century days it was the worn plate that proceeded to its next stage as a colour print. But nowadays hundreds of thin impressions worthless to the collector of mezzotints have been coloured by hand, and this simple operation has increased their value twenty-fold. With other engraving the fraud of colouring by hand is fairly easy to discover, but in mezzotint the cheat has the decided advantage over the connoisseur.
In stipple the hand-coloured print should be easy of detection. As we have already shown in the previous portion of the volume dealing with line and stipple engraving, the incised work on the plate holds the ink, and the portions on the copper not bearing any work of the tool print white. It is just this fact that overcomes the most cunning effort of the fabricator. A genuine colour print is one which has been inked in colour by the printer, and consequently all over the plate every portion between lines or between dots should print white. In prints coloured by hand these portions are covered with colour. Even on prints coloured on the plate in genuine fashion certain portions, such as the eyes, were afterwards finished by hand, but the above rule holds good as a test.
In no sense is the collecting of colour prints suited for the young collector. Forgeries of the engraved work of Bartolozzi, Tomkins, C. Turner, Ward, Gaugain, J. R. Smith, and others who worked after the canvases and drawings of Morland, Romney, Hoppner, Cosway, Reynolds, Cipriani, Downman, and Stothard are being reproduced by the hundred
