line engraving

line engraving. Term applied to a method of making prints (and the print so made) in which the design is cut directly into the surface of a metal (usually copper) plate. In normal parlance the word ‘engraving’ usually refers to line engraving, but the word is also used as a generic term, covering a variety of printmaking processes (see print). The line engraver uses a tool called a burin, holding it in his right hand (presuming he is right-handed) and pushing it through the surface of the copper, cutting a clean V-shaped furrow. Both hands are in action, for the engraver steadies the plate with his left hand against the pressure exerted by the burin; when cutting curves, he holds the burin still with the right hand while the left rotates the plate onto the point of the tool. The shreds of metal excavated by the tool and the slight burr thrown up at the sides of the lines are cut off by a scraper. The essential character of the medium is linear, though shading and tone may be suggested by parallel strokes, cross-hatching, or textures compounded of various dots and flicks. Typically, line engravings have a quality of metallic hardness and austere precision, compared with the easy spontaneity of etching or lithography, in which the artist draws the design freely. Often, however, engraving has been combined with etching (or with other intaglio techniques such as mezzotint) on the same plate.

Line engraving seems to have originated somewhat before the middle of the 15th century in the workshops of goldsmiths, arising independently in Germany and Italy (see niello), though slightly earlier in Germany (the first known impressions date from the 1430s). The early German engravers are mostly anonymous and are identified by a system of initials and noms de plume, as with the Master of the Playing Cards and the Master E. S., who were certainly goldsmiths as well as engravers. Martin Schongauer, who died in 1491, was the first major artist to work mainly as an engraver, and the medium had its finest flowering in the early 16th century, in the work of Albrecht Dürer (trained initially as a goldsmith) and Lucas van Leyden. Active at the same time in Italy was Marcantonio Raimondi, who was the great pioneer in the use of engraving as a means of reproducing the works of other artists. This soon became the primary function of the medium, and ‘the entire history of Western art would have been quite different if engravings had not rapidly disseminated every stylistic innovation all around Europe’ ( Antony Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking, 1980). Rubens, for example, realized the value of having his works broadcast in the form of prints, and several excellent engravers worked for him, his favourite being Paul Pontius (1603–58). A little later there arose in France a celebrated school of portrait engraving, in which the greatest names were those of Claude Mellan, Robert Nanteuil, and the Flemish-born Gerard Edelinck.

During the 18th century line engraving began to decline in importance even as a reproductive process, especially in England, where tonal processes such as mezzotint and stipple were popular. In the 19th century wood engraving came to dominate the mass market for illustrations, but copper engraving continued to be used where fine detail was required, as for example in high-quality reproductions of paintings (several eminent artists of the time, particularly in Britain, earned more from the reproduction rights of their pictures than they did from the pictures themselves). From about 1820 steel plates came into common use when a large print run was required, as they lasted longer than copper plates before showing signs of wear. They had the disadvantage of being very difficult to work, but this problem was got round by steel plating—a process patented in 1857—whereby an extremely thin coating of steel is deposited on a copper plate by means of electrolysis.

The development of photomechanical processes towards the end of the 19th century made line engraving virtually obsolete as a reproductive technique. In the 20th century, however, there was a modest revival of interest in it as a means of original expression, the greatest impetus coming from S. W. Hayter's experimental workshop for the graphic arts—‘Atelier 17’—established in Paris in 1927.