Antique Prints

( Originally Published 1924 )

More popular branch of collecting than that comprised under the title of old prints, it would be difficult to find, and yet, amongst amateur collectors, there is often some misapprehension as to the different classes of prints. There are probably few branches of collecting in which there is greater opportunity for bargains.

I was shown by one of the London dealers some years ago a splendid impression of Rembrandt's etching; "The Three Trees." He did not know that I had seen it some months before, fastened into a child's scrap-book, which had belonged to the grandfather of the man who sold it. Its margin, unfortunately, had been injured, and in a valuable print, by the way, almost as much depends on the margin as on the print, but it was a splendid object, and but for the interposition of a collector, would have been torn up in a nursery.

A fine series of Piranesi's "Dungeons" was found in a country sale, fastened on to a large six-fold planish covered screen. Both sides of the screen were so decorated. It was not easy to steam the prints off, but they were got off, and the new owner had a wonderful series. Quite recently, in an auction-room, a framed print was bought, which formed one of a series of six. The owner, when he got it home, discovered to his great delight that at the back of the print were the remaining five out of the six, and that it had been the previous owner's habit to exhibit, in the same frame, first one of the prints, and then another. The six had been sold at far less than the full value of one.

The oddest circumstance, however, connected with prints, that I ever heard of was with regard to a series called "The Procession." One only was sold in the auction sale, but the purchaser found that the back of the frame opened with two buttons, and so, wondering whether the owner had possessed the other prints, he waited till the close of the sale, and from a lumber-room bought various bundles of stuff and one odd rectangular frame. In the bundles he found all the remaining prints of "The Procession," including the one which is of a different size, and that exactly fitted the empty frame, which he had bought for a shilling.

Prints fall naturally into four groups :there are wood engravings, line engravings, mezzotints and etchings-and in with the etchings one may include stipple prints, which are not etchings, but which partake a little of their character. The wood engravings are of course the oldest. Whether the two prints dated 1418 and 1423 (Of which one is in the Rylands collection and the other in London) are the progenitors of the entire series, cannot be stated quite definitely, becausesome critics believe that in one or both of these two woodcuts the figures have been tampered with. They were both, by the way, I believe, discovered inside old bindings.

Wood engraving, however, certainly commenced in the fifteenth century, and two of its greatest exponents were Durer in the old days, and Bewick in more modern times. It would not be easy to collect Durer's prints, they are precious and very well known. Bewick's are more likely to be met with, but a great joy is to collect English illustrations from 1857 down to 1870, or the delightful magazines and books, such as "Once a Week," "Good Words," "The Poems of Tennyson," and so on, in which the real woodcuts of that amazing that amazing period called "The Sixities" appeared. To find the drawings for these is difficult, because in making the woodcut, the drawing was generally cut away, but the proofs are sometimes to be got, and are well worth securing. Woodcutengraving is a thing of the past to a great extent : process has driven it out.Box trees, on suchplaces as Box Hill, near Dorking, are no longer carefully protected for the sake of the fine wood which was the best of allon which to engrave, and probably, except in rare instances, wood engravings will never come back.

Line engraving, whether on copper or steel, commenced with the Florentine engravers who, after ornamenting gold work, used to fill up the hollows with the black enamel to render the design more clear. The goldsmith did not want to put the hard enamel in until he was certain the effect would be all right, and therefore he took a sulphur cast of his engraving which was called a niello, and filled up the lines in the sulphur with lamp-black, so that he could see how the work was going on. Then he found by using damp paper and pressing on the plate, he could make a sort of print, which helped him even more considerably, and so began plate printing from an engraving.It is the reverse of wood work : the wood engraver cuts away round the line, the plate printer cuts the line, and the very word " to engrave "comes from an old German word meaning " to dig." Let us take Schongauer, Durer and Vosterman as representatives of the old line engravers. Doo and Sherborn as representing the modern school.

In etching the work is done with an acid instead of with a tool, and there are various methods of coating the plate with the ground, as it is called, before the artist begins to draw upon it what is to be the etching. He can do it with a dabber, he can do it with a roller and smoke his plate, he can put the material on in solution, but in each case he proceeds afterwards to remove part of the surface and then uses the acid as the engraver has used the burin to cut into the plate. He can work "in line," he can work "in line and shade," he can work in " shade and texture," and these are the three principal methods of etching.

Rembrandt is, perhaps, the greatest exponent of the art. Meryon, the poor lunatic Frenchman, who had first of all to give away his prints and then to sell for a few coppers, prints which now realise hundreds of pounds, is an almost equally great exponent of this wonderful art, and Whistler's most triumphant and most permanent work was done in etching. The works of these men are very difficult to obtain at moderate prices, but are worth striving for, and if the collector has any idea of making a collection of etchings, there are works by many other artists worth securing.