STIPPLE AND CRAYON ENGRAVING. Stipple engraving was a little art of prettiness and daintiness, particularly well adapted to the translation of anecdotic pictures of a senti mental, mildly romantic, or domestic character, such as were turned out in great numbers to supply a vogue in the English market during the reign of George III., many of which, popular in their day, survive only in the colour-prints and, though rarely of much artistic value, are yet now highly valued for their merit in survival. Nevertheless there were in the brief hey-day of the art a few among the multitude of designers and engravers who, realizing its limitations, made the most of its qualities, and these, such as J. R. Smith, William Ward and John Jones, the great mezzotinters Charles Wilkin, Thomas Burke, and whenever he chose to do so, Francesco Bartolozzi, with Peltro William Tom kins, Knight, Cheeseman, Schiavonetti, and others of the school, used the medium with individuality, undeniable charm and some artistic effect.
As a separate method, stipple-engraving came to England from France probably about 1764, by way of the crayon manner and the pastel, and these had evolved originally from the dotted man ner, to which Ludvig von Siegen refers, in announcing the wonders of his own invention of mezzotint in 1642, as one of the modes of engraving which it was not. The dotted manner, a process of punching the plate with awl and mallet, called opus mallei, was used for its own sake with pictorial effect by Jan Lutma, an Am sterdam goldsmith, and the son of Rembrandt's sitter ; but graven dots had been used earlier as accessory to line-engraving by Giulio Campagnola, Ottavio Leoni, and others, while in England the earliest important engraver of portraits, William Rogers, in Queen Elizabeth's reign, had stippled the face of the Queen, while Lucas Vorsterman used dots also to suggest the flesh in his head of Charles I.
But in the 18th century, when the crayon and pastel drawings of Boucher and others were popular in France, the aim of the en gravers was to reproduce their texture on the copper-plate. The idea was in the air, so to speak, and several were engaged in the attempt to materialize it. Thus the invention of the crayon manner was claimed separately by Jean Charles Francois, Gilles Demarteau, who used his own version of it with artistic feeling, and Louis Marin Bonnet, an ingenious engraver to whom we owe at least the "pastel manner." This was a subtle development of the crayon mode admitting colour variety from a series of plates, as we may see in Bonnet's really fine print, La Tete de Fiore, after Boucher, but Francois seems to have been actually the first in the field. The means used to imitate crayon drawing resembled soft-ground etching, though to produce the appearance of the chalk lines the etching-ground was perforated by tools of the roulette order, and various kinds of needles, while, after the usual biting by the acid, the finishing touches were given by graver, dry-point and roulette, though one often fancies the methods of soft-ground had been employed. Francois taught this crayon engraving, and with it the application of colour in printing a la poupee, to William Wynn Ryland, a young English line-en graver, who had been studying with Le Bas in Paris, and who, when funds were lacking after his return to London, bethought him of the new manner of engraving he had learnt. Then having
called Bartolozzi into collaboration, they both modified and de veloped it as stipple-engraving.
The new method proved very easy of accomplishment, simple and rapid. The outline was etched in a series of dots, and all the shadows were put in with large or closer dots, or tiny groups of dots. When all the biting was over, the ground was removed, and the finishing was done with dry-point and stipple-graver, a curved tool. Then the printing was done with black, red, or several coloured inks, a rag-stump, or poupee, being used, and the plate freshly cleaned for each impression. Beginning by translating the pretty pseudo-classical designs of Angelica Kauffman and Cipriani, which acquired a very popular vogue, Ryland and Bartolozzi found the new method exceedingly profitable. To the ready hand of Bartolozzi it came almost as a fairy gift, with the facilities of the medium linking themselves to his sweet caressing sense of beauty. Indeed, he developed it with richer character in its fine shades than the unfortunate Ryland could do, as we may see in many notable prints after Reynolds and other distinguished painters. All the painters of the day were anxious to share in the profits SO readily made by the stipple-prints which were filling the print sellers' windows, and few native engravers could resist the easy attraction of the new method, while it brought also Italian and French engravers to learn it, and work here for the English mar ket. There was also, up to the war with revolutionary France in 1793, a great trade in English prints on the continent, and Bonnet and other French engravers, adopting the stipple method, tried to get a share in this trade by issuing prints with titles often in misspelt English. Sir Robert Strange, the eminent line-engraver, launched an indignant tirade against stipple, and even denied its claim to be regarded as engraving at all, though there was no denying its efficacy as a medium for colour-printing, the white of the paper, showing between the tinted dots, affording a peculiarly luminous quality, and thus giving it a superiority over the coloured mezzotint, though it must be admitted that rarely was the stipple or the mezzotint of old time completely printed in colours, some portions invariably being left to be coloured by hand. Neverthe less, the popularity of stipple continued as long as the special subjects for which it was used remained in fashion, and as long as the leading 18th century painters and engravers survived the period of their comparatively short though successful collabora tion, but it really waned with the advent of colour-lithography. Stipple-engraving is rarely practised nowadays as a separate art, though a recent attempt has been made to revive it for original expression by Dorothy Woollard. As a medium for original colour printing it has completely given place to aquatint, woodcut or wood engraving, lithography, or relief-etching from several plates.