Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Some tanning and marking due to age. Year 1929. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> The literature of etching is already so vast-how vast the author himself did not realise until he commenced to draw up the bibliographies to be found at the end of this volume-that some apology is needed for adding to it. It is less than three years since Mr. Sparrow brought out his British Etching from Barlow to Seymour Haden and in the same year appeared Mr. Weitenkampf’s important work on American Graphic Art. Mr. Lumsden’s The Art of Etching appeared in 1925 and three years earlier Mr. Robins’ Etching Craft; while for those who wish for one masterly survey of the whole field of engraved work there is always Mr. Hind’s monumental History of Engraving and Etching. Further back loom the by now patriarchal figures of Hamerton in England and Koehler in America. Has not the whole subject been treated a dozen times? Certain considerations may be urged in mitigation of the present writer’s foolhardiness. Hamerton and Koehler coming as they did at the beginning of the movement are now out-of-date; Mr. Sparrow confessedly stops his account at Haden and neither Mr. Hind nor Mr. Lumsden deal at all fully with modern etchers. Mr. Weitenkampf treats of modern Americans but modern British etching and the history of etching itself are outside the scope of his book. It was felt that there was a place for a volume in which might be traced the evolution of etching in England from its beginnings the story of its develop- ment carried down to the present day and the many common characteristics of the British and American Schools emphasised. Enthusiasm for etching both in England and the United States seems to be greater to-day than it has ever been and so many new etchers are constantly coming forward that some general survey of contemporaries can hardly fail to be of interest. (OS)