Between the first and the fifth states the herdsman has wandered about on the plate, and the sheep have been changed into cattle etchers to be their own printers. Whistler was photographed at the press, and many of his prints bear in pencil, after the signature, the letters "imp." The texture, quality, and color of the paper used are also factors in printing. Note, for example, the difference in effect between an etching by Meryon printed on white paper and one on the greenish paper that he favored, or run through some portfolios of the work of Buhot and mark how he experimented with various kinds. of paper. Happy is the etcher who lights on a supply of old hand-made paper, or One of Mary Cassatt's noted "mother and child" dry-points. The plate has been canceled by drawing lines across them, so that no more impressions can be taken on the special kind that fits the particular case, as when Cadwallader Washburn printed his old Buddhist priest on gray paper taken from the window of a Japanese temple. Printing, however, does not necessarily indicate completion of the plate. It may mean simply that the artist is proving his work. An impression (trial proof) is taken to see how the work already accomplished appears in print. The plate is then again coated with ground, though not smoked, and the ground, being transparent, permits the artist to make any desired changes. This process, of course, can be repeated as often as the artist desires. In reproductive etching especially, "proofs" and "states" of a plate are at times fairly numerous, as one may see by referring to the work of Bracquemond or Waltner or Köpping. In this description of the etcher's art reference has been made only to pure etching, with only such aid as manipulation in printing may give. But there are various. auxiliary processes that have served etchers, though usually only to a limited extent, to give an accent here or there. For instance, the burin, the line-engraver's tool, was used by Meryon, and the roulette, a small, toothed wheel that produced a dotted line, shows its work in the water of Whistler's "Doorway," while in some of Heinrich Wolff's plates it is used independently. When the ground has not been properly laid, and gives way in spots before the acid, "foul biting" results, spoiling the plate by its dots. But applied intentionally, it gives a sort of coarse spatter-work effect at the desired places. There are also various ways of roughening the surface of the plate so that it will print a tint. It may be rasped with a file, corroded with powdered sulphur, rubbed with Scotch stone (as in Mrs. M. N. Moran's "Twilight, Easthampton"), brushed with acid, passed through the press with sandpaper laid upon it, the particles of sand being forced through the ground and opening a way for the acid. The most familiar tint method, however, is aquatint. In that, minute particles of a resinous substance are deposited on a copperplate. When the plate is placed in a bath the acid attacks it only between the resinous particles. Aquatint, generally used as an auxiliary in combination with line etching, more rarely in its pure state, may be studied in the works of Goya, Fortuny, Klinger, Mielatz, and many others. In color work it is also combined at times with soft-ground etching. In this the ground is mixed with tallow to make it soft. On this is laid a piece of paper on which the drawing is made with a pencil. Wherever the pencil touches, the ground adheres to the paper and comes off with it. So, again, the copper is bared for the ac The late William M. Chase etching a pen-drawing by Robert F. Blum, photographed on a zinc plate, and etched, S. H. Horgan superintending the process tion of the acid, the lines in this case being broken, as in a pencil-drawing on grained paper. Finally there is dry-point, which is not etching at all, but is often employed in combination with etching. Dry-point indicates drawing with a needle directly ⚫ on the copper, without any ground and without the use of acid. The "point" in this case penetrates the surface of the copper, and, as it passes along, throws up ridges along the lines, as the plow throws up the earth along the furrow. These ridges, known as "burr," catch much ink, and print a rich, velvety black; but they are soon crushed down in the press, so that the plate yields only a comparatively small number of good impressions. Here are plenty of aids, then, for those of experimentative bent, a characteristic strong in Buhot, a veritable juggler with processes, and in Guerard, but found also in Fortuny, Bracquemond, and in our own J. D. Smillie and Mielatz. Etching, like all other media, has limits that must be understood and respected. It has characteristics that must be felt and expressed. To realize what possibilities lie in copper and needle and acid, one has only to recall some of the characteristics. of various artistic individualities that have found expression in this art, at once in- There are, too, the bucolic charm of S "WEEL Out of the Mist By GEORGE T. MARSH Illustration by Clifford W. Ashley TEEL, w'at you t'ink, Loup? De Albanee onlee leetle piece now? We do good job to mak' for de sout' shore, eh?" With a whine the great slate-gray husky in the bow turned his slant eyes from the white wall of mist enveloping the canoe to his master's face, as if in full agreement with the change of course. The west coast of James Bay lay blanketed with fog from the drifting ice-fields far to the north. Early that morning, when the mist blotted out the black ribbon of spruce edging the coast behind the marshes of the low shore, Gaspard Laroque had swung his canoe in from the deep water. For hours now he had been feeling his way alongshore toward the maze of channels through which the Albany River reached the yellow waters of the bay. Fifteen miles of mud-flat, sand-spit, and scrub-grown island marked the river's mouth, and his goal, the Hudson's Bay Company post, Fort Albany, lay on the easternmost thoroughfare of the delta. There waited the dusky wife and children he had not seen since his trip down the coast over the sea-ice at Christmas with the dog that now worried at the scent of the invisible flocks of geese that rose clamoring through the fog ahead of the boat. Bought when a puppy from an east-coast Eskimo at the Bear Islands, the husky had been his sole companion through the lonely moons of the winter before on the white wastes of his subarctic trapping-grounds. "Whish you, Loup! Here we go!" Swinging the nose of the boat well off the flat shore, the half-breed dropped to his knees, placed a battered brass compass on a bag in front of him, and, following the wavering needle at his knee, started straight out through the smother of mist across the delta of the many-mouthed Albany. Two, three hours passed, and still the narrow Cree blade bit into the flat surface of the bay as though driven by an engine rather than by human thew and sinew, when suddenly the husky lifted his nose, repeatedly sucking in and expelling the baffling air. Then with a whine he suddenly sat up, throwing the canoe off its bottom. "W'at you do, Loup? You crazee? Lie down!" But the husky did not lie down. Instead, his black nostrils quivered in long sniffs as he faintly sensed the strange odor that the moisture in the heavy air almost obliterated. Then the hairy throat of the great dog swelled in a low rumble as he strained against the bow brace, peering into the impenetrable mist. "Ah-hah!" chuckled the Cree, interested. "W'at you t'ink you smell, eh? No goose mak' you so cross; mus' be seal." In answer the hair on the dog's back lifted from ears to tail, and raising his nose, he broke into a long howl, a warning which his master knew full well meant that from somewhere out of that wilderness of mist human scent had drifted to the husky's palpitating nostrils. Again from the dog's throat rolled the challenge of his wolfish forebears to the hidden enemies, and out of the fog ahead floated the answer of a human voice. "Quey! Quey!" called the Cree in reply, and ceased paddling. Again the voice called from the fog; again Laroque answered, and started paddling slowly in the direction of the sound. It was a canoe from Moose, he surmised, bound for Fort Albany, and he was nearer the south shore than he had reckoned. |
