button to main menu  Eleventh Exhibition, p.21
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page 21:-
of the stones in the water; but here the scale of aquatinta is too small whereby to judge of the comparative excellence of the two lines; I had never heard of this old new line before spoken of, 'till I arrived in London, in 1810, and the Rydal plate was finished in Ambleside, in the Spring of the same year, before I went to London.
What I have here said is not done with an intention in the slightest degree to injure Mr. Hassell; but to shew, that knowing both lines, I five years ago proposed in my intended work occasionally to use them both but preferred the soft ground line. It is probable that Mr. Hassell hit upon the line himself, and it gives me great pleasure to find that he has been rewarded for his invention; I do not find that manner of line in the slightest degree hinted at by Mr. Green, of Wells Street; from which it is fair to infer, that at the time of his publication, in 1804, he had not heard of it; nor is it noticed by the author of the aquatinta process in Dr. Rees's new Cyclopaedia; and it should seem that though this process was known to some, it was not known generally.
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