Modern Illustration Part 2

In 1830 I think one may safely say that the first really important modern ill.u.s.trated book, in which wood was subst.i.tuted for metal engraving, appeared in France. This was the "Histoire du Roi de Boheme,"

by Johannot. Though published twenty years later than Rogers' "Poems,"

with Stothard's ill.u.s.trations, as an example of engraving it was scarcely any better. But the designs--little head and tail-pieces--were so good that they were used over and over again by "L'Artiste," the organ of the Romanticists, in which they were accepted as the perfection of ill.u.s.tration.

At this date there is to be noted in England, among the best work done, the beautiful alphabet by Stothard, published by Pickering.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY THURSTON. FROM BUTLER'S "HUDIBRAS" (BOHN).

Wood-engraving, unsigned.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY THURSTON. FROM BUTLER'S "HUDIBRAS" (BOHN).

Wood-engraving, unsigned.]

If, up to 1830, England and France were in equal rank, so far as ill.u.s.tration went, for the next ten or fifteen years France utterly eclipsed her earlier rival. In 1833 appeared the "Gil Blas"[8] of Gigoux, containing hundreds of drawings, which all Frenchmen, I believe, consider to be the ill.u.s.trated book of the period. To Gigoux, Daniel Vierge owes more probably than he would care to acknowledge; while Gigoux himself is founded on Goya. In 1838, however, was issued a book which, in drawing, engraving, and printing, completely outdistanced anything that had heretofore appeared in England or in France: Curmer's edition of "Paul et Virginie," dedicated by a grateful publisher, "Aux artistes qui ont eleve ce monument typographique a la memoire de J. H.

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre." These artists include the names of nearly everyone who was then, or soon became famous in French art. The book contains marines by Isabey, beautiful landscapes by Paul Huet, animals and figures by Jacque, and, above all, drawings by Meissonier, who contributed over a hundred to this story and to the "Chaumiere Indienne," published under the same cover. All the best French and English engravers collaborated. Even the printing was excellent, for the use of overlays, made by Aristide Derniame, had begun to be fully understood.[9] The printers' name deserves to be remembered: Everal et Cie.

[8] My own copy, apparently a first edition, is dated 1836.

[9] Charles Whittingham, the founder of the Chiswick Press, who died in 1840, has the credit of being the first printer in England to use overlays, and as an early example might be mentioned, "The Gardens and Menageries of the Zoological Society delineated," published by Tilt in 1830, containing drawings by William Harvey, engraved by Branston and Wright, a.s.sisted by other artists.

After this, for some ten years, there was a perfect deluge of finely ill.u.s.trated books. The "Vicar of Wakefield," with Jacque's drawings, Moliere, "Don Quixote," "Le Diable Boiteux." Magazines, too, were brought out; the "Magazin Pittoresque," which had started in 1833, published in 1848 Meissonier's "Deux Joueurs," engraved by Lavoignat; in many ways this remains, even to-day, one of the best pieces of _facsimile_ wood-engraving ever made. At that time it was simply unapproached anywhere. In "L'Artiste" and "Gazette des Entants," 1840, will be found many remarkable lithographs by Gavarni; but most of Daumier's works must be looked for in the cheaper prints, notably in "La Caricature," where also may be found, from 1830, in lithography the work of Delacroix, Monnier, Lami, and others.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY THURSTON. FROM Ta.s.sO (BOHN). Engraved on wood by Corbould.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FROM CRUIKSHANK'S "THREE COURSES." Engraved on wood by S.

Williams.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FROM CRUIKSHANK'S "THREE COURSES."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FROM CRUIKSHANK'S "THREE COURSES." Wood-engravings, not signed.]

In England, too, very good work was being done, though it was not so absolutely artistic as the French. Among the men who were working were Thurston, Stothard, Harvey, Landseer, Wilkie, Calcott, and Mulready. The "Penny Magazine" was started in 1832 by Charles Knight. Gray's "Elegy"

appeared in 1836, the "Arabian Nights" in 1838, and, about the same time the "Solace of Song," both containing much of Harvey's best work; while later came those drawings by Cruikshank, which mainly owe their claim to notice to the marvellous interpretations of them made by the Thompsons and the Williamses. In England, however, the engravers were seeking more and more to imitate steel, the artist's simplest washes being turned into the most elaborate cross-hatching, which made each block look as if it were a ma.s.s of pen-and-ink or pencil detail, when no such work was ever put on it by the draughtsman. The artist was ignored by the engraver, until finally the latter became absolutely supreme, that is to say, his shop became supreme, while the artist who, when he had the chance, could give on a piece of wood an inch or two square, most beautiful, even great, effects of landscape, was subordinated wholly to his interpreter. For an accurate account of this inartistic triumph I would recommend the works of Mr. W. J. Linton.

In France the art of ill.u.s.tration continued to improve. It culminated in 1858 in the "Contes Remois," with Meissonier for draughtsman and Lavoignat and Leveille for engravers. These ill.u.s.trations are absolutely equal to Menzel's best work, and are by far the finest ever produced in France.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FROM CRUIKSHANK'S "TABLE BOOK." Engraved on wood by T.

Williams.]

I had always supposed Menzel to occupy a position quite as original as Bewick's. But I find that he was really a follower of Meissonier. His "Life of Frederick the Great" was not published until 1842, while the "Paul et Virginie" had appeared in 1835. Besides, the first of his drawings for the "Frederick" Menzel confided to French engravers,[10]

especially to the men who had reproduced Tony Johannot. But this artist's ill.u.s.trations, though in point of size the most important, in point of excellence are the worst in the French book, being not unlike characterless steel engravings. It is therefore not surprising that Menzel was dissatisfied with the results, and that he proceeded at once to train a number of Germans to produce engravings of his work in _facsimile_. The best of these men were Bentworth, Unzelmann, the Vogels, Kreitzschmar, who engraved the drawings for the "Works of Frederick the Great," and the "Heroes of War and Peace," those monuments to Menzel's art and German ill.u.s.tration. Indeed, it seems to me that, until the introduction of photography, there is little to be said of German ill.u.s.tration that does not relate entirely to Menzel and Dietz, and some of the artists on "Fliegende Blatter," which was founded in 1844.

[10] Rather English and French, Andrew, Best, Leloir.

But in England it is just before the invention of photographing on wood that some of the most marvellous drawings were produced; really the most marvellous that have ever been done in the country. It is true that Sir John Gilbert had been making his striking and powerful designs, Mr.

Birket Foster his exquisite drawings, while much good _facsimile_ work was done after Mr. Harrison Weir; the Abbotsford edition of Scott was appearing, and the "Liber Studiorum;" true, also, that the "Ill.u.s.trated London News," started in 1842, had done much to raise the general standard; "Punch," also, was commenced in 1842; much, too, had been accomplished in lithography. Still, it is with the appearance of Frederick Sandys, Rossetti, Walker, Pinwell, A. Boyd Houghton, Small, Du Maurier, Keene, Crane, Leighton, Millais, and Tenniel, with the publication of the "Cornhill," "Once a Week," "Good Words," the "Shilling Magazine," and such books as Moxon's "Tennyson," that the best period of English ill.u.s.tration begins. Mr. Ruskin's own drawings for his books must not be forgotten.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY BIRKET FOSTER. FROM "LONGFELLOW'S POEMS" (BELL).

Engraved on wood by Vizetelly.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY SIR JOHN GILBERT. FROM MARRYAT'S "MISSION" (BOHN).

Engraved on wood by Dalziel.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. FROM "TENNYSON'S POEMS."

Moxon, 1857. Engraved on wood by Dalziel.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. PROCESS BLOCK FROM A DRAWING IN THE POSSESSION OF EDMUND GOSSE, ESQ.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY BIRKET FOSTER. FROM "LONGFELLOW'S POEMS" (BELL).

Engraved on wood by H. Vizetelly.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY BIRKET FOSTER. FROM "BELL'S SCHOOL READER."

Wood-engraving unsigned.]

Among the English engravers, outside of the large shops of Dalziel and Swain, there are only two names that stand out conspicuously: W. J.

Linton and W. H. Hooper. The excellent work of the latter, unfortunately, has been overshadowed by that of Mr. Linton, who, however, cannot be considered his equal as an engraver.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY BIRKET FOSTER. PROCESS BLOCK FROM AN ORIGINAL DRAWING ON THE WOOD BLOCK, NEVER ENGRAVED.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY BIRKET FOSTER. FROM "GOLDSMITH'S POEMS" (BELL).

Engraved on wood by Dalziel.]

In America F. O. C. Darley was certainly the first ill.u.s.trator, while the French tradition was carried on for years in "Harper's Magazine" by C. E. Doepler, who produced some very excellent little blocks.

Harper's "Illuminated Bible," with more than fourteen hundred drawings by J. G. Chapman, engraved by J. A. Adams, was begun in 1837, and finished in 1843. But the greatest number of the better American drawings were either borrowed from English sources, or, as in the case of the American Tract Society, English artists, like Sir John Gilbert, were commissioned to make them. After the Civil War, the first man to appear prominently was Winslow Homer. Contemporary with him, and later, were John La Farge, Thomas and Peter Moran, Alfred Fredericks, W. L.

Shepherd, and the older of the men working to-day. Among the caricaturists, Thomas Nast was preeminent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY HARRISON WEIR. FROM POETRY FOR SCHOOLS (BELL).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY HARRISON WEIR. FROM POETRY FOR SCHOOLS (BELL).

Engraved on wood by A. Slader.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY HARRISON WEIR. FROM A WASH DRAWING ON THE WOOD.]

There is one American book, however, which deserves special mention.

This is Harris's "Insects Injurious to Vegetation," the drawings for which were the work of Sourel and Burckhardt. It is one of the most artistic books of the sort ever published in America or elsewhere. Then, too, amid a flood of other things, appeared, in 1872, "Picturesque America," and later "Picturesque Europe," which then reached really the high-water mark of American publishing enterprise in the United States, just as surely as Dore at the same time in France and England was the most exploited of all ill.u.s.trators. The greater number of drawings for these books were made by Harry Fenn and J. D. Woodward. The profession of ill.u.s.tration at this period must have been almost equal to that of gold-mining. Everything the artist chose to produce was accepted. It would be more accurate to say everything he half produced, for the school of Turner being then superseded by that of Dore, wood-engravers, like Pannemacker, for instance, had been specially trained by the artist to carry out the ideas which he merely suggested on the block.

But a change was coming; the incessant output of ill.u.s.tration killed not only the artists themselves, but the process. In its stead arose a better, truer method, a more artistic method, which we are even now, only developing. This later American ill.u.s.tration may be said to have had its beginning in the year 1876.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY A. COOPER. FROM WALTON'S "ANGLER" (BOHN). Engraved on wood by M. Jackson.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY RANDOLPH CALDECOTT. FROM "OLD CHRISTMAS" (MACMILLAN, 1875).]

CHAPTER II.

THE METHODS OF TO-DAY; THEIR ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT.

Modern ill.u.s.tration belongs essentially to our own times, to our own generation. To the last quarter of the eighteenth century several writers on the subject have traced its beginning. But in a measure only is this theory justified by fact. All dates are difficult and elusive.