Excerpt from New York: A Series of Wood Engravings in Colour and a Note on Colour Printing by Rudolph RuzickaAN instinctive love of colour often found expression in the art of wood engraving, as it did in all arts. The car liest examples of European wood engraving, dating from the beginning of the fifteenth century, were pictures of sacred subjects cut in bold outlines on blocks of wood and impressed on paper by means of rubbing. Their popular appeal, apart from the subject, rested, no doubt, in their bright colours, applied by hand with the aid of brushes and stencils. This method of colouring continued in use long after the invention of printing in the middle of the fifteenth century, and although even then efforts were made to print colours from wood blocks, they sel dom remained unassisted by the colourist's hand, so that colour printing proper may be said to begin with the invention of engraving and printing in a manner called chiaroscuro or clair-obscur.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.