac- cusation centre laquelle il protestait, il chercha stupide- ment a se cacher et tenta de se couper la gorge. II fut con- damne sur des preuves peu convaincantes, et comme le lui avait predit William Blake, longtemps auparavant, il fut pendu 4 Tyburn en 1783.
( In n'aurait pas fait autrement pour un bandit de grand chemin, et cependant, apres tout, avec sa gravure au poin- tille, Ryland a certainement augmente la somme des plai- sirs innocents de la foule. Dans son propre travail, il y avait uue delicatesse de louche, une douceur d'effet egales a Bartolozzi, mais avec moins de tendresse et de souplesse de tons. Evidemment, il s'etait fait un style approprie aux
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Les anciennes gravures anglaises en couleurs
dessins d' Angelica Kauffman et il les interpreta avec 1'en- tente de leur finesse.
On s'en rendra compte dans le charmant Cupidon attach^ a un arbre- par les Nymphes, Venus presentant Helens A Paris, La Beautt couronnee par I' Amour, Le Jugemeni de Paris, Ludit Amabiliter, O Venus Regina, Olim Truncus, Dormio Innocuus, Juno Cesium, Maria, d'apres le voyage sentimental de Sterne. On dit que miss Benwell, peintre, posa pour Maria; Patience et Perseverance, Amusement du matin, un portrait de fantaisie de lady Mary Wortley Mon- tagu, brodant au tambour et portant un costume turc qu'elle a decrit dans une de ses lettres; Kneller 1'avait deja peinte ainsi a la demande de Pope ; et aussi des portraits de fantaisie de lady Hester Stanhope et de Mary, duchesse de Richmond.
Bieu qu' Angelica Kauffman eut au service de son proli- fique crayon, Bartolozzi et ses nombreux disciples, c'est-a- dire la plupart des meilleurs graveurs du temps, son gra- veur favori fut Thomas Burke. En cela, elle faisait preuve d'uu jugement solide, car il u'existait personne, pas meme Bartolozzi, qui put egaler le sentiment poetique de Burke et le surpasser par sa magistrale habilete. Apres avoir etudie, croit-on, a 1'ecole d'art de la Societe royale de Du- blin, il vint a Londres et il apprit la gravure a la maniere noire sous son compatriote, Vhabile John Dixon qui passait pour 1'un des plus habiles « immortalisateurs » de Reynolds, pour employer le mot meme du maitre. Burke montra bientot qu'il pouvait graver une mezzotinte comme les meilleurs des eldves de Reynolds; mais la maniere de 1'eldve, se developpa d'apres ses propres idees et differa de celle du maitre par une touche plus tendre et plus lumineuse et une plus grande douceur de tons. Ces qualites nous frappent dans sa belle interpretation du Telemaque a la Cour de Sparte, d' Angelica Kauffman et il est tout naturel qu'elles lui aieut suggere 1' adoption de la methode du poin- tille. La technique qu'il apprit de Ryland, ameliora sans aucun doute son instruction. Son sens de 1'effet que Dixon lui apprit a traduire en mezzotinte lui fut d'une valeur incal- culable pour 1'usage du nouveau precede, car, par une mani£re a lui de faire des points infiniment rapproches, qui rappelaient les larges surfaces de tons de la mezzotinte, il obtiut, peut-6tre, les plus beaux effets que la gravure au pointille ait jamais donues.
. Burke etait un artiste qui, en voyant une peinture, comprenait comment il la fallait interpreter sur la planche de cuivre avec la juste expression de toutes ses beautes de tons. II y a dans sa gravure un eclat qui montre le poiutille a son sominet, et heureusement de beaux tirages de plu- sieurs de ses planches out etc faits en couleurs; Lady Rus- hout et sa fille, Renaud et Armide, une fleur peinte par Varelst, Angelica Kauffman ou le Dessin ecoutant I' inspira- tion de la Poesie, Cupidon et Ganymede, Jupiter -et Calisto, Cupidon enchainant A glaia, Una et A bra, voila les joyaux parmi les reproductions de Kauffman par Burke et qui prouvent ou Ton peut arriver quand la gravure au pointille et 1'impression en couleurs s'unissent en perfection.
Si les agreables fantaisies d'Angelica, inspirerent a Burke des chefs-d'ceuvre, son interpretation des miniatures de Plimer, representant les filles de Lady Rushout, ue furent
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pas moins exquises et son talent rendit avec un egal charme la peinture idyllique d'interieur comme on le voit dans les Poulets favoris, — Samedi matin, — Le Depart pour le marche, d'apres le populaire W. R. Bigg et le Vicaire de la paroisse recevant la dime, d'apres Singleton. Mais il existe des peintures qu'on aurait desire voir gravees par Burke, et Ton s'etonne qu'il ne 1'ait pas fait.
La plupart des graveurs s'adonnerent alors a cette me- thode facile et lucrative du pointillage et du tirage en cou- leurs; tous les peintres a la mode, depuis le President de 1'Acadetnie royale, jusqu'a la moiudre dame amateur, pro- fitaient de la mode. La vente etait toujours tres grande, le gout du public qui n'a jamais ete tr6s artiste, etait dirige vers un genre qu'il etait facile de satisfaire. On ne deman- dait que de jolies choses.
Sir Joshua Reynolds voyant, sans doute, les choses delicieuses que Bartolozzi avait faites avec les Cupidons et les Graces de Cipriani fut amene, a ses moments perdus. a s'occuper des planches de cuivre des graveurs au pointille, assistes d'un imprimeur en couleurs. Laissant de cote ses travaux plus iniportants, les portraits beaux, elegants, de grandeur naturelle des charmantes et nobles dames et des hommes connus, pour les gracieuses interpretations de la gravure a la maniere noire, il trouva que dans les mains d'artistes graveurs sur cuivre, comme Bartolozzi, John Josses, Caroline Watson, Wilkiu, Cheesman, Dickinson, Nutter Schiavonetti, Marcuard, Thomas Watson, John Peter, Simon, Grozer, Collier, J. R. Smith, 1'art delicat du pointill£ pouvait exprimer toute la douceur, la tendresse, et la grace qu'il voulait mettre dans les peintures d'enfants et de jeunes filles, aussi possedons-nous de delicieuses estam- pes, en monochrome et en couleurs, telles que I' Hon. Anne Bingham et Lavinia, Comtesse Spencer, Lady Betty Foster, La Comtesse d'Harrington et ses enfants, Lady Smith et ses enfants, Lord Burghersh, I' Hon. Leicester Stanhope, Simpli- cite, (Mlle Gwatkin), les enfants Peniston Lamb, tous par Bartolozzi; Lady Cockburn et ses enfants, Master Henry Hoare, I' Hon. M™ Stanhope posant pour la Contemplation, Lady Beauchamp (plus tard Comtesse de Hertford), Une Bacchante, (Mme Hartley, 1'actrice et son enfant), les en- fants Spencer dans le Masque et les Diseurs de bonne aven- ture, Aflle Elizabeth Beauclerc (soeur de Lady Diana et de Edpham Beauclerc), en « Una », Muscipula, Robinetta, Felina, Collina, la Fille endormie, Enfance, Lady Catherine, Mamers, Reverie, Lord Grantham et ses freres, Mme Sheridan en Ste Cecile, Affection maternelle (Lady Melbourne et son enfant), Perdita (Mme Robinson), Afme Abinglon en « Roxo- lana », L'dge de I'innocence, VAcademie enfant, le Serpent dans I'herbe, mais la liste serait sans fin. Tous les collectiou- neurs d'estampes en couleurs, savent combien ces gravures de Rexnolds sont recherchees, mais le collectionneur n'est-il pas unique qui peut posseder la mezzotinte en couleur de Keating representant le f ameux portrait de la Duchesse de Devonshire et ae sa petite fille, d'apres Reynolds.
Cette estampe, avec la Bacchante de Smith et la Nature (Lady Hamilton), et aussi la Nature d'Henry Meyer, avec quelques estampes de Morland par Ward, Smith et Keating, la Comtesse d'Oxford de S. W. Reynolds, A/rae Bouverie de J. R. Smith, quelques importantes estampes d'Hoppner,
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Les anciennes gravures anglaises en couleurs
la Famillf I'-'iin de C. Turner, d'apres Reynolds, les enfants S\'iui<>{, de Smith, d'apres Wright de Derby, et Mm>' Hobin- s<tii, d'apres Romney, prouvc-nt que, dans la main d'uu gravcur ayant 1'ceil d'un pcintrc, la maniere noire s'aocorde avcc les encrcs de couleur avec autant d'harmonie ct dc charme que le pointille.
Giiiiisborougli, lui, le Gainsborough d'une maitrise uni- ciuc, d'une inimitable beaute, laplusgrande gloire de 1'art anglais du xvmc siecle semblc ne pas avoir eu 1'ambition d'etre un iiiiprimeiir en couleurs. A 1'exception de Hobbinol et Gandcrctta (Tomkins) que nous reproduisons et Lavinia (Bartolozzi) tous deux peints pour les Poetes britanniques de Macklin, je ne crois pas qu'une ojuvre importante de Gainsborough ait ete reproduite en estampe pointillee en couleurs. Or, ces deux reproductions ne peuvent pas suffire pour representer le maitre, tandis que en mezzotinte, 1'in- terpretation de Whiston Parney de la Duchesse de Devons- hire par Gainsborough, fut, je crois, imprimee en couleurs mais les tirages sont extremement rar.>s.
L'art exquis de Romney d'autre part, avec sa gracieuse simplicite de beaute, se prelail mieux a la gravure en cou- leurs. Parnii les innombrables gravures leinlees dont les petits carreaux des boutiques d'estampes du xvril6 sidcle etaient remplies, aucunes n'etaient mieux accueillies des connaisseurs que celles de Romney. Aussi, dans toute collection complete des tirages en couleurs, il faut placer parmi les plus belles et les plus appreciees, la jolie Emma et Serena (Miss Sneyd), de John Jones, Mme Jordan dans The Romp d'Ogborne; Miss Lucy Vernon dans la Seamstress et Lady Hamilton dans The Spinster de Cheesman, la belle Emma dans la Bacchante de Knight, en Sensibitili par Earlon et en Nature dans les deux mezzotintes que nous venons de mentionner par Smith et Henry Meyer.
II va de soi que les miniatures de Richard Cosway, pein- tre a la mode, d'un dessin leger et brillant, aux jolics lein- tes. aux graces douces et sinueuses, a la delicate decision de caractere, reussissaient Ires bien en gravure pcintiilee.
En couleurs, les tirages avaient un charme de tenue particulidremenl aimable. Plusieurs des plus belles ont ete i'aites par 1'habile Conde : Mme Bouverie, Mme Tic/tell, jyme Jackson, Mm" Fitiherbert, Mme Robinson en « Mela- uia » le jeune Horace Beck ford; ]. S. Agar a delicalemenl grave Harriet Lady Cockerell en Bohemienne, Lady Heath- cote et A/me Duff; Cardon de sa louche distinguee a grave la charmante Mme Recamicr, Schiavonetti Mme Maria Cosway et Michel et Isabella Ogincsy ; Bartolozzi, Mme Har- i/i»;', Mariano Bovi, Lady Diana Sinclair et Charles White la jolie Enfance (les enfants de Lord Radnore).
Les miniatures de Samuel Shelley etaient seulement moins ,\ la mode. Comme portraitiste et peintre de fantaisie, Reynolds etait son modele et son inspirateur, mais le resul- tat, en depit d'une execution tres finie et d'un certain charme d'elegance, etait d'un tres petit Reynolds, car le dossin de Shelley laissait beaucoup a desirer. Naturelle- ment la miniature trouva d'heureuses applications dans le pointille eu couleurs et Shelley eut de la chance avec ses gravures, surtout avec Caroline Watson, avec son cxquise delicalesse et son execution tres finie, et William Nutter, qui connaissait fort bien le style de nombreux peintres.
John Downman, artiste agri-able et original, qui eut une grande vogue, pendant sa vie, etait aussi particulidreinent fait pour la gravure pointiilee. Homme d'une personnalite interessante et d'un talent original, il commenca, comme eldve favori de Benjamin West, par etre un peintre d'his- toire comme on disait alors. II se fit une reputation par le charme particulier et le style de ses portraits, et devint associe de 1' Academic royale. Un critique contemporain. parlant des tableaux exposes a 1' Academic en 1796, s'etonne i de voir un sujet tire des ecritures, peint avec un tel soin et une telle simplicite d'«xpression par un main accoulumee a dessiner les beautes civilisees et artificielles d'une grande metropole ». Ces portraits ont fait la popularite de 1'artiste; negligees pendant trois quarts de sidcle, leurs reproduc- tions gravees font aujourd'hui de Downman un nom revere par les collectionneurs.
Ses portraits, trds reussis dans leur spontaneite et leur habile intuition de caractere etaient faits au crayon ou an fusain. La legere teinte des cheveux, les joues, les levres et les yeux, avec un coloris plus defini, dans le cas de por- traits feminins, avec 1'invariable ceinture et le ruban sur une robe blanche, etaient rendus d'une facon tres particu- liere. Au lieu d'appliquer la couleur comme d'habitude, il la rnettait au dos du dessin et elle apparaissait a travers le papier special mince dont il se servait avec un effet doux.
Voici comment il fut amene a employer cette methode. Enleve dans une raffle de presse et transporte a bord d'un vaisseau, au commencement de la guerre d'Amerique, il resta eloigne de 1'Angleterre pendant deux ans et quand il put revenir chez lui, il retrouva sa femme et ses enfants a Cambridge dans le denument. Son habilete dans le por- trait lui permit de gagner la vie de sa famille.
Un jour qu'il avail, par hasard, laisse un dessin repre- senlanl une figure, sur la lable, un de ses enfanls s'amusa a barbouiller de la couleur sur 1'envers qu'il avail pris pour une feuille blanche.
Downman Irouva son dessin sur la lable, il reraarqua que la figure avail des Ions delicals, il y songea : celle facon nouvelle qui consislail a leinter ses dessins par transpa- rence, fut 1'occasion de sa prosperite. Grace a elle, il penelra dans les maisons des grands, el meme dans les palais; les beaules a la mode el celles qui auraienl aime elre des beaules a la mode, el les aclrices celfibres, loules s'offri- renl au charmanl crayon de Downman sachanl qu'il leur prelerail a loules 1'air d'heureuses jeunes filles. Bienenlendu les estampes d'aprds ces portrails se vendaienl bien, le public ne s'en fatiguait pas. Parmi celles qui fonl prime aujourd'hui, nous cilerons A/me Siddons par Tomkins, la Duchesse de Devonshire el la vicomtesse Duncannon par Bartolozzi, Lady Elisabeth Foster, par Caroline Walson Miss Farren (comlesse de Derby) par Collyer, Frances Kemble, par John Jones.
Le r£gne social des beautes de Cour dura longtemps el survecul a bien des changemenls de modes, depuis les coif- fures monstres jusqu'aux robes de mousscline et aux chapeaux de paille. Les jours ou Iriomphaienl ces deesses, les Gunnings semblaienl etre revenus avcc les trois du- chesses rivales, Devonshire, Rutland, el Gordon, aulo- crales du Ion, gouvernanl la mode par leur beaule souve-
9
Les anciennes gravures anglaises en couleurs
raine, leur elegance, leur esprit et leur charme, et surtout par la fascinante audace de leurs innovations et la hauteur demesuree de leurs plumes.
— Viens, Paris, laisse tes montagnes et tes vallees. — Tu mepriseras tes grossicres deesses, — Si tu vois une fois nos belles Anglaises. — Vois Junon dans 1'imposante Devon; — Minerve, dans 1'esprit et les yeux de Gordon ; — Venus jeune dans la douce Rutland. — Tu mourras avant d'avoir donne le prix.
Ainsi chante le poete; d'autres satiriques qui ecrivent des plaisanteries et esquissent des* caricatures sont des droles moins indulgents; un ecrivain du Morning Post avec un gout bizarre pour la statistique, etablissait une Echelle du Bon ton, montrant dans une douzaine de beautes a la mode, des proportions relatives de beaute : figure, ele- gance, esprit, bon sens, grace, expression, sensibilite, prin- cipes qu'elles possedaient. C'est une liste amusante. Nous y voyons la charmante Mme Crewe creditee d'un maxi- mum de beaute, mais sans aucune grace; la comtesse de Jersey, beaucoup de beaute, de grace et d'expression, mais ni bon sens, ni principes ; la duchesse de Devonshire, plus de principes que de beaute et plus de figure que le reste; Sa Grace de Gordon avec zero d'elegance et la comtesse de Barrymore supreme dans les attractions feminines.
Alors que tout le monde parlait de ces beautes a la mode, alors que 1'apparition d'une d'entre elles dans une nouvelle mode suffisait pour amener un rassemblement dans le Mall, il va de soi que les estampes, portraits en couleur, satisfai- saieut a la curiosite generale. Mais il y avait un public qui desirait autre chose que des portraits meme jolis et qui les voulait avec du sentiment et des histoires.
Certains peintres qui comprenaient cela, fournirent aux graveurs des peintures a sujet populaire. Us eurent raison de le faire, car combien d'entre eux seraient oublies s'ils n'avaient pas ces estampes ? L'un des plus importants fut William Redmore Bigg, qui s'est fait un nom en peignant avec 1'imagination d'un cure de campagne de simples inci- dents de vie campagnarde ou domestique. Le public s'en- thousiasma pour ces estampes qui furent uue mine d'or pour les graveurs. Quant a leurs qualites artistiques nous ne pouvons guere en juger aujourd'hui que par ces tirages fami- liers. Us sont innombrables et ont tous une grace conven- tionnelle. En couleurs les plus agreables sont le Samedi matin, de Burke, et Dimanche matin, d'aprds Nutter, Dulce domum et Black Monday de John Jones, Romps and Truants de William Ward, Shelling Peas et le Ramasseur de Hou- blon de Tomkins, le Dejeuner au College, le Souper au College, Infortunes campagnardes d'Ogborne, le Retour du jeune marin, et le Naufrage du jeune marin de Gaugain.
Puis, voici William Hamilton, artiste fecond et heu- reux. Envoye en Italie dans sa jeunesse, par Robert Adam, 1'architecte, il revint avec une sorte de style italianise de dessin a la fois classique, historique, allegorrque, conven- tionnel, mais heureusement, il developpa une manie're legere, jolie, et decorative de traiter des sujets simples de famille, qui plaisaient a la fois au public et au graveur : ce sont les charmantes planches de la gracieuse serie des Saisons de Thomson gravees par Tomkins et Bartolozzi, Matin et soir, par Tomkins, avec Midi et Nuit, par Delattre.
10
Les uombreux dessins d'enfantsau jeu tels que Amusement d'Ete, Amusement d'Hiver.
How Smooth, Brother ! feel again, Le Chateau en danger, de Gaugain, Breaking Up et la Mascarade, de Nutter, Le Colin-Maillard, Enfants donnant a manger a des poules, Enfants jouant avec un oiseau, de Knight, La Main chaude et autres de Bartolozzi, voila les plus jolics estampes en couleurs de 1'epoque et les plus estimees de nos jours, sur- tout les Mots.
L'ceuvre d'Hamilton suivit le gout populaire, pour la gravure au pointille : sans ces estampes, que saurions-nous d'un artiste si estime de son temps et si industrieux? On en pourrait dire autant de Francis Wheatley dont la popu- larite survit grace a la gravure. C'est seulement aprds son retour de Dublin, ou il aurait continue 1'existence d'un peintre a succes si la societe de Dublin n'avait pas de- couvert que la dame accueillie par elle comme etant Mme Wheatley etait la femme d'un autre, que Wheatley commensa a peindre ces sujets de ville, de campagne et d'interieur qui lui valurent une si grande vogue parmi ses contemporains et le firent promptement admettre a 1'Aca- . demie royale. N'eut-il peint que cela, les treize Cris de Londres, publics par Colnaghi a intervalles de 1793 a 1797, suffiraient a nous le rappeler, ils nous sont si familiers gr^ce aux planches si belles des freres Schiavonetti, Ven- dramini, Gaugain et Cardonet aussi.helas ! par lesfacheuses reproductions qui en furent faites a d'innombrables exem- plaires ! Quelle interessante serie ! Ces estampes ont comme un vieux parfum de lavande ! Comme les rues de Londres nous paraissent propres, sereiues et ressemblent a celles d'une ville de province ! Comme elles paraissent sentir bon ! Comme la vie y doit £tre idyllique ! En regardant ces estampes, on croit entendre les vieux cris qui se r^pe'tent dans ses rues tranquilles du temps de George. Peut-etre les rues de Londres en 1795 n'etaient-elles pas aussi agreables que Wheatley nous les fait voir. Mais, souvenez- vous : dans ces rues, de jolies dames en robes de mousse- line et en calicots imprimes a la nouvelle mode, qui avaient pose devant Reynolds, dont les portraits s'etalaient a la devanture des marchands d'estampes, se promenaient encore dans leur chaise a porteur, on pouvait voir beau- coup de jolies mines et de graces : dans ces memes rues, le jeune Turner allait son chemin vers 1'immortalite, le jeune Charles Lamb se promenait pretant son cceur avec usure a cette foule humaine qui se pressait dans ces rues dont les estampes de Wheatley nous ont conserve la saveur. Parmi les innombrables estampes en couleurs d'apres Wheatley, celles qui sont les plus estimees de nos jours sont peut-etre en mezzotinte, Le Desastre, Le Retour du soldat, Le Retour du marin, par William Ward, Le Clown battu par W.-S. Reynolds; au pointille, I'Ete et I'Hiver, de la serie des Saisons, par Bartolozzi.
Westall fit Le Printemps et L'Automns. La Porte du cottage et La Porte de I'ecole par Keating, Partant pour la foire, La Foire, par Eginton et Le Dindon par Delattre, sont d'admirables specimens de 1'art qui fit la reputation de Wheatley.
Les agreables paysanneries et les sentimentalites d' Henry Singleton furent assez populaires pour tenter 1'habilete des
Les anciennes gravitres anglaises en couleurs
principaux graveurs qui ont du faire de leur mieux pour I'imprimcur en couleurs, car Singleton.de son temps menu-, [1 ]>Mur un pauvrc coloristc. I'armi les iiii'illeures estampes, nous citerons les deux jolis pendants de Nutter, La Fermc et La Porte du cabaret, Le Vicaire de la paroisse de Burke, Le Chanteur de ballades d'Eginton, Abondance <ini;laise ct Pativrete aux lnd.es, des sujets d'enfants, par .Mr.iilows et Benedetti, Lingo et Cowslip qui reprfsente 1'acteur coinique John Kdwin et Mme Wells dans VAgriable surprise d'O'Keefe, groupe que Downman a peint egale- nient avec infiniment plus d'esprit et de caractere.
Les sujets ayant trait a 1'enfance etaient aussi trSs dcinandes, mais le public voulait maintenant des enfants plus grands et plus du monde que les Cupidons et les Cherubins de Cipriani ou les amours enfants, et les Baccha- nalcs de lady Diana Beauclerc si admires par Horace Wai- pole et si flattes dans les gravnres de Bartolozzi, Tom- kins et Bovi. Le fecond Richard Westall n'etait pas en arriere de ses collegues de I'Academie en adaptant ses ins- pirations au gout des acheteurs; il combinait la fantaisie des champs, comme on le demandait avec le sentiment de la vie des enfants et il contribua a donner a nombre de. salles de reception un air plus confortable grace a ses agreables sujets. Quand le charme de la gravure vicnt caclier la faiblesse, quand 1'impression en couleurs y ajoute son charme sous la direction personnelle de Westall, nous trouvons quelque raison d'etre a la popularite des estampes suivantes : Le Bouton de rose de Nutter, La Sensitive et Cupidon endormi, Innocents faute, Innocents vengeance de Josi, Le Fantome de Schiavonetti, un joli mais inegal pen- dant au Masque de Reynolds.
A cette epoque productive de 1'impression en couleurs, les Chants d'innocence de William Blake avaier.t paru, avec leurs pages gentiment ornees d'une seule couleur imprimee, la magique simplicite de leur poesie, chaque page ayant la Saveur d'avril, comme 1'a dit Swinburne, mais cepen- dant, il ne seinble pas qu'elles aient produit une influence quelconque sur les artistes qui faisaient des sujets d'en- fants pour des impressions populaires. Et cependant il est certain qu'un sentiment poetique contribua a la grace et au charme des ceuvres de Thomas Stothard : la prodi- gieuse activite de son crayon domina dans une grande mesure I'illustration de livres de 1' epoque.
On lui attribue cinq mille dessins ; Blake lui-mdme en grava quelques-uns au pointille, mais nous avons ici a nous occuper des jolis tirages en couleurs tels que Le Cinq no- vembre, La Nourriture des poulets, L'Ecolier recompense, Retour de I'ecole, Buffet Fours, L' Amour en deroute, Rosina, Flora, La iolie Poll de Plymouth, de Knight; First Bite et /».<< Breerhed, de Nutter; Nurs'd at home et Nurs'd abroad de Strutt et d'autres qu'il serait trop long d'enumerer.
I 11 autre artiste fort goute des acheteurs d'estampes en couleurs fut le Reverend Matthew William Peters, le seul clergyman qui ait ete membre de I'Academie royale. II faut cependant faire remarquer qu'il n'entra dans les ordres qu'apres avoir obtenu tous les honneurs academiques. Aprcs quelques heureuses annees passees a faire des por- traits et des tableaux de genre, il donna sa demission de membre de 1' Academic. On pent dire que pendant qu'il
peignait pour se faire une popularite, il y avail In-aiu mip de « monde et de chair » dans ses peintures : en tout cas, elles etaient fort seduisantes : voycz les jolies Sylvia et Lydia, par Dickinson ; Amour et Jeunesse ravie, par Whin- ; Beaucoup de bruit pour rien, de John Peters Simon; Sophia d'Hogg, Les Chanteurs, de J.-R. Smith. Les trois saints enfants dans 1'estampe de Simon nous montre Peter sous un jour ou nous 1'imaginons plus volontiers en acadi'-mi- cien t converti » pour devenir chapelain de George « Flo- rizel >, prince de Galles.
John Russell, dont les gracieux portraits au pastel plai- saient avec le charme special du procede. trouverent aussi une heureuse interpretation sur la planche de cuivrc spe- cialement quand elle etait traitee par Tomkins, ce graveur delicat. Ses plus charmantes epreuves en couleurs sont la charmante Maria, Amour maternel et Enfants donnant a manger a des poulets. Mrs Fitzherbert de Collyer est aussi une des plus recherchees parrai les nombreuses estampes en couleurs de Russell. A 1'epoque ou les gravures de Charles Ansell, La Mart d'un cheval de course, en 1784, avaient un immense succds, persoune ne pensait que cent vingt-cinq ans plus tard les collectionneurs le tiendraient en grande estime non pour les chevaux qui avaient fait sa reputation, mais pour quatre jolis petits dessins d'interieurs domestiques bien de leur epoque et dont Tomkins nous a donne une gravure au pointille, tr£s charmante et rare en couleurs.
Tomkins a grave des choses d'Ansell, Knight aussi. Mais la serie des Coin du feu anglais et Coin du feu francais, le Boudoir francais et le Boudoir anglais (tous deux reproduits ici) doivent £tre, s'ils sont finement colories, un des joyaux d'une collection de choix. Ces estampes nous laissent entre- voir des details sur la vie d'interieur des gens a la mode d'autrefois.
Grace au sens de cet artiste si vivant qu'est Edward Dayes, nous pouvons voir comment le beau monde cir- culc dans les pares. Une promenade dans Hyde-Park et La Promenade dans Saint- James's Park, 1'une gravee par Gau- gain, 1'autre par Soiron, sont tres vivantes, elles sont rares en couleurs. Le nom d'Henry William Bunbury a aussi un interSt social. Classe habituellement avec les caricatu- ristes, dont il etait un des plus spontanement humoristes et des plus fins, il cut, co:nme son confrere en caricature Thomas Rawlinson, ses jours de grace. A cette epoque, il fit, avec un sentiment tr£s net de la beaute, de charmautes choses que les graveurs traduisirent en couleurs. Citons Travaux du matin par Tomkins, Le Chant et La Danse par Partolozzi, Les Graces modernes par Scott, et Suzanne aux yeux noirs par Dickinson.
Le crayon de Bunbury, qui tournait en ridicule les folies et les faiblesses du jour, savait, a 1'occasion, t se tourncr legdrement vers les pensees d'amour », comme dans un Conte d'amour si artistiquement grave par J.-K. Sherwin, et c'est dans ses dessins sur 1' amour et le roman qui cho- quaient un peu Fanny Burney. Elle ne trouvait pas bien qu'un ecuyer de cour, marie et pdre de famille, traitat de semblables sujets, mais il adorait Werther que Fanny Bur- ney avouait ne pouvoir lire, n'etait-il pas le niari devouc de Catherine Horneck?
11
Les anciennes gravures anglaises en couleurs
Rowlaudson n'avait pas certes la culture et le raffine- ment de Bunbury, mais avec son humeur rabelaisienne, il avait un impeccable dessin et, quand il voulait, un charme de touche et une grace magique de courbe. Parmi les innom- brables planches coloriees on peut vite faire le compte de celles qui sont de veritables tirages en couleurs. Les Loges d' Opera et 1'interessant et vivant Vauxhall si siprituelle- ment grave par Pollard et aquatinte par Francis Juke n'ont pas ete, comme on le suppose, imprimees tout d'abord en couleurs, mais la Sirene et Narcissa, tous deux d'un charme voluptueux, sont graves et pointilles et vraiment imprimes en couleurs en partie. A quelques exceptions pres, les impressions de Rowlandson ont ete seulement gravees par lui et aquatintees et coloriees par d'autres mains, il fournissait seulement un dessin teinte.
Quand le manteau du portraitiste a la mode cut passe des epaules de Reynolds a celles de John Hoppner, quand les beautes commencerent a ne plus etre ausi jeunes qu'elles 1'avaient ete, et qu'une nouvelle generation de jolies jeunes femmes eut fait son apparition, le public curieux demanda de nouvelles figures. Aussi Hoppner, qui avait ete deja fine- ment interprete par la mezzotinte, s'alliait a Charles Wilkin, peintre de portraits a 1'huile et en miniature de quelque reputation, qui en qualite d'habile graveur au pointil!6 avait gagne ses eperons avec sir Joshna, notamment dans sa belle gravure de Lady Cockburn et ses enfants. La nouvelle entreprise etait Une serie choisie de portraits de dames de qualite a la mode. Ces gravures charmantes et appreciees en monochrome sont delicieuses, mais tres rares, en couleur. Sept portraits furent faits par Hoppner et sont parmi ses meilleurs : ceux de la vicomtesse S'-Asaph, de la vicom- tesse Andover, comtesse d'Euston, de la nouvelle duchesse de Rutland, lady Charlotte Campbell, lady Langham, et lady Charlotte Buncombe. Les trois autres sont du gra- veur lui-meme. — Ladies Gertrude Villiers, Catherine Howard et Gertrude Fitzpatrick qui, enfant, avait pose devant Reynolds pour sa Collina, M. Paget en Psychi par Hoppner est un charmant pointille par Henry Meyer. La mezzotinte imprimee en couleurs semble avoir ete tres gou- tee par Hoppner, car nous avons dans ce procede la jolie Comtesse d'Oxford un exemplaire de choix, et M. Whitbread par S. W. Reynolds; Sophia Western et M. Bouverie par J. R. Smith; Lady Cholmondeley et sou enfant, par Charles Turner; M. Jordan, en « Hippolyta », par John Jones; Lady Charlotte Creville, par John Young; Mn Hoppner, en Elisa, M. Orby Hunter, les Enfants Goodsall dans Soleil couchant et Lady Lambton et ses enfants, Salad Girl, M. Ben- well et les Filles de sir Thomas Frankland, si connues en monochrome et extremement rares en couleur, par Wil- liam Ward; les Enfants Douglas par James Ward, Enfants au bain (ceux d'Hoppner), M. Hibbert et la gracieuse Miranda (Mme Michael Angelo Taylor) dont on ne connait qu'une epreuve en couleurs de qualite exquise et qui fait partie de la collection de choix de M. Frederick Behrens.
La superiorite d'Hoppner sur les portraitistes ses contem- porains etait depuis bien longtemps reconnue, quand elle f ut serieusement mise en echec par le portrait d' Une actrice expose en 1790 al'Academie royale; il etait 1'ceuvre d'un jeune peintre de vingt-trois ans qui devait un jour presider
12
1'Academie et devenir le peintre le plus a la mode de son temps. C'etait Thomas Lawrence, le portrait etait celui de la belle et populaire miss Elisabeth Farren, qui devait etre sept ans plus tard la comtesse de Derby; elle etait repre- sentee en blanc avec un manchon : le tableau fut grave par Charles Knight avec les dernieres touches par Bartolozzi, qui le signa; c'est aujourd'hui une des gravures en couleurs les plus recherchees et les plus souvent reproduites.
Les beautes a la mode n'avaient cependant pas le mono- pole de la « placidite de contentement et la conscience de superiorite » necessaires, suivant 1'expression du Dr Johnson. « pour donner a la figure humaine toute son expression », Heureusement, il y avait de jeunes artistes qui savaient trouver partout de gracieuses et charmantes femmes aussi exquises a prendre, avec le sens artistique de la nature et du moment, et peut-etre plus pittoresques, car elles n'etaient pas obligees de cacher leur caractere sur leur figure et dans leurs attitudes. Un de ces artistes etait aussi un eminent graveur et en meme temps un grand marchand et impri- tneur.
John Raphael Smith tint une grande place dans le monde des imprimeurs de Londres a la fin du xviue siecle, car il n'avait pas seulement cette habilete d'artiste qui consiste a faire ce que le public demande, mais il avait aussi le sens commercial de ce qui pouvait plaire au public dans ses differentes fantaisies. Maitre en mezzotinte et le premier parmi les traducteurs de Gainsborough, Reynolds et Rom- ney, il employa avec plus de legerete le meme procede pour graver nombre de ses vives peintures de scenes contem- poraines avec leurs manieres et leurs modes tres vivantes. Genereux, hospitalier, gai, d'une vie dont tous les moments etaient consacres a 1'art, aux affaires et au plaisir, J. R. Smith avait un gout pour tout ce qui etait gai et plaisant dans la vie autour de lui. II avait aussi un sens instinctif de la mode ; aussi dans les nombreux dessins de lui representant de jolies dames dans les diverses attitudes de la paresse nous avons uue idee plus reelle des modes du moment que dans les graves tableaux desir Joshua. Smith les eut graves lui-meme au pointille en suggerant des effets de crayon avec 1'independance de 1'artiste original et avec la touche large du mezzotintiste ou il les aurait laisses a d'autres graveurs. Etant peintre, il savait mettre judicieusement des cou- leurs sur la planche, et parmi les estampes les plus ap- preciees de 1'epoque, celles de J. R. Smith tienuent une place a part. Nous citerons parmi les plus caracteristiques : A loisir, Black Brown and Fair maid, Wife, Widow, What you will, A Christmas Holiday; FUrdilla et Narcissa, The Fortune Tellers, The Mirror, Serena and Flirtilla, Thoughts on a Single Life, Thoughts on Matrimony graves par William Ward qui publia en couleurs la charmante mezzotinte The Widows Tale. Voici dans le meme pro- cede La Promenade a Carlisle House, puis de Smith Lec- tures on Gadding et The moralist, graves par Nutter, et le Credulous Lady and the Astrologer par Simon. Mais ses pro- pres dessins en mezzotiute ne valent pas la splendide Al- meria d'apres Opie; jamais sa pointe ne fut plus sure que dans sa Mn Mills d'apres Engelheart, ou son Serpent dans I'Herbe d'apres Reynolds, ou ces charmantes et fami- lieres estampes Delia en Ville, Delia d la campagne, Occu-
Les anciennes gravures anglaises en couleurs
p;itii>n rustique. Amusement Ala campagne et la si'-iic ilc Letitia dans sa forme originate, Wen entendu.
J.-R. Smith etait une grande personnalite et son influence sivr son eleve William Ward fut tres forte. II 1'instruisit par 1'exemple et lui fit 1'honneur de graver en mezzotinte ct tn diarniantes couleurs, la peinture a la Morland inti- tuli-o La Visile au grand-pere. II le fit certainement tra- vail lor et on voit les resultats, non settlement dans les in- noutbrables planches que Ward a produites en mezzotinte <-t en pointille, d'apres divers peintres, mais aussi dans ces jolis dessins d'une charmante feminite, Louisa, Alinda, Lucy de Leinster Almeida, Le Soliloque, Hesitation, Louisa Mildmay et Cyprian Votary tous graves avec une verve et un channe qui sont le resultat d'une parfaite connaissauce des ressources de la methode du pointille, connaissance qui n'a etc surpassee, si meme egalee, par aucun graveur.
Quand ces estainpes sont finetnent teintees, elles lais- sent voir le metier de 1'iinprimeur en couleurs dans ce qu'il a de plus delicat et elles justifient le gout de ceux qui les collectionnent.
Dans ce genre, voici Private amusement (Reflexion) et Public amusement (Tentation) grave par Ward, d'apres Kamberg, deux estampes tres appreciees mais tres diffe- rentes de caractdre, fines niezzotintes des peintures de sou jeune frere James. De toutes, les meilleures peut-etre sont The Citizen's Retreat, Selling Rabbits, Compassionate Chil- dren, The Haymakers, Outside of a Country Ale House, Summer et Winter Vegetable Market et A Poultry Market, graves par Ward dout les planches suivantes ont ete tirees en couleurs : The Rocking Horse, Rustic Felicity, A Cottager going to market et A Cottager returning from market.
La renommee de William Ward tiendra surtout dans I'avenir, a ses interpretations innouibrables en pointille et en mezzotinte des peintures de son beau-frere, cet artiste si nature), ce vagabond dissolu et imprevoyant, ce peiutre au talent facile et familial, George Morland.
Kii interpretant Morland comme il avait interprete John-Raphael Smith, il montrait sa connaissance du gout populairc. Les estampes a la mode etaient des sujets bien simples de campagne ou de domesticite mais qui repetaient des conventions de peinture et des sentiments stereotypes. Bigg, Hamilton, Whcatley, Singleton, Westall, tous fai- saient des choses jolies et agreables : le public les achetait, les pendait aux inurs des interieurs sans meme soupjonner que la Nature, veritable inspiratrice de 1'art, avait pcu a faire avec toute cette peinture. Alors arriva Morland avec sou instinct naturel pour la peinture vraie et simple, son art libro et facile, la charmante magie de sa palette, son rcalisme sans affectation. Les autres avaient idealise la vulgarite, Morland comprit qu'une chose n'est jamais vul- >;airi- si on la voit, si on la traite avec verite.
J.-R. Smith comprit, en artiste et en marchand acha- lande d'cstampes, que ce talent viril charmerait le gout du public en lui montrant la beaute a travers uue vision vraie de la nature.
Coincidence curieuse : A la meme epoque, un obscur edi- U-ur de Kilmaniock donnait aux Ecossais amateurs de chants, les moyens de reconnaitre dans le lyrisme naturel de Bunts une renaissance de la poesie anglaise. Dans Mor-
land, il y avait un Burns qui pouvait met t re (ircen Grow the Rashes, O, ou My Nannie, O, ou The Jolly Beggars en couleurs durables, comme le poete les avait mis en chants immortels. Et aujourd'hui, les simples peintures de Mor- land sont classiques parce qu'en elles, independamment du sttjet, il y a la vraie poesie de forme et de couleur.
Toujours pret a se Her, dans le premier eveil de cons- cience de ses brillants moyens, avec ses ambitions d'artiste jointes a sa joie de vivre, Morland ne tarda pas a subir 1'influence aimable mais energique de Smith. L'editeur, pousse par !e gout du public, stirnulait 1'activite du peintre. Avec des graveurs comme Smith lui-me'me ou comme Ward pour interpretes habiles et sympathiques, sans compter tous les autres graveurs de merite disposes a faire de meme, Morland regna bientot sur le marche ou, tout au moins, sur ceux qui 1'exploitaient. II semblait pou- voir faire tout ce que le public desirait ; aussi, avant de se developper dans le Morland de 1'etable, de la ferme et du vagabondage pittoresque, il se mesura avec les peintres de genre populaires sur leur propre terrain et les battit par son sens de la nature.
Bigg aurait-il pu faire quelque chose d'aussi charmant qa'Une visile a V enfant en nourrice et Une visile a la pen- sion? Voyez les mezzotintes en couleur de ces peintures par William Ward, et comparez leur douce verite de scene et de sentiment avec la version du meme graveur de La Nais- sance d'un heritier par Bigg, avec sa mise en scene et sa sensiblerie. Quelles impressions en couleurs de scenes d'en- fants Hamilton et Stothard ont-ils dessinees qui se puisse comparer, pour la veritable suggestion de 1'ardeur enfan- tine, avec ces perles que sont les mezzotintes de Ward; Children Birds-Nesting, Juvenile Navigators, Le Colin-Mail- lard, The Kite Entangled, Playing at Soldiers de Keating, Nurse and Children in a Field, du meme, Children Nut- ting de Dayes, Children Feeding Goats, de Tomkins.
Morland se plaisait a laisser les enfants du voisinage jouer autour de son atelier, il pouvait ainsi les peindre au naturel sans qu'ils en eussent conscience.
Tous les graveurs, on le concoit, mouraient d'envie de faire une planche de ses peintures rapidement finies. Cette charmante spontaneite d'impression, avec une lutnineuse harmonic de tons qui distingue les oeuvres de Morland, meme celles qui furent peintes dans les heures les plus troubles de sa vie, se retrouve dans les meilleures gravures de ses nombreuses ceuvres. On peut essayer de faire une selection au point de vue de la qualite et de la rarete : II faudra noter parmi les gravures au pointille de Smith Rustic employment et Rural amusement, Delia a la vilfc et Delia a la campagne et la fameuse serie de VHistoire de Letitia : Bonheur domestique, L'Enlevement, Le Parent ver- tueu.v, S'habillant hour la mascarade, La Porte de la Taverne, La Jolie Penitents (nouvelle publication en 1811 avec les amples costumes de 1786 reinplaces par des modes de 1' Em- pire). Puis voici encore Constance (M™ Ward), Variety (M™ Morland), Matin, Thoughts on Amusement for tin- evening, un tres rare ovale par William Ward, Louisa, une paire ovale de grande dimension, La Fille de Livings- tone et How Sweet to meet with Love's return, les fa- iiionx Chiens qui dansenlvt Guinea Pigs, par Gaugain, les
13
Les anciennes gravures anglaises en couleurs
deux derniers republics par Phillipe, Le Jardin de fht et Saint-James Park par Soiron, The Squire's Door et The Farmer's Door par Duterreau, La Visits du Fermier a sa fills mariee & la ville, par W. Bond, La Visile faite a la campagne par Nutter, Industrie et Paresse (M™ Morland) par Knight, The Fair Seducer et The Discovery par E.-J. Dumee.
Nombre de peintures de Morland en mezzotinte ont merite un tirage en couleurs, mais un nombre considerable ont ete coloriees a la main, en tout ou en partie, et 1'on dit que J.-K. Smith employa son jeune eleve Joseph Mallord William Turner a ce travail. Je doute cependant que M. Rawlinson ait pu decouvrir la main de Turner sur une estampe de Morland : contentons-nous done de distinguer les plus belles et les plus rares des mezzotintes imprimees en couleurs. A celles que nous avons citees, nous ajouterons The Angling Party par Keating, The Angler's Repast par A'illiam Ward a qui nous devons La Coquette a sa toilette, The Pledge of Love, Contemplation, tr£s rare et qui rap- pelle d'une facon exquise 1'original qui se trouve dans la collection de M. Thomas Barratts.
Habitants du cottage, Voyageurs, Le Couvreur, Le Pre- mier septembre, Matin ier septembre, Soir, interieur d'un cabaret de village, La Porte de la Taverne, Effets de I 'extra- vagance et de la paresse., Le Peage, Le Retour du' sportsman, L'Etable du fermier, le chef-d'auvre de Morland a la National Gallery, Le Retour du marche, La Nourriture des pores par J.-R. Smith, Coucher de soleil dans le Leicestershire par James Ward, Ett et Hiver par Barnard, Matin ou le Bienveillant sportsman, Soir ou le Retour du sportsman par Grozer, La Vente des cerises et Shelling Peas, paire tres rare gravee a la maniere noire par E. Bell. Puis voici la serie du Deserteur, par Keating : L'Enrdlement d'une recrue, Recrue deserteur trouve cache dans la chambrc de sa femme, Le Deserteur est conduit devant une cour martiale; L'. Deser- teur obtient son pardon et il est rendu a sa famille, serie de scenes etudiees avec realisme, resultat d'une des aventures memes de Morland et qui n'ont ete possibles qu' au xviue sid- cle. Une serie de quatre estampes Snipe Shooting par Cat- ton junior, ne doit pas etre oubliee; elle a cet interet de moutrer 1'aquatinte en combinaison avec le pointille et la gravure.
On comprend la place importante de Morland dans 1'his- • toire du xvuie sificle, lorsque, en parcourant une collection comme celle de M. Thomas Baratt a Hampstead ou il y a des quantites d'estampes en couleurs, on cherche a noter quelques perles et qu'on s'aperfoit que la liste s'est vite allongee.
Ill
Bartolozzi etait arrive en Angleterre avec la reputation d'un maitre graveur, rival du grand sir Robert Strange. Le charme sans appret, la beaute de ses incomparables gra- vures, d'apres le Guerchin, les jolies lignes de sa Clytie et de son Silence, d'apres Annibal Carrache, avaient etonne les
14
connaisseurs. Son habile et fecorid burin, sa pointc avaient une grace et une delicatesse inaccoutumees dans nombre de details de la gravure. Le moindre billet de concert a bene- fice, pour le plus humble musicien etait grave avec autant de finesse et de brio que le diplome de 1' Academic royale; 1'illustration des livres nouveaux s'enrichissait de la char- mante aisance de sa touche. Et, nous 1'avons vu, le petit art du pointille s'etait presente a sa main habile comme le don d'une fee tant le moment etait opportun. Le sens dou- cement caressant de la beaute trouva une expression cer- taine dans les ressources gracieuses du precede et le public en devint tres amateur. Grace a une popularite sans cesse croissante et a 1'appreciation de ses collegues artistes, il produisit les charmantes estampes au pointille qui sont les chefs-d'oeuvre du genre, et, pour beaucoup de gens, le nom de Bartolozzi est synonyme de « belles estampes anciennes en couleurs ».
C'etait aussi un veritable artiste faisant des choses de valeur, interpretant la beaute avec un charme a lui. Les eleves accouraient a son atelier ; parmi eux, des graveurs de renom, qui se disaient qu'une gravure nouvelleet facile au pointille leur rapporterait plus qu'une autre au burin, ou a la mezzotiute. Parini les eldves, certains apprirent si bien de Bartolozzi qu'ils egalerent bientot leur maitre qui le reconnaissait, soit par un genereux eloge, soit par 1'ha- bitude contestable de signer leurs planches de son propre nom. Malheureusement pour sa reputation il prit de plus en plus cette habitude et quand le nom de Bartolozzi eut une valeur sur le marche, il lui arriva de signer des estampes tout a fait indignes de son nom. II y a la, pour le collection- neur, des pieges nombreux et des disillusions a eviter.
Bartolozzi a ete appele 1'Achille de la gravure du xvin" si£cle et certainement sa production et son influence furcnt vraiment heroiques : le talon vulnerable ne manqua meme pas a la ressemblance. La vie prodigue d'un epicurien, peu a peu, assombrit la conscience de 1'artiste, au point de ne plus lui laisser distinguer entre les exigences de son art et sa popularite commerciale. Recherche dans sa mise, hospi- talier, la bourse toujours ouverte, il comptait avec satis- faction sur le debit de plus en plus grand de ses estampes en couleurs, debit qu'il avait cree ou tout au moinsqu'il avait tourne a son profit par de belles offrandes, mais quand il vit que le public accepterait u'importe quoi sous le nom d'estampe en couleurs, si faux que fut le dessin, si pauvre que fut la gravure, il sacrifia ses scrupules d'artiste au besoin de se procurer de 1'argent. Sa bourse etait percee c'etait a la manie du public, pour les estampes en couleurs a la remplir. C'est ainsi que Bartolozzi, le grand et fameux graveur, dont le dessin si sur avait ete pendant si long- temps comme 1'appui des imprimeurs et de nombre d' ar- tistes se mit a encourager de vains amateurs incompe- tents, parmi lesquels de charmantes feinmes avec de jolies idees a faire de mauvais dessins, qu'il corrigeait parfois, qu'il donnait ensuite a de mediocres graveurs et qui arri- vaient sur le marche en planches hativement gravees au poiutille apres avoir ete decorees d'encres de couleurs.
Ses meilleurs eleves 1'abandonnerent : Tornkins, Chess- man, Schiavonetti, Ogborne, Marcuard travaillereut pour leur compte; alors 1'atelier de Bartolozzi devint une fabri-
Les anciennes gravures anglaises en couleurs
que ni'i I'on fit des cstampcs au gout <lu public, au-.M viti- que possible. Cette liate dans la fabrication n'eut pas son effet settlement sur Bartolozzi et ses graveurs, mais sur le commerce do 1'cstampe en general. Le critique d'art <lu « Mont lily Mirror » pour 17176, blamant les imprimeurs, causes <lu inal, pmu-stait contre cette maniere imparfaite de faire d<-s istami><-s i-t il diVlarait dc plus que cela eu son effet sur les peintres et les avail pousses a une indiffe- rence complete sur 1'execution de ces oeuvres destinees a la reproduction, car ils se bornaient a satisfaire 1'impri- iiu-ur ou 1'editeur avec quelques effets d'ombre et de lu- miere.
Auparavant, cependant, sir Robert Strange qui detestait liartolozzi et pour qui la gravure au burin etait seule digne de 1'art du graveur, avait predit une sorte de debacle artis- ti(|ue pour la gravure au poiutille si populaire.
Iji raison de la nature de 1'operation, ecrivait-il, et de 1'extreme facilite de 1'execution, ce precede est dans les mains d'un enfant, d'un imprimeur, d'un fabricant d'es- tampes, quel qu'il soit et malgre 1'ignorauce et 1'inhabilete. Je les nomme fabricants et,en verite, une production sern- blable ne merite pas le litre d'ceuvre d'art, elle tendrait 4 deprecier les beaux arts en general, a degouter le public, a i;alrr le gout du pays. Cet art, si on veut lui donner ce nom, est extremement limite, admet peu de variete et n'est susceptible d'aucune amelioration ».
Naturellement le grand graveur au burin qui avait tra- vaille pour se faire un nom pendant de longues annees etait vcxe de voir que ces beaux effets de chair douce qu'il pro- duisait si bien avec une laborieuse maltrise de la pointe et du burin, etaient rendus si facilement par le pointille et plus apprecies par le public. II y avait beaucoup d° vrai dans sa protestation. Le public etait alors sature, non de jolies estampes finement gravees, mais de mauvaises gravures de mauvais dessins, la plupart grossierement coloriees a la main, ou imprimees sans aucun sens d'art, mais les beaux arts n'etaient pas du tout deprecies par cela.
Aujourd hui ce charmant petit art a retrouve des ama U-urs enthousiastes comme autrefois, tandis que le noble art de la gravure au burin n'est appreciS que par un petit nombre.
Si Strange pouvait aujourd'hui visiter Christie, il serait bien etonne de ne voir aucune de ses superbes gravures au burin d'apres les maitres italiens, et d'entendre les enchdres mises sur les estampes en couleurs d'aprds Reynolds, de son ancien rival Bartolozzi, ou sur sa Duchesse de Devonshire et Lady Duucannon, de Downmanou lesenfantsde Cipriani; Contentement, Amiiie,les Mois d'Hamilton, les Beautes de Saint- James et de Saint- Giles ou la Fille aux oranges de Miss Ben well.
Strange ne serait pas peu etonne aussi s'il entendait le cas que le collectionneur moderne fait des principaux eleves de Bartolozzi dans cet art que, de son temps, il jugeait avec tant de mepris. Parmi eux, 1'eleve prefere de llartolozzi etait Pcltro-William Tomkins. « C'est mon fils en art », clisuit le inaitre toujours dispose a faire 1'eloge du bon travail. « II pent faire tout ce que je fais dans ce genre, et j'espere qu'il fera plus. .
Tomkins avait herite le gout des arts graphiques de son
\Villi.ini Tomkins, associe de 1'acaderaie royale, et printrr clr paysaj^'M; r'r.st ait]>iv>i ilr liartuli i/zi qu'il apprit cette douceur et cette grace de dessin qui distiuguent ses planches de cuivre, qu'il s'agissc de ses jolis dessins de fan- taisie sur les eufants, comme // dort, Jeu innocent, Un bon tour, ou de ses interpretations des ceuvres d'autres ar tistes. Son pointille serre avait la memc rondeur de ton que les dessins authentiques du inaitre qu'il copiait et il s'adaptait particulierement bien aux simples tons du tirage du xviii" sidcle. On trouvera dans ce volume quelques- unes dcs plus agreables estampes de Tomkins, j'ai parle des autres en parlant des peiutres. L'eusenible de son ceuvre est enorme et tout est charmant : aussi le collectionneur peut-il choisir, sans epuiser la liste des principales estampes de Tomkins, graveur de la Reine, professeur des Princesses; il parait avoir ete trds bien avec les dames artistes et ama- teurs dont les dessins employerent souvent son burin, telles que Julia Conyers, la Princesse Elisabeth, Lady Templeton, Lady Edward Bentinck, Miss Drax et, bien entendu, elles demandaient toutes des tirages en couleurs comme un droit. Parmi les oauvres les plus serieuses, on trouve quelques bonnes planches d'apres les anciens maitres, comme celles qu'on voit dans Tresham « British Gallery of Pictures », representant la Vierge, 1'Enfant et Saint-Jean, d'aprds Raphael grave et public par Tomkins a Fulham en 1789. Je Us au bas : « Imprime en couleur par C. Floquet » ce qui fait penser a une anu'cale entente eutre le graveur et 1'im- primeur, car le coloriste avait rarement sa place dans les anciennes impressions en couleur.
Les bonnes gravures de Thomas Checsman ont le charme d'un artiste habitue a exprimer ses propres conceptions. Dans sa jeunesse il habitait chez la veuve d' Hogarth, et c'est a son appui qu'il dut d'etre charge de la gravure de The Last Stake. II apprit de Bartolozzi la gravure au poin- tille rehaussee par le burin et on voit comme il y excellait en regardant ses charmantes estampes : Spinster et Seams- tress de Romney, la Marquise de Townshend et son enfant (Amour et Beaute) d'Angelica Kauffman, Reverie de Rey- nolds, Affection maternelle et autres, de lui-meme.
Robert S. Marcuard fut aussi un des meilleurs elfives de Bartolozzi et les belles gravures du portrait de son maitre, d'apres Reynolds, ont une richesse de tons, une distinction de caractere qu'on trouve rarement dans le pointille et qu'on voit aussi dans les interpretations, par Marcuard, d'autres portraits d'hommes de Reynolds. II semble avoir fortifie son pointille d'ombre avec le burin: beaucoup plus employee que d'habitude, cette pratique lui avait ete suggeree pro- bablement par son reuvre en mezzotinte.
II faut citer quelques belles estampes par Charles Knight, habile graveur d'une remarquable ardeur. II s'assimila si bien les methodes de Bartolozzi — il ne lui manquait que I'iniinitable delicatesse du maJtre, — qu'on lui confia les planches importantes qui n'attendaient plus que les der- ni£res touches du inaitre pour etre dignes de son nom. Et le maitre les signait sans hesitation pour la publication comme ce fut le cas pour la fameuse miss Farren, d'apres Lawrence ;