[Of obscure history.
The late appearance of the word suggests that it is an adaptation (influenced by STUMP sb.1) of the far older Fr. synonym estompe, which, along with the related vb. estomper, † estomber, appears a. 1700 in De la Hire, Traité de la Pratique de la Peinture, published in Mém. de l’Acad. Roy. des Sciences 1666–1699 (1730), IX. 658. De la Hire evidently regarded the words as established in use; he suggests that estompe may be a corruption of étoupe (earlier estoupe) tow, link. This is impossible; most etymologists regard the sb. as derived from the vb., which some believe to be ad. Du. stompen or afstompen to dull, blunt, though there seems to be no evidence that either of these vbs. was ever used in the sense of F. estomper.
The stump for crayon drawing is elaborately described, as an instrument used by Fr. pastellists, in A. Browne’s Appendix Art Painting (1675), but without mention of either the English or the Fr. name. Browne says (in this copying W, Sanderson, Graphice, ii. 78, published 1658) that a ‘stubbed pencil’ (app. = ‘brush,’ not ‘crayon’ or ‘lead pencil’), sometimes ‘stuffed with cotton or bombast,’ was employed by some artists for the same purpose. Obviously a ‘stubbed pencil’ could be called in English a ‘stump’ (STUMP sb.1 3); and the equivalent Du. stompe could be employed in the same way. On the whole, considering that in the 17th c. the art of crayon drawing received much improvement in Holland, the likeliest view seems to be that the word stompe was applied (with no intention of using a technical term) to the ‘stubbed pencil’ by Dutch artists working in French studios; and that in the adapted form estompe it became the Fr. name for the improved instrument invented in France. On this view the Eng. word would be an adaptation of the Fr., as the relative chronology suggests.]
A kind of pencil consisting of a roll of paper or soft leather, or of a cylindrical piece of indiarubber or other soft material, usually cut to a blunt point at each end, used for rubbing down hard lines in pencil or crayon drawing, for blending the lines of shading so as to produce a uniform tint, and for other similar purposes.
1778. Encycl. Brit. (ed. 2), III. 2293/2. When the head is brought to some degree of forwardness, let the back-ground be laid in, which must be treated in a different manner, covering it as thin as possible, and rubbing it into [the] paper with a leather-stump.
1811. Self Instructor, 544. Blend your shadows … with a stump made of paper.
1859. Gullick & Timbs, Painting, 316. The tints are rubbed in, and blended for the most part with the finger, although ‘stumps’ (Fr. estompes), and the point of the crayon … are also used.
1860. W. Collins, Woman in White, vii. Near it were some tiny jewellers’ brushes, a washleather ‘stump,’ and a little bottle of liquid, all waiting to be used in various ways for the removal of any accidental impurities which might be discovered on the coins.
1862. Catal. Internat. Exhib., Brit., II. No. 5483. Drawing stumps in paper, leather, and cork.
1869. Eastlake, Materials Hist. Oil Painting, II. 252. His love of gradation and of the imperceptible union of half-tints led him [sc. Correggio] to use the ‘stump’ or some similar mechanical means.
