John Baptist Jackson Part 2

But it is doubtful that Jackson was a pupil of Kirkall. For this a.s.sumption we have the evidence of a curious and important little book, _An Enquiry into the Origins of Printing in Europe_,[15] which because of a misleading t.i.tle and an anonymous author has been overlooked as a reference source. It is a transcription of Jackson's ma.n.u.script journal and was prepared for publication to coincide with the launching of the wallpaper venture, Kirkall is mentioned as follows (pp. 25-26):

... I shall give a brief account of the State of Cutting on Wood in England for the type Press before he [Jackson] went to France in 1725. In the beginning of this Century a remarkable Blow was given to all Cutters on Wood, by an invention of engraving on the same sort of Metal which types are cast with. The celebrated Mr.

_Kirkhal_, an able Engraver on Copper, is said to be the first who performed a Relievo Work to answer the use of Cutting on Wood. This could be dispatched much sooner, and consequently answered the purpose of Book-sellers and Printers, who purchased these sort of Works at a much chaper [sic] Rate than could be expected from an Engraver on Wood....

[Footnote 15: London, 1752. Hereafter cited as the _Enquiry_. The first half deals with Jackson's opinions on the origins of printing from movable type and the progress of cutting on wood, the second half with Jackson's career and his venture into wallpaper manufacturing. The real content of the book was so little known that Bigmore and Wyman's comprehensive, annotated _Bibliography of Printing, London, 1880-86_, vol. 1, p. 201, described it as dealing with "certain improvements in printing-types made by Jackson, the typefounder."]

It does not seem reasonable that Jackson would learn the art of woodcutting from Kirkall and then refer to him as a famous engraver on copper and type metal. It is just as difficult to believe that Kirkall taught Jackson to work on metal, not wood.

The "EK" who engraved the blocks for Mattaire's _Latin Cla.s.sics_ might very well have been Kirkall, whose style also might have had something in common with Jackson's early work. But this would not necessarily indicate a definite influence. English pictorial relief prints for book ill.u.s.tration in the first decades of the 18th century had one characteristic in common; they were almost all done with the engraver's burin on type metal or end-grain boxwood. They therefore showed elements of a "white-line" style as opposed to the black-line or knife-cut method commonly used in other countries. While it is likely that Jackson was an exception to the general rule in England (we have his word for it in the _Enquiry_, as we shall see), he was also deeply influenced by the prevailing English style of burin work on wood or type metal. If Papillon saw a similarity between Jackson's cuts and those in the _Latin Cla.s.sics_, it might have been because he was unfamiliar with other examples of English work and did not recognize a national style.

The initials "J. B. I." appear on a small cut in the 1717 edition of Dryden's plays, also published by Tonson. If this is an early piece by Jackson it would indicate that he might have been born earlier than 1701, although it is conceivable that he could have made it when he was sixteen.

This is the extent of the evidence, or rather lack of evidence, of Jackson's early years in England. Nothing is certain except that woodblock work was at a particularly low ebb. Standards in typography and printing were rude (Caslon was just beginning his career), far inferior to those on the Continent. Cuts were used rather sparingly by printers, and almost always for initial letters (these included little pictures), for tailpieces, and for decorative borders. As a measure of economy the same cut was often repeated throughout a book. Also, initial letters were sometimes contrived to permit the type for different capitals to be inserted in the center area, so that in some instances no more than two cuts were needed to begin alternate chapters in a volume.

Rarely were woodblocks employed to ill.u.s.trate the text. Pictures were almost always supplied by the copper-plate engraver, even when the prints were small and surrounded with typographical matter. This was an expensive and troublesome procedure, but it was the only one possible where an able group of cutters or engravers on wood did not exist and where printers found it difficult to achieve good impressions on the uneven laid paper of the time.

The main employment for knife cutters on wood was in making the popular prints, or ill.u.s.trated broadsides, which had been sold in city and village throughout the country since the early 1600's. Plank and knife could be used for these prints because of the generally large size of the pictures and the lack of sophistication of the audience. They are described by Bewick from his memories as a boy in the 1760's:[16]

I cannot, however, help lamenting that, in all the vicissitudes which the art of wood engraving has undergone, some species of it are lost and done away: I mean the large blocks with the prints from them, so common to be seen, when I was a boy, in every cottage and farm house throughout the country. These blocks, I suppose, from their size, must have been cut on the plank way on beech, or some other kind of close-grained wood; and from the immense number of impressions from them, so cheaply and extensively spread over the whole country, must have given employment to a great number of artists, in this inferior department of woodcutting.... These prints, which were sold at a very low price, were commonly ill.u.s.trative of some memorable exploits, or were, perhaps, the portraits of eminent men.... Besides these, there were a great variety of other designs, often with songs added to them of a moral, a patriotic, or a rural tendency, which served to enliven the circle in which they were admired. To enumerate the great variety of these _pictures_ would be a task.

[Footnote 16: Bewick, 1925 (1st ed. London, 1862), pp. 211-212.]

Bewick adds that some of these popular woodcuts, although not the great majority, were very good. Since this was the main field for woodcutters, it is an interesting conjecture that Jackson might have been trained for this craft. As he matured, we can a.s.sume that he felt the urge to excel as a woodcutter and left the country to develop his potentialities.

It must be remembered that in painting and engraving England was far behind the continental countries, which could boast of centuries of celebrated masters. The medieval period persisted in England until the time of Henry VIII. Traditional religious subjects, so indispensable to European art, were thereafter generally proscribed. There was no fondness as yet for themes of cla.s.sical mythology, and the new and developing national tradition in painting had to form itself on the only remaining field of pictorial expression, portraiture. Standards of style were set by foreign artists who were lured to England to record its prominent personages in a fitting manner. Beside such masters as Holbein, Zuccaro, Moro, Geeraerts, Van Dyck, Mytens, Lely, Kneller, Zoffany, and Van Loo, among others, native painters seemed crude and provincial. The list of foreign artists other than portraitists who visited England before 1750 for varying periods is also impressive.

If good native painters were rare in the first decades of the 18th century, good engravers or woodcutters were even rarer. Hogarth, whose earliest prints were produced in the 1720's, received his training from a silversmith.

Jackson's next move was toward the Continent.

_Paris: Perfection of a Craft_

Jackson arrived in Paris in 1725, his age 24 if we accept 1701 as his birth date. Here flourished a brilliant community of artists, craftsmen, dealers, and connoisseurs; woodcutting, etching, and line engraving were highly developed and the printing offices made extensive use of woodcuts for decoration and ill.u.s.tration. The woodcut tradition mimicked line engraving and was confined chiefly to tiny blocks wrought with the utmost delicacy. The main influence came from the 17th century-- in particular from the etchings and line engravings of Sebastien Le Clerc and from the etchings of Jacques Callot, whose simple system of swelling parallel lines, with occasional cross-hatchings, was adopted by both line engravers and woodcutters.

Le Clerc, whose style was influenced by Callot, had produced a vast number of ill.u.s.trations involving subjects of almost every type; his designs, therefore, were ready-made for publishers who wanted good but low-priced ill.u.s.trations. Woodcutters copied his engravings shamelessly, line for line. The overblown high Baroque style in ornament, swag, and cartouche was also drawn upon as a source for decorative cuts. In an attempt to imitate the full tonal scale of engraving, the woodcutters used heavier lines in the foreground to detach the main figures from the background, which was made up of more delicate lines. Background lines were often narrowed further by sc.r.a.ping down their edges, an operation that caused them to merge imperceptibly into the white paper. In this way, although the natural vigor of the woodcut suffered, an effect of s.p.a.ce and distance was achieved. Because of the small scale this technique was difficult, especially when cross-hatching was added, and special knives as well as a phenomenal deftness were needed to work out these bits of jewelry on the plank grain of pear, cherry, box, and serviceberry wood.

Jackson's initial impression of the state of woodcutting in France is described in the _Enquiry_ (p. 27):

From this Account it is evident that there was little Encouragement to be hoped for in England to a Person whose Genius led him to prosecute his Studies in the ancient Manner; which obliged Mr.

_Jackson_ to go over to the Continent, and see what was used in the _Parisian_ Printing-houses. At his arrival there he found the _French_ Engravers on Wood working in the old Manner; no Metal Engravers, or any of the same Performance on the end of the Wood, was ever used or countenanced by the Printers or Booksellers in that City. He tells us that he thought himself a tolerable good Hand when he came to _Paris_, but far inferior to the Performances of Monsieurs _Vincent le Seur_ and _Jean M. Pappillon_....

Jackson admits benefiting from the friendship and advice of these woodcutters, then goes on to describe their work with a ruthless frankness. Le Sueur, he says, was a brilliant copyist of the line engravings of Sebastien Le Clerc but, because he was a line-for-line copyist, lacked skill in drawing. Papillon's father, also a woodcutter who copied Le Clerc, avoided cross-hatching, which Jackson considered an essential ingredient of the true style of black-and-white woodcutting; Papillon himself, while described as a draughtsman of the utmost accuracy, was criticized for making his work so minute that it was impossible to print clearly. Jackson says in the _Enquiry_ (pp. 29-30):

If his Father neglected Cross Hatching, the Son affected to outstrip the _le Seurs_ in this difficult Performance, and even the ancient _Venetians_, believing to have fixed a _Non plus ultra_ in our Times to any future Attempts with Engraving on Wood.

... I saw the Almanack[17] in a horrid Condition before I left _Paris_, the Signs of the Zodiack wore like a Blotch, notwithstanding the utmost Care and Diligence the Printer used to take up very little Ink to keep them clean. I have chosen to make mention of these two _Frenchmen_ as the only Persons in my time keeping up to the Stile of the ancient Engraving on Wood; and as they favoured me with their Friendship and Advice during my abode in _Paris_, I thought in Justice to their good Nature it was proper to give some Account of their Merit!

[Footnote 17: The _Pet.i.t almanach de Paris_, founded by J. M.

Papillon in 1727 and ill.u.s.trated with his woodcuts.]

Acknowledgment of friendship and merit in this vein, while entirely true (Papillon was minute to the point of exhibitionism, and his cuts were often not adapted to clear printing), demonstrates the lack of tact that made powerful enemies for Jackson wherever he traveled. Papillon no doubt read the _Enquiry_, in which he was discussed at length, and the well-known _Essay_, with its aggressive tone and irresponsible claims.

When Papillon's _Traite_ came out in 1766 he took the opportunity to put the English artist in his place. Certainly his account was colored by Jackson's writings; there is no other explanation for this display of personal bitterness in a work published 36 years after the Englishman left Paris (pp. 327-328):

J. Jackson, an Englishman who lived in Paris for a few years, might have perfected himself in wood engraving, which he had learned, as I said previously on page 323, from an English painter, if he had been willing to follow my advice. As soon as he arrived in Paris he came to me asking for work; I gave him some things to execute for a few months in order to allow him to live, for which he repaid me with ingrat.i.tude by making a duplicate of a floral ornament of my design which he offered, before delivering the block to me, to the person for whom it was to be made. From the reproaches I received when the matter was discovered, I refused, naturally, to employ him further.

Then he went the rounds of the printing houses in Paris, and was forced to offer his work ready-made and without order, almost for nothing, and many printers, profiting by his distress, supplied themselves amply with his cuts. He had acquired a certain insipid and limited taste, little above the mosaics on snuffboxes, similar to other mediocre engravers, with which he surcharged his works. His mosaics, however delicately engraved, are always lacking in effect, and show the engraver's patience and not his talent; for the remainder of the cut has only delicate lines without tints or gradations of light and shade, and lack the contrast necessary to make a striking effect. Engravings of this sort, however deficient in this regard, are admired by printers of vulgar taste who foolishly believe that they closely resemble copper plate engraving, and that they give better impressions than those of a picturesque type having a greater variety of tints.

Jackson, having been forced by poverty to leave Paris, where he could find nothing further to do, traveled in France; then, disgusted with his art, he followed a painter to Rome, after which he went to Venice, where, I am told, he married, and then returned to England, his native country.

Whether or not Jackson was unethical he was certainly an active compet.i.tor and many printers "supplied themselves amply with his cuts."

He must have produced an enormous amount of work during his five years in Paris because John Smith, in his _Printers Grammar_,[18] says that Jackson's cuts were used so widely and for so many years in Paris that they replaced the fashion of using "flowers," or typographical ornaments, and that this style did not come into vogue again until the cuts were completely worn down through use.

[Footnote 18: Smith, 1755, p. 136.]

This statement is not entirely true, but it is probable that Jackson's woodcuts, more broadly executed than the typical French products, outlasted all others of the 1725-30 period. They were consistently re-used, and appeared, as far as they can be traced, well into the 1780's.[19]

[Footnote 19: See cuts in _Dissertatiumeula quodlibetariis disputationibus_ of C. L. Berthollet, Paris, 1780, and _Voyage litteraire de la Grece_, of de Guys, 1783.]

Elsewhere in the _Traite_, however, Papillon has a good word for Jackson's abilities:[20]

Jackson, of whom I have already spoken, also engraved in chiaroscuro; I have a little landscape by him which is very nicely done.

[Footnote 20: P. 415. This may be the print formerly in Dresden but lost during the war.]

It was inevitable that Papillon and Jackson should clash. The Frenchman's notion of woodcutting was influenced, as we have seen, by copper plate engraving; he wanted, by incredible minuteness of cutting, to achieve approximately the same results. This was in keeping with the delicate French _rocaille_ tradition on which Papillon was nurtured; to him any other contemporary style of book decoration was evidence of bad taste. Jackson, on his part, felt that this approach violated the essentially broad, vigorous nature of the woodcut and, in addition, made excessive demands on the printer. Since this impoverished beginner, and an Englishman at that, refused to take his earnest advice or to fall into the prevailing style, Papillon was enraged. After all, Jackson was working as an employee. But Papillon was not entirely blind. In a number of places in the _Traite_ he made reference to other woodcutters who were working in Jackson's style, and he recorded some of the works the Englishman ill.u.s.trated during his five years in Paris.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Headpiece by J. M. Papillon for his _Traite historique et pratique de la gravure en bois_, Paris, 1766, vol. 3. This is an example of Papillon's minute style, against which Jackson rebelled.

Actual size.]

Jackson's blossoming out as a maker of wallpaper after his return to England and his brash claims in this connection in the _Essay_, must also have irked Papillon, who knew the field as an expert; his father in 1688 had set up the first large printing house in France for wall hangings, and after his death in 1723 Papillon had inherited it. In 1740, he sold the business to the widow Langlois, but he had run the shop during Jackson's residence in Paris and his former employee no doubt had learned a great deal by observing its operation. Yet here more than twenty years later was the upstart Englishman again, venturing into wallpaper manufacturing with an air of moral superiority, attacking all other products as unworthy. Jackson's ridiculing of the Chinese style must have been particularly galling since Papillon and his father had specialized in producing such papers. These were much better than comparable English work, but Jackson, confining himself to English products, had attacked the whole style without making distinctions.

According to the _Enquiry_ (pages 32-55 of this book will be drawn upon for the ensuing details of Jackson's career), M. Annison, Director of the Imprimerie Royale, for whom Jackson produced many cuts, introduced him to Count de Caylus, collector, connoisseur, etcher, and the leading spirit in French engraving at the time. De Caylus had, in 1725, undertaken to direct the reproduction of drawings and paintings in the best French collections.[21] Pierre Crozat, the famous collector, sponsored the publication of this ambitious work.

[Footnote 21: _Recueil d'estampes d'apres les plus beaux tableaux et d'apres les plus beaux dessins qui sont en France dans le cabinet du Roy, dans celui de M. le Duc d'Orleans et dans d'autres cabinets, divise suivant les differentes ecoles._ Paris, 1729-42, 2 vols., 182 plates. Often called the _Cabinet Crozat_, it was reprinted by Basan in 1763 with aquatint tones by Francois Charpentier replacing the woodblock tints.]

The drawings were reproduced in chiaroscuro while the paintings were rendered in black-and-white by a corps of engravers. The chiaroscuros were made by combining an etched outline, usually by de Caylus or P. P. A. Robert, with superimposed tones, mainly in green or buff, from one or two woodblocks cut in most cases by Nicolas Le Sueur, or under his direction. This was not a new printing method. Hubert (not Hendrick) Goltzius had first employed it in a set of Roman emperors after antique medallions in 1557.[22] To reproduce drawings by Raphael, Parmigianino, and himself, Abraham Bloemart, as well as Frederick and Cornelius Bloemart in the early 1600's, had used this combination extensively, and as described earlier, p. 11, Kirkall had used it between 1722 and 1724.[23] The combination method produced rather feeble prints that lacked the vigor of straight woodblock chiaroscuro. The etched outline was thin and ineffective, and the tints were pallid so as not to overpower the drawing. Only Abraham Bloemart's prints in this style were convincing, although Kirkall's chiaroscuros, in their soft, over-modeled way, had individuality. But the _Cabinet Crozat_ lacked distinction entirely. The chiaroscuros had a mechanical look, a fact not surprising when we remember that they were produced by a team of engravers-- a.s.sembled, as it were, from several hands working in different media.

The best prints were a few chiaroscuros made entirely from woodblocks by Nicolas Le Sueur, although these were also rather tepid, no doubt to harmonize with the rest of the work.

[Footnote 22: _Imperatorum imagines_, Antwerp, 1557. The woodblocks were cut by Josse Geitleugen.]

[Footnote 23: In the _Enquiry_ (p. 31) Jackson a.s.serts that Kirkall's tints were made from copper plates, not woodblocks.]

Jackson tells us that he worked on some tint blocks, first from a drawing by Giulio Romano and later from a drawing by Raphael, _Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter_, the original _modello_ for one of the famous tapestry cartoons. Count de Caylus, he says, liked the work and wanted to employ him further on the project, but Crozat rejected him flatly. De Caylus, according to Jackson, was embarra.s.sed and distressed and offered recompense for the lost time and labor, but Jackson, not to be outdone in generosity by a n.o.bleman, refused, explaining that the honor of knowing the Count and receiving his approbation more than made up for his lost effort.

Vincent Le Sueur objected to the combination method and withdrew early from the project. Possibly Jackson, who also disliked this method and was not known for his discretion, was considered by Crozat to be a disruptive element. Possibly his style of cutting was not retiring enough for Crozat's tasteful French notion of chiaroscuro. This project, in any case, aroused the Englishman's interest in the process. _Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter_, after Raphael, made about 1727, was probably Jackson's first chiaroscuro woodcut. No doubt he produced it on his own and offered it as a plate for the publication, perhaps at the time he was commissioned to cut the tint blocks to be used in combination with de Caylus' etching of this subject.

With both Papillon and the powerful Crozat against him, Jackson was finished in Paris. De Caylus urged him to go to Italy. Accordingly, in April 1730, he left Paris in the company of John Lewis, an English painter, and set out for Rome, where he expected to continue his studies in drawing and deepen his knowledge of art.

Jackson's style was still being formed during his Paris period. Confined for the most part to initial letters, headbands, and tailpieces, his work differed from contemporary French cuts only in its technical handling, which was firmer and broader. Little of a more creative nature came his way, and the Paris stay therefore served as a useful interim during which he became adept in his craft. The necessity for keeping himself alive by cutting on wood developed his powers of invention and his facility: he became a remarkably rapid and skillful cutter. Jackson gathered strength in Paris, but it was in Venice that he really came to maturity as an artist.