This crayon engraving was first practised in France in the latter half of the eighteenth century by Demarteau, who fashioned his practice on the crude experiments of Jean Charles François nearly half a century earlier. It is admirably adapted for rendering in facsimile the chalk drawings of the old masters, and in France the crayon drawings of Boucher and Fragonard and Watteau were duplicated and widely published.
Stipple engraving, which in eighteenth-century days became the familiar method of engraving of the school of Bartolozzi, was no new art. Its use was recognised by the early masters, by Dürer and by Lucas van Leyden. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century days stipple work was sparingly used in portraits by line engravers. But it is in England in the latter half of the eighteenth century that the art of stipple was practised as a separate branch of engraving and brought to a point of excellence that has never been equalled before or since.
A fashion became very prevalent to use either a red or a warm-brown ink instead of black. Colour printing was being practised at the same time, and this practice had more of fashion about it than artistic necessity, and much of the work would be better had it been printed in black.
It was William Wynne Ryland (1732-1783), a pupil of Boucher, who introduced into England the style of engraving which imitated red chalk drawings. Many of these are after the insipidities of Angelica Kaufmann, such as Cupid Punished by the Graces, which sells in proof state for five guineas, The
