A style of picture most popular of late among artists and buyers is the etching. Not that it is a new style, but simply that it has been revived, perfected, and made the fashion. Etching is not new, for it dates back at least to Albert DÜrer, in the first of the sixteenth century, and very probably was known before his time.

The methods are very interesting and simple. To etch means to eat. Thus from the very name we gain insight into the mode of work. The tools are easy to obtain, for as Hamerton, the most interesting of modern etchers, says, “Almost any bar of metal that can be sharpened to a point will do to etch with. Turner used an old fork. A nail at the end of a stick would answer the purpose; common sewing needles have often been used. There are, however, various degrees of usefulness even in things so easily made as etching-needles, and different artists have different tastes.” But, as the art has grown popular, these primitive tools have been replaced by better styles. The shops contain several styles of needles and instruments. The etching-needle is ordinarily a piece of stout steel wire inserted in a handle, and ground to a fine point. Two or three of these needles of different thicknesses are used, some for broad and some for fine lines. Having needles, the etcher prepares a copper plate by covering it with a coating of asphaltum and wax, and this, if you wish to speak technically, must be called the etching ground. It is blackened by lampblack mixed with the varnish. Upon this the drawing is made. The lines can be made broad or fine, as the needles are of different degrees of fineness, and, of course, these lines cut through the ground to the plate beneath. Upon the plate where the picture has been drawn dilute nitric acid is poured. The result of pouring nitric acid on copper is well known: it eats or corrodes, or etches the copper; but upon our ground of wax makes no effect. The eating of the acid is called biting in. When the work is well bitten in, the acid is poured off, and the plate cleaned and examined. If the lines of the lighter parts appear to be sufficiently etched, they are painted over with the asphaltum, ground and dissolved in spirits of turpentine, while the rest of the work is re-bitten, i. e., the acid is applied to the other parts again.

This covering of a part of the plate is called stopping out.

Stopping out and biting in are continued until all the lines are of the required depth. If, by accident or oversight, a line is too deeply bitten in, it is rubbed with an instrument called the burnisher. This tool polishes the plate when scratched, and softens the too deep lines.

This process is old. It has been used with various modifications since the time of the first etchers. A new method, called by its author, P. G. Hamerton, the positive process, is gaining very general favor. Let him state its merits:

“By my positive process the artist, whilst etching, sees his work in black upon a white ground, as distinctly as if he were drawing with a lead-pencil on white paper, instead of seeing it in copper on a black ground. The old negative process is objectionable not only because it is negative, but because the lines are brilliant, which causes them to appear more numerous than they really are.” Hamerton prepares his plate by brightening it, first with cyanide of silver, and then laying on a ground of white wax. The plate is fastened into a tray, or shallow bath, and the mordant, as the acid preparation is called, is poured over it. The etcher draws his picture while the plate lies in the mordant. The lines blacken as soon as drawn. If a second or third biting is necessary, the plate is cleaned and re-waxed.

This is the mechanical part of etching. So simple it is that it seems that any one could be a successful etcher. But there is a knowledge and skill apart from the mechanical work. What is it? Haden well answers the question: “It is an innate artistic spirit, without which all the study in the world is useless. It is the cultivation of this spirit, not arduously but lovingly. It is a knowledge that is acquired by a life of devotion to what is true and beautiful; by the hourly and daily comparing of what we see in nature and the thinking of how it should be represented in art. It is the habit of constant observation of great things and small, and the experience that springs from it. It is the skill to combine and the skill to separate—to compound and to simplify—to fuse detail into mass—to subordinate definition to space, distance, light, and air. Finally, it is the acumen to perceive the near relationship that expression bears to form, and the skill to draw them—not separately, but together.”