The British School of Etching: Being a Lecture Delivered to the Print Collectors' Club (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

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Excerpt from The British School of Etching: Being a Lecture Delivered to the Print Collectors' Club

The british school OF etching in his gentle art OF making enemies, places several people under his ban, among them the so-called experts those sombre of mien, and wise with the wisdom of books, who frequent museums - collecting - comparing - compiling classifying - contradicting. On every charge, from sombreness of mien to capacity for contradiction, I must plead guilty, and it is with the greater timidity that I venture to deliver this opening lecture of the Print Collectors' Club to so distinguished an audience of connoisseurs and well-known artists. When the honour was thrust upon me, it was suggested that this first lecture should be a survey of the whole history of etching. That would have meant a very superficial treatment of the subject, and so it seemed preferable to limit our attention to the British School. But even the British School of Etching is no narrow frith to cross, and you must pardon me if the short time at our disposal allows only of cursory reference to many well-known etchers, with just an indication of the mile stones and landmarks from which you can map out, or recall to your memory, the big outlines and features of our subject to-night. And to give you a final apology for an inadequate treatment of a large subject I would point out that it would take all our time to read you just a bibliography, with little more than titles, of all that has been written about British etching from Faithorne's Art of Graving and Etching, published in 1662, down to the last illuminating article by Mr. Malcolm Salaman, who, you will be pleased to know, has recently been elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of painter-etchers in place of the late Sir Frederick Wedmore. Nor can we enter into details of technique - that is a subject for later demonstrations and lectures. But, as I am addressing the amateur (in the true sense of the word) as wellas the technician, I would ask you to consider the fact that every one of the etchings which you see reproduced to-night was done in the same way - drawn with a point of steel or of a stone (such as diamond or ruby) on copper or zinc or other metal, printed direct without further treatment in the case of the scratched lines of dry point, or printed from lines bitten with acid into the metal plate. In any case, every thing depends on a basis of pure line drawn with a fine point and to understand etchings you must appreciate the value, the quality, the characteristics of line. You will find that an etcher's line can be as personal, as expressive, as diverse, as handwriting. The line that the etcher makes on copper is his means of expression - his language; and, in Hazlitt's words, it' is in the highest degree unphilosophical to call language or diction the dress of our thoughts. It is the incarnation of our thoughts. You can recognise the master from a square inch of his plate, by the subtle incarnation of personality that creeps into every line of his work. That is why I have put on the screen as a key-note to our whole subject a little plate of Shepperton by Sir Francis Seymour Haden. It is a very simple plate - more than half of it white space - yet it is masterly in composition and in expressive rendering of nature. The work throughout seems so loose and un conscious, yet every line is vital and reveals the master's hand.

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