ay, 1919 
27 
fairness, one must allow that the very passion 
for novelt}’—a trait which Adam brought out 
of the Garden of Eden with him—which per¬ 
mitted the intrusion of the steel engraving to 
overshadow the affection that had been lavished 
upon the mezzotint had, it is true, placed the 
mezzotint upon its earlier pedestal. However, 
the years of art's occasional and very deep 19th 
Century spells of “Dark Ages” found the steel 
engraving merely usurping the mezzotint. 
James, Duke of Monmouth, 
by A. Boolding, the first en¬ 
graver in mezzotint to take 
important place as a finished- 
exponent of that art 
tempt for all art-shams of every sort. 
Alfred Whitman once said that 
fine mezzotints appeal to the least 
cultivated mind, while to the stu¬ 
dent and art amateur they are a 
never-ending source of fascination 
and delight. This was one way of 
saying that the appeal of the mezzo¬ 
tint is universal. It is true. 
Year after year noteworthy ex¬ 
amples of the mezzotinter’s art have 
• become more and more eagerly 
sought by acquisitive print-lovers. 
In consequence mezzotints of ex¬ 
treme perfection are becoming more 
and more rare. Notwithstanding 
this fact, many truly beautiful and 
desirable mezzotints are to be had at 
prices that place them well within 
reach of limited purses. As collect¬ 
ors’ subjects they are worthy of our 
time and study. 
There is, I 
think, a certain 
practical phase of 
collecting mezzo¬ 
tints that appeals 
to one who is 
master of a roof- 
tree of his own. 
No sort of a 
print, with the 
possible excep¬ 
tion of the Japa¬ 
nese color - print, 
lends itself with 
more satisfactory 
permanence to 
wall decoration 
than do prints of 
this class. 
In the days 
gone by the mez¬ 
zotint formed an 
indispensable and 
agreeable mural 
adjunct to the 
house of every 
person of culture. 
I suppose, out of 
2'he Duchess of Ancaster, from a portrait by Thomas Huds 
engraved in mezzotint by J. MacArdell, 1757 . MacArdell % 
born in Dublin. His work was admired by Sir Joshua Reyno 
Cotton Mather, etigraved by 
Peter Pelham in 1727 . This is 
the earliest mezzotint engraved 
in America. From the collec¬ 
tion of Chas. A. Munn, Esq. 
which latter was in our own day to 
regain its throne in the regard of even 
the average person. I think that Amer¬ 
ican mezzotinters had something to do 
with this perpetuation of a love for 
the mezzotint, but of this more anon. 
Making Mezzotints 
Before going further into the mat¬ 
ter of the history of the mezzotint let 
us be sure we know just what sort of 
an engraving it is, just what are its 
distinguishing ear-marks. A line en¬ 
graving and an etching are both pro¬ 
duced from a metal plate on which the 
design is incised, the plate being 
inked and so wiped that the face of 
the plate becomes clean, while suffi¬ 
cient ink remains in the incised lines 
to produce the design when submitted 
to the pressure of a press in contact 
with a sheet of 
paper. With line- 
engraved or with 
etched plates any 
ink, even the light¬ 
est film, permitted 
to remain on the 
unincised portions 
of the plate will 
print tints of vary¬ 
ing degrees of 
darkness according 
to the amount of 
ink that has been 
left on them. How¬ 
ever, the incised 
lines will print 
darkest of all and 
will stand forth 
definitely either 
from the white 
ground of a cleanly 
wiped plate or from 
the toned ground 
produced by a 
lightly wiped plate. 
With pure mez¬ 
zotinting there are 
no incised lines. 
Let us quote Lipp- 
mann’s description 
of the process fo^ 
