THE

NEW-ENGLAND MAGAZINE.

JULY, 1832.

ORIGINAL PAPERS.

EARLY AMERICAN ARTISTS AND MECHANICS.

NO. I.

NATHANIEL HURD.

THREE seemingly inglorious discoveries improved the world, and changed the affairs of men, more than any king, conqueror, or reformer ever did, viz. the discovery and use of Gun-Powder, the Mariner's Compass, and the art of Engraving and Printing.

The two last gradually banished barbarism, and humanized the world. The multiplication of books by the Ars Artium omnium Conservatrix, and of drawings by the beautiful art of Engraving, produced a radiance of knowledge which has secured the human race from those horrid shocks of Gothicism, which overran Greece and the Roman empire. When the Mariner's Compass appeared to extend the world by the discovery of America, and the Telescope the Universe, Printing and the Engraving of maps, and the wonders of Astronomy, displayed their grandeur. For want of these, the ancients dwelt in comparative darkness. Authors had but just seen the facility of spreading their works by printing, when Sculptors and Painters seized hold of the discovery, to multiply their productions, by cutting their pictures on copper, and impressing them on paper, to the great advantage of their art, and to the still greater advantage of geography and natural history. "Little," says Horace Walpole (Lord Orford,) "did the monarchs of Egypt think, when they erected their enormous Pyramids, with a view to record and eternize their names, that a weed, then growing by their own river Nile, would one day be converted into more durable registers of fame, than all the stupendous pyramids they could erect; and yet the use of paper and the art of printing, has ensured endless fame to the arts of Egypt, while its monarchs vainly sought it by enormous piles of stone." The verses of Homer, the works of Plato and of Aristotle have continued thousands of without loss; in which time what numberless palaces, temples, castles, cities, kingdoms and empires have been demolished, and swept from

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the face of the earth. May not printing, by moveable types, and by engravings on copper and on stone, be justly called the PRESERVING ART OF ALL OTHER ARTS?

Of the seven-and-twenty centuries, in which the memory and learning of mankind have been exercised, scarcely six can be culled out as fertile in the sciences, or favorable to humanity; and all for want of the multiplication of books and drawings by the art of printing and engraving on brass or copper. By means of it the intellectual world was equally enlarged with the discoveries of the material one.

The history of type-printing is well known to our readers, but that is not the case with Engraving. The history of Engraving and of Engravers is but little known amongst us; and we hope our first steps in it may encourage more able persons to pursue it with a persevering industry equal to its importance.

The fine arts, so called, are generally traced to no higher a source than to the Grecians. We must go farther back for the art of engraving. It was known to the builders of Solomon's Temple, and we trace the word itself to a Hebrew root. The word translated carving, in the 6th Chap. of 1 Book of Kings, is derived from the verb to plough, because its cuttings resembled furrows. Hence the Latin Vulgate translates the Hebrew word by sculpsit-and incidit—and by cælavit, or embossing, and, perhaps, gilding.

The Romans engraved on brass, as seen in the votive tablets in their temples of Esculapius; but they never thought to impress their engravings on paper. As the modern Italians led the way in Painting, so they led the van in Engraving. Marc Anthony Raimondi was patronized by Raphael, and engraved most of his works. The first book published with engraved figures was a book of anatomy at Padua, by Vesalius, which was translated into English by Gemini, who lived in Black Friars. About this time (1551) William Turner, Physician to the Duke of Somerset, published the first book of Botany in England, entitled "a New Herball," a very curious and elegant production. It is in the old black letter, with a very handsomely flourished large capital letter at the beginning of each article. There is but one older book in our University Library, at Cambridge. Archbishop Parker took into his palace at Lambeth a German engraver named Hogenburgh, who engraved the bishop's portrait on brass, and also that of the king. But the Low Countries, we mean Flanders and Holland, were the theatre at that time of the fine arts. At Antwerp the first engraved map was published, entitled Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. Soon after that, Christopher Saxon, a native of Yorkshire, engraved a set of maps of the counties of England and Wales; at the corners whereof were, beside the royal arms, the pictures of the city of York, and the port of Hull. From stubborn plates of brass, they at length passed to the use of more flexible plates of copper; but they made little other improvement for nearly a century. In 1627 the engraved portraits of King James First, of Queen Mary, and of Queen Elizabeth, the Earl of Northumberland, the Duchess of Richmond, and Sir Thomas Gresham, appeared; but we forget the name of the artist, only that he was a foreigner.

King Charles I. was very fond of the art of engraving as well of painting, and encouraged both. He conferred upon VOERST, a Dutch

man, the title of Engraver to the King. The same artist engraved portraits of the King, the Queen, and Nobility, from the paintings of his countryman, the celebrated VANDYKE, in a free and masterly style. This may be considered the era of the first good engravings in England. When Cromwell assumed the regal power, he by no means neglected the arts. The coins and medals struck in his reign, as well as miniature painting, exceeded all that appeared before his time.

In Holland about this time flourished VOSTERMAN, who was patronized by the famous RUBENS, and where he was to Rubens what Voerst was in England to Vandyke. Vandyke himself executed several admirable etchings by aid of aqua-fortis, and the "dry point," or fine engraving tool. The next engraver of eminence that appeared in Holland was HOLLAR. He too passed over into England, where, under the patronage of the Earl of Arundel, he produced some fine specimens of his art. But he was, what was rare enough among the Dutch, unsteady and given up to pleasure, and died poor.

The famous PRINCE RUPERT, nephew of Charles I. after the death of his uncle, devoted his time to chemistry and philosophy, and, it is said, invented mezzotinto engraving. This is done by making numerous lines on copperplate close to each other, then at right angles, and lastly diagonally, so that, when impressed on paper, it makes one uniform black impression, resembling fine black cloth. Then the picture is drawn upon it; and where the artist wishes to have the light and soft representations of flesh in the human countenance, or in the drapery, he scratches and polishes the rough copper, so as to suit his design. It has in some pictures a very pleasant effect; but it fails in the hair and in the beard. Most of the engraved portaits from the paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds were executed in mezzotinto. But after all the pains taken by the best artists, they fall short of the exquisite effect of the curved lines cut into the copper by the keen graver; so that the linear mode of this beautiful art, as we see it in the works of Mr. STRANGE, in England, and HoUBRAKEN, in Germany, still maintain their merited pre-eminence. Some engravings of naked infancy, where there are no angles but all circulars, are really enchanting. There is more art and more nature in this mode of engraving than in any other. It requires more pains and demands more patience than any other mode.

In speaking of the art of engraving, we must not pass over in silence the name of GEORGE VERTUE, who, though not holding the very first rank in the execution of the art, was greatly distinguished in the history of it. He was born in London, 1684, died in 1756, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He was a learned antiquarian, knew the history of painting and engraving, and of the artists in both branches, and was himself a very accurate and faultless professor of it, His works are numerous, carefully labored, but not remarkable for spirit. He redeemed from time and obscurity many valuable relics of former ages: hence he became a great favorite of Lord Orford.

After Mr. Vertue came the less patronized but more ingenious HoGARTH, who was both engraver and painter. His original business was that of which, I believe, we have not yet a professor in these United States; I mean a mere silver-plate engraver; as they have in England, and other monarchies, where there is a very important art and science,

which we know little or nothing about, viz. heraldry, or blazonry of noble genealogy. At the age of twenty-one, instead of copying the ridic ulous monsters scratched on ensigns armorial, Hogarth wisely determined to copy nature on copperlates, and on canvass. This led him

to study not merely the human figure, but, in a particular manner, the human countenance in all the expressions of the heart and mind, and in this he exceeded every artist that preceded, or followed him. He was the great moral painter, and his peculiar excellency is as well known in this country as in his own. He practised etching rather than cutting with the graver, or style, by hand; as it allowed of an abrupt, and often of a ragged manner, entirely adapted to most of his subjects; especially in pieces where drollery and burlesque, or ridiculous distress, predominated. He could paint almost all the eight parts of speech.*

Engraving in the red-chalk manner is called stippling. The lithographic, or engraving on stone, now much in vogue, stands between the linear engraving and the mezzotinto; but every species of engraving must yield the palm to the linear, or true sculpsit, or incidit, or plough-furrow method, pursued by Houbraken, Strange, Woollet, and some other great masters in the art.

The art of copperplate engraving is but of recent date in this country. Prior to fifty years past we had no other than silver plate engraving, and this not by persons who made it, as in Europe, their whole business, but by silversmiths. He who made the tankard, the vase, and the coffee-pot, executed the needed engraving; but when we commenced giving services of plate to heroes and other meritorious characters, the business gradually centred in persons who followed no other business.

Amongst our seal-cutters, and die-engravers, and engravers on copper, was NATHANIEL HURD. His grandfather came from England, and settled in Charlestown, now connected to Boston by a bridge, like the borough of Southwark with London. He died in that town in 1749, aged 70. His son Jacob married the only daughter of John Mason of Kingston, in the island of Jamaica, and died in the year 1758. He was the father of Nathaniel Hurd, who is the prominent subject of this memoir. In seal-cutting and die-engraving, Mr. Hurd was considered superior to any in the colonies. Coats of arms, pictures, and carvings were not much valued and sought after, a century ago, in New-England. They approximated too near to graven images, in the view of our puritanical forefathers, to meet with much encouragement. Portrait painting, however, met with considerable countenance. They deemed it a mark of family affection, and individual respect and esteem, so that from the time of Mr. Smybert, who came over to this country with Dean Berkley, down to the period when Copley flourished as our first portrait painter, there were very few families, in easy cumstances, who had not a picture by the hand of that very eminent American painter; but as to engravings on copperplate by an American, there was hardly such a thing to be seen in New-England; and

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* The ostentatious nobility and gambling gentry appeared to feel the reproaches from the press and the drama, while those in lower ranks were touched by the moral pencil of Hogarth, and started back with shame and affright from the mirror thus held up to them, and many were awakened to recollection and remorse. [Dr. Waterhouse's Essay on JUNIUS, p. 139.]