raver. But
enough has been done in the last few years to prove that photography
will henceforth take up the painter's handiwork as he leaves it, and
thus the importance of thoroughness and completeness on the part of the
painter has to be more than ever insisted upon by the publishers of
"engravings."

A word may be useful here to explain that the coloured "photogravures,"
reproducing the washes of colour in a painting or water-colour drawing,
of which we see so many in Paris, are not coloured by hand in the
ordinary way, but are produced complete, at one impression, from the
printing-press. The colours are laid upon the plate, one by one, by the
printer, by a system of stencilling; and thus an almost perfect
fac-simile of a picture can be reproduced in pure colour, if the
original is simple and broad in treatment.

[Illustration: No. III.

"_A Son of Pan_," by WILLIAM PADGETT.

Example of outline drawing, put in solidly with a brush. If this had
been done with pencil or autographic chalk, much of the feeling and
expression of the original would have been lost. The drawing has
suffered slightly in reproduction, where (as in the shadows on the
neck and hands) the lines were pale in the original.

Size of drawing 11-1/2 x 6-1/2 in. Zinc process.]

[Illustration: "HOME BY THE FERRY." (FROM THE PAINTING BY EDWARD
STOTT.)

(_Royal Academy, 1891._)]

One other point of interest and importance to collectors of engravings
and etchings should be mentioned. Within the last few years, an
invention for coating the surface of engraved plates with a film of
steel (which can be renewed as often as necessary) renders the surface
practically indestructible; and it is now possible to print a thousand
impressions from a copper plate without injury or loss of quality. These
modern inventions are no secrets, they have been described repeatedly in
technical journals and in lectures, notably in those delivered during
the past few years at the Society of Arts, and published in the
_Journal_. But the majority of the public, and even many collectors of
prints and etchings, are ignorant of the number of copies which can now
be taken without deterioration from one plate.

It is necessary to the art amateur that he should know something of
these things, if only to explain why it is that scratching on a copper
plate has come so much into vogue in England lately, and why there has
been such a remarkable revival of