WOOD ENGRAVING
Fortune-Louis Méaulle (1844-?,French). after Victor Hugo: La Vague. From L 'Art  c.1868

A typical illustrative wood engraving (relief method). The white, unprinted areas are where the wood has been removed with metal-working gravers. The lines of the image left in relief are finer, closer and more regular than a woodcut, often with thecharacteristic pointed ends of lines produced with gravers. Tones are produced by imitating linear crosshatching, variation in the width of parallel white lines, and a variation in the size of dots left between intersecting white lines. Nineteenth century wood-engraved book and magazine illustrations are somewhat mechanical in appearance.