Etching

"Among the different modes of expression in the visual arts, etching appears the most literary" wrote Baudelaire. Individual artists had distinct ways of rendering lines on paper, many considered etchings as distinctive as the artist's signature.

It was also an easily reproducible form. Artists would work with a metal sheet covered with wax. Their sharp tool would cut through the wax and expose the metal. The lines would then be transferred to a metal plate, the lines were given a careful acid bath till they became permanant. .