Ariadne Florentina: Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving. Ruskin John
to accept this limitation with respect to engraving as a pictorial art? Will you call nothing an engraving, except a group of furrows or cavities cut in a hard substance? What shall we say of mezzotint engraving, for instance, in which, though indeed furrows and cavities are produced mechanically as a ground, the artist's work is in effacing them? And when we consider the power of engraving in representing pictures and multiplying them, are we to recognize and admire no effects of light and shade except those which are visibly produced by dots or furrows? I mean, will the virtue of an engraving be in exhibiting these imperfect means of its effect, or in concealing them?
11. Here, for instance, is the head of a soldier by Dürer,—a mere gridiron of black lines. Would this be better or worse engraving if it were more like a photograph or lithograph, and no lines seen?—suppose, more like the head of Mr. Santley, now in all the music-shops, and really quite deceptive in light and shade, when seen from over the way? Do you think Dürer's work would be better if it were more like that? And would you have me, therefore, leaving the question of technical method of production altogether to the craftsman, consider pictorial engraving simply as the production of a light-and-shade drawing, by some method permitting its multiplication for the public?
12. This, you observe, is a very practical question indeed. For instance, the illustrations of my own lectures on sculpture are equivalent to permanent photographs. There can be little doubt that means will be discovered of thus producing perfect facsimiles of artists' drawings; so that, if no more than facsimile be required, the old art of cutting furrows in metal may be considered as, at this day, virtually ended. And, indeed, it is said that line engravers cannot any more get apprentices, and that a pure steel or copper plate is not likely to be again produced, when once the old living masters of the bright field shall have been all laid in their earth-furrows.
13. Suppose, then, that this come to pass; and more than this, suppose that wood engraving also be superseded, and that instead of imperfect transcripts of drawings, on wood-blocks or metal-plates, photography enabled us to give, quite cheaply, and without limit to number, facsimiles of the finished light-and-shade drawings of artists themselves. Another group of questions instantly offers itself, on these new conditions; namely, What are the best means for a light-and-shade drawing—the pen, or the pencil, the charcoal, or the flat wash? That is to say, the pen, producing shade by black lines, as old engraving did; the pencil, producing shade by gray lines, variable in force; the charcoal, producing a smoky shadow with no lines in it, or the washed tint, producing a transparent shadow with no lines in it. Which of these methods is the best?—or have they, each and all, virtues to be separately studied, and distinctively applied?
14. See how curiously the questions multiply on us. 1st, Is engraving to be only considered as cut work? 2d, For present designs multipliable without cutting, by the sunshine, what methods or instruments of drawing will be best? And now, 3dly, before we can discuss these questions at all, is there not another lying at the root of both,—namely, what a light-and-shade drawing itself properly is, and how it differs, or should differ, from a painting, whether by mere deficiency, or by some entirely distinct merit?
15. For instance, you know how confidently it is said, in common talk about Turner, that his works are intelligible and beautiful when engraved, though incomprehensible as paintings. Admitting this to be so, do you suppose it is because the translation into light and shade is deficient in some qualities which the painting had, or that it possesses some quality which the painting had not? Does it please more because it is deficient in the color which confused a feeble spectator, and offended a dogmatic one,—or because it possesses a decision in its steady linear labor which interprets, or corrects, the swift penciling of the artist?
16. Do you notice the two words I have just used, Decision, and Linear?—Decision, again introducing the idea of cuts or divisions, as opposed to gradations; Linear, as opposed to massive or broad?
Yet we use all these words at different times in praise, while they evidently mark inconsistent qualities. Softness and decision, breadth and delineation, cannot co-exist in equal degrees. There must surely therefore be a virtue in the engraving inconsistent with that of the painting, and vice versâ.
Now, be clear about these three questions which we have to-day to answer.
A. Is all engraving to be cut work?
B. If it need not be cut work, but only the reproduction of a drawing, what methods of executing a light-and-shade drawing will be best?
C. Is the shaded drawing itself to be considered only as a deficient or imperfect painting, or as a different thing from a painting, having a virtue of its own, belonging to black and white, as opposed to color?
17. I will give you the answers at once, briefly, and amplify them afterwards.
A. All engraving must be cut work;—that is its differentia. Unless your effect be produced by cutting into some solid substance, it is not engraving at all.
B. The proper methods for light-and-shade drawing vary according to subject, and the degree of completeness desired,—some of them having much in common with engraving, and others with painting.
C. The qualities of a light-and-shade drawing ought to be entirely different from those of a painting. It is not a deficient or partial representation of a colored scene or picture, but an entirely different reading of either. So that much of what is intelligible in a painting ought to be unintelligible in a light-and-shade study, and vice versâ.
You have thus three arts,—engraving, light-and-shade drawing, and painting.
Now I am not going to lecture, in this course, on painting, nor on light-and-shade drawing, but on engraving only. But I must tell you something about light-and-shade drawing first; or, at least, remind you of what I have before told.
18. You see that the three elementary lectures in my first volume are on Line, Light, and Color,—that is to say, on the modes of art which produce linear designs,—which produce effects of light,—and which produce effects of color.
I must, for the sake of new students, briefly repeat the explanation of these.
Here is an Arabian vase, in which the pleasure given to the eye is only by lines;—no effect of light, or of color, is attempted. Here is a moonlight by Turner, in which there are no lines at all, and no colors at all. The pleasure given to the eye is only by modes of light and shade, or effects of light. Finally, here is an early Florentine painting, in which there are no lines of importance, and no effect of light whatever; but all the pleasure given to the eye is in gayety and variety of color.
19. I say, the pleasure given to the eye. The lines on this vase write something; but the ornamentation produced by the beautiful writing is independent of its meaning. So the moonlight is pleasant, first, as light; and the figures, first, as color. It is not the shape of the waves, but the light on them; not the expression of the figures, but their color, by which the ocular pleasure is to be given.
These three examples are violently marked ones; but, in preparing to draw any object, you will find that, practically, you have to ask yourself, Shall I aim at the color of it, the light of it, or the lines of it? You can't have all three; you can't even have any two out of the three in equal strength. The best art, indeed, comes so near nature as in a measure to unite all. But the best is not, and cannot be, as good as nature; and the mode of its deficiency is that it must lose some of the color, some of the light, or some of the delineation. And in consequence, there is one great school which says, We will have the color, and as much light and delineation as are consistent with it. Another which says, We will have shade, and as much color and delineation as are consistent with it. The third, We will have delineation, and as much color and shade as are consistent with it.
20. And though much of the two subordinate qualities may in each school be consistent with the leading one, yet the schools are evermore separate: as, for instance, in other matters, one man says, I will have my fee, and as much honesty as is consistent with it; another, I will have my honesty, and as much fee as is consistent with it. Though the man who will have his fee be subordinately honest,—though the man who will have his honor, subordinately rich, are they not evermore of diverse schools?
So you have, in art, the utterly