CHAPTER IX

THE SOCIETY AND THE FINE ARTS-(Continued)

(1755-1851)

Prizes for Artists' Instruments and Materials, Crayons, Colours, Pencils, Paper, Etching Fluids, etc.-The Society's Shilling Colour-BoxSteel Engraving-Acierage-Aquatint — Colour Printing-DieSinking, Medals, and Medallists-Gem-engraving-Pastes for Cameos-Tassie and his Medallions.

BESIDES the prizes given to artists as encouragement for technical skill or in appreciation of genius, there were also a certain number for inventions and improvements connected with the Arts. A good many of these are trivial, but there are others of interest and some of importance in the history of the technics of Art.

A few prizes were at various times offered and awarded for artists' instruments and materials. In 1764 a premium of thirty guineas was given to Thomas Keyse for a method of fixing crayon drawings. Keyse was a still-life painter of some repute. He was also the keeper of Bermondsey Spa, where he had a gallery of his own works. The masterpiece was the interior of a butcher's shop, and over it certain of the wits of the time made merry.

In 1772 twenty guineas were given to Joseph Pache for preparing crayons, and "establishing a manufactory thereof in England." In 1781 the greater silver palette was awarded to Thomas and William Reeves for improved water-colours. In 1794 the palette and twenty guineas were awarded to George Blackman for his method of making oil-colour cakes. These were reported on favourably by Cosway and by Stothard, and the method of their preparation is described in the Transactions.1 In 1803 a 1 Transactions, vol. xii. p. 271.

silver medal and ten guineas were given to James Harris for a syringe for preserving oil-colours. The syringe was of the ordinary sort, when it was filled with colour the piston was inserted and secured by screwing on the head. It was certainly an improvement on the then existing method of supplying artists' oil-colours in bladders, and received the approval of Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A.

An award to William Brockedon in 1823 for a rest for painters engaged in minute work, may be noticed on account of the inventor's personality, rather than because of its intrinsic importance. Brockedon was a versatile genius, an excellent painter, a man of science (he was an F.R.S.), and an ingenious inventor. He was Chairman of the Committee of Polite Arts 1824-1831.

Besides these there were rewards for various drawing instruments and appliances, sculptors' instruments, etching fluids, drawing tablets, pencils, paper for copper-plate printing, etc. Reference to some of these will be found in Chapter XIII, which also records the award to Senefelder for the invention of lithography.1

One of the most popular things the Society ever did was its offer of a medal for a shilling colour-box, and mention may be made of it here, though we are anticipating by some half a century at least the proper course of the Society's history. This offer was made in 1851, and in the following year the medal was awarded to J. Rogers, of 133 Bunhill Row, E.C. The box has long since been obsolete, or rather has been superseded by better appliances of the same sort; but it was a very great advance on anything which existed at the time, and its enormous popularity was sufficient evidence of its value.

The proposal was put forward by Henry Cole, and was carried out with the promptitude that characterised all that remarkable man's ideas. The offer was advertised in September 1851. The competing boxes were received on 1st December, and the award was published on 14th January 1852. The medal was presented at the distribution of awards held by Prince Albert in 1853. According to 1 See Chapter XIII, p. 305.

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a statement made by Sir Henry Cole, the maker reported to him in 1870 that eleven millions of these boxes had then been sold.

At the same time a medal was offered for a cheap set of drawing instruments, to contain a pair of compasses, a drawing square, and a graduated ruler. This was awarded to J. & H. Cronmire, of Cottage Lane, Commercial Road, for two sets of instruments, one to be sold at 2s. 6d., and one of a superior character at 6s. A good many of these were sold, but the drawing instruments never attained the popularity of the shilling colour-box.

Two prizes awarded in 1822 and 1823 mark an important though temporary modification in the technique of the engraver, the substitution of steel for copper plates. Although steel had been employed for etched plates by Albert Dürer in 1510, it had never really come into use, and until the middle of the nineteenth century copper was in practice always used by engravers. It had the advantage of being easily worked upon, and the disadvantage of only giving a small number of impressions. The precise date of the invention of the modern steel plate seems uncertain, and the name of the inventor (if any single person can claim the credit) is also doubtful. S. T. Davenport 2 attributes the invention to Jacob Perkins, whose "siderographic" process for printing bank-notes will be described later.3 In the volume of the Transactions for 1820, in which the process is fully described, Perkins states that his method had been "in successful operation many years in America," and it certainly involved the use of engraved steel plates, but he makes no claim to having been the first to engrave on steel. He merely refers to such plates as if they were in ordinary use. In the specification of his patent, taken out in October 1819, Perkins describes a method of " decarbonat1 Fifty Years of Public Work, vol. i. p. 385.

"Engraving and other Reproductive Art Processes," Journal, vol. xiii. p. 134.

See Chapter XIII, p. 303.

E. Turrell, in a communication (Transactions, vol. xlii. p. 43), says that Perkins first used steel plates "in his bank-note manufactory in the United States."

ing" and "reconverting " steel plates for engraving, and refers to the use of steel plates as a thing commonly

known.

Early in the century Abraham Raimbach, the engraver, made some unsuccessful experiments with steel, but it seems to have been considered that the difficulties of engraving on the metal, even in a soft state, and of afterwards hardening it, were practically insuperable.

Raimbach, in his Memoirs,1 does not refer to his experiments, and he only alludes to steel-plate engraving as a cause of the deterioration of the art from the numbers of plates produced to comply with the popular demand, and the consequent inferiority of the work.

In 1822, T. G. Lupton was awarded a gold medal for introducing the use of soft steel for mezzotint. In a communication on the subject," he says that the method of working is precisely the same as for copper plates, except that greater strength has to be used in laying the ground, and the plate has to be gone over with the tool a greater number of times.

The medal was evidently given to Lupton under the idea that he was the first to employ steel, at all events for mezzotint, and in his paper he appears to claim this credit for himself. As a matter of fact, however, he seems to have been anticipated by William Say, since there is in the collection of the British Museum a mezzotint by the latter engraver, which is dated 1817, and this is said to have been printed from a steel plate. It is from a portrait by G. Dawe, R.A., of the Princess Charlotte, the daughter of George IV., who died in 1817. This has always been believed to be the first mezzotint on steel, and inasmuch as Lupton's plate, submitted to the Society in 1822, appears from his paper to have been his first success, there is no reason to question Say's claim to priority.3

In 1823 a gold medal was given to Charles Warren for Improvements in the art of engraving on steel." These improvements consisted in substituting a plate of soft steel for the ordinary copper plate. His process is described

1 Memoirs of Abraham Raimbach, 1843. 3 See also Chapter VIII, p. 190 n.

2

Transactions, vol. xl. p. 41.

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in the Transactions,1 and it appears that he was led to experiment in the use of steel from early training in engraving for calico printers, and from observation of methods used in ornamenting articles of cast steel. He began by decarbonising steel plates, and, after engraving on the softened steel (or iron), re-hardening it, but he found that plates of sufficient thinness for the purpose were apt to warp in the hardening, while there were other difficulties in using thicker plates. He was then led to try printing from the plates in their soft state, and found no difficulty in producing large numbers of impressions. The details of the method of softening the plates were improved, and it was found that editions of 4000 and 5000 prints could be produced without the plates showing signs of deterioration. Warren died suddenly, after the award of the medal, and before its presentation, so the account of his process in the Transactions is contained in a report by the committee, not in a communication from himself. So far as can be judged, the method is principally intended for etching, though available also for line engraving.

Probably the truth about the invention of steel-plate engraving is that many engravers tried to employ steel. Perkins was successful with the small plates that served his purpose, and probably those who tried to use larger plates found difficulties in the processes of softening and hardening the steel. Very likely, therefore, it was not till Say (possibly) and Lupton and Warren (certainly) found that steel plates could be employed without the necessity for hardening them, that such plates came into extensive use. That they did come into such use, and very rapidly, is, of course, well known. The facilities they afforded for printing large editions enabled publishers to produce the flood of "Annuals " which were popular in the thirties and forties of the last century, and served to popularise Art, if they did little to elevate it.

The copper plate came to its own again when it was found possible to deposit upon its surface a thin film of steel, or rather iron, and thus to give it a hard "face"

1 Transactions, vol. xli. p. 88.