Modern Illustration Part 3

It is not easy to point to the exact year when the old came to an end and the new began. Even in cases when a certain date, 1830 for example, seems to mark a positive barrier, it does so only because, with constant use, it has become the symbol of a certain change.

But the cause of this modern development is not hard to discover. It was the application of photography to the ill.u.s.tration of books and papers which established the art on a new basis. As the invention of printing gave the first great impetus to ill.u.s.tration, so surely has it received its second and more important from the invention of photography. The gulf between primitive illuminated ma.n.u.scripts and Holbein's "Dance of Death" is not wider than that which separates the antiquated "Keepsakes"

and "Forget-Me-Nots" from the "Century Magazine" and the "Graphic." The conditions have entirely altered.

Greater ease of reproduction, greater speed, greater economy of labour have been secured, as well as greater freedom for the artist, and greater justice in the reproduction of his design. As a consequence, ill.u.s.tration has increased in popularity, the comparative cheapness of production placing it within reach of the people who have ever taken pleasure in the art, since the days when all writing was but picture-making; it has gained artistically, since the fidelity of the _facsimile_ now obtained has induced many an artist of genius, or distinction, to devote himself wholly to black and white. If, on the one hand, this popularity threatens its degradation (foolish editors and grasping publishers flooding the world with cheap and nasty ill.u.s.trated books and periodicals), on the other, the artistic gain promises to be its salvation, for not in the days of Durer himself was so large a proportion of genuinely good work published.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY CHARLES KEENE. FROM A PEN DRAWING IN THE POSSESSION OF THE AUTHOR.]

The first attempt to photograph a drawing on the block for the purpose of engraving, is said to have been made in England, in 1851 or 1852, by Mr. Langton, an engraver in Manchester, a.s.sisted by a photographer whose name unfortunately has not been preserved. It may be granted that this was the first attempt. But artistically it was of small importance, as nothing, so far as I know, directly came of it. That the process was well enough known in 1865 is proved by the following extracts from the "Art Student" of that year: "The picture is obtained in the usual way, and the film of collodion afterwards removed by using a pledget of cotton moistened in ether. A block so prepared works as well under the graver as an ordinary drawing." But I do not believe that even this process of photographing on the block was very practically used.[11] To take one case in point, the "Amor Mundi" by Sandys, published in the "Shilling Magazine" for April, 1865, which I reproduced by photogravure in "Pen Drawing and Pen Draughtsmen:"[12] the plate was made from a negative taken from this design after it had been drawn on the block.

Mr. Swain has told me that he photographed the drawing, because he was so delighted with the original (which he was about to cut to pieces) that he wanted to preserve an exact copy. Now, had the art of photographing drawings on wood been generally known, Mr. Swain would have photographed the drawing on to another block, reversing the negative, and kept the original. Instead, he simply photographed the original before it was engraved. The same thing is said to have been done with some of Rossetti's ill.u.s.trations for Tennyson; while Messrs.

Dalziel kept back their "Bible Gallery" for many years, until drawings could be decently photographed on the wood. But the practical application of photography to the transferring of drawings to wood blocks, although probably known about as long ago as 1850, in a few offices is scarcely practised to-day. I think, however, one may safely say that about the year 1876 this practice became fairly general; one may therefore, for the sake of convenience, take the year 1876 as the date of the beginning of modern ill.u.s.tration.

[11] I am mistaken in this, as many of Pinwell and North's drawings, made on paper in 1865-66 for Dalziel, were photographed on wood.

[12] First edition 1889.

As this change is probably the most important in the whole history of the art, I think it may be well to explain shortly how drawings were produced before the introduction of photography, and how they are made now.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY CHARLES KEENE. FROM A PEN DRAWING IN THE POSSESSION OF THE AUTHOR.]

Before the time of Durer and Holbein, the artist was of small importance; indeed, so too was the engraver, though we hear much about him. The artist made his drawing either on a piece of paper or on the block. Judging from some of the work in the Plantin Museum (the sole place where we can obtain any actual data[13]), the design was made in rather a free manner; the argument against this conclusion, of course, is that comparatively few originals exist. There is, however, in the British Museum a drawing of an Apollo by Durer[14] on which are the marks of a hard lead pencil, or metal point leaving a mark, used to trace it, while the word "Apollo" in the mirror is written backwards.

On the other hand, in the old Herbals are cuts of the artist making his drawing from nature, the draughtsman putting it on the block, and the wood-cutter cutting it. When we come to engraving on metal, we find that, though the wood-cutter need not have been an artist, he only having to follow lines given him, or to make certain mechanical ones to suit himself, the metal engraver was obliged to be an artist, because he had to be able to copy the picture or design entrusted to him. But mechanical aids were found for him too, with the result that the later engravings on metals, as well as the old woodcuts, became the productions of shops, in which certain parts were done by certain men, and the real artist, whether he were draughtsman or engraver, had a small share in the actual reproduction. The next stage was the entire disappearance of the wood-cutter, when finally all books were ill.u.s.trated by means of steel and copper. With Bewick who, with a graver, engraved his own designs on the end of the block, instead of cutting them with a knife on the side of a plank, as everyone had previously done,[15] there was introduced a new phase--the possibility of drawing with a pen, or pencil, or brush, or wash, upon the whitened surface of box-wood, a good medium, a design which should be absolutely facsimiled by the engraver. The engravers of Bewick's time and until about 1835 or 1840, being true artists and craftsmen, knew that their business was to engrave the artist's design as accurately and carefully as they could, since what the latter wanted was the absolute _facsimile_ of his work and none of their suggestions. But by the fifties, the artist either had become wholly indifferent to the way in which his work was engraved, or else he was absolutely under the thumb of the engravers. His entire style, all his individuality, was sacrificed for the benefit of the engraving shop, from which blocks after him were turned out. The head of the firm whose signature they bore may never have done a stroke of work on them. Even a man strong as Charles Keene was completely broken up by this system, though he may not have realized it. Artists were told that they must draw in such a way that the engravers could engrave them with the least time, trouble, and expense.

Two attempts were made to escape from the wood-engraver who was again endeavouring to reduce everything to a _facsimile_ of steel: by the use of steel plates themselves, as in the case of the later editions of Rogers' "Italy;" and also, by the practice of aquatint and lithography, in France by such men as Gavarni and Daumier, and in England by Prout, Roberts, Harding, Nash, and Cotman. But lithography in this country, as a method of ill.u.s.trating books and papers, never can be said to have become very popular, though in France for years its employment was general.

[13] There are two or three seventeenth-century drawings on the wood at South Kensington, and some, I believe, in the British Museum.

[14] On paper.

[15] At least, he was the first man to do important artistic wood-engraving.

The art of wood-engraving was dying in the clutch of the engraver, when an artless process came to its aid. For, at this crisis it was discovered that a drawing made in any medium, upon any material, of any size (so long as proportion was regarded), might be photographed upon the sensitized wood-block in reverse. The importance of the discovery will be appreciated when it is remembered that, before this, the poor artist, if he were drawing the portrait of a place directly on the block, was compelled to draw it the exact size it was to be engraved, to reverse it himself, and to have his actual drawing destroyed by engraving through it. Once photography was used, the drawing could be made of any size, it was mechanically reversed, the original was preserved, and the artist was free. Gone, however, according to the engraver, was the engraver's art. It is true that the wood-chopper disappeared: the man who could not draw a line himself, and yet would pretend that his mechanical lines, made with a graver or ruling machine, were more valuable than the artist's, and who had no hesitancy in changing the entire composition of a subject if he did not like it. But his disappearance was a great gain. In his place there arose the latest school of wood-engravers. Many of the new were perhaps no better than the old men, for not knowing how to draw, not being artists, they directed their energies often to the meaningless elaboration of unimportant detail. But at least this work could always be corrected, now that the original drawing was preserved and could be compared with the print from the engraved block.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY M. E. EDWARDS. FROM GATTY'S "PARABLES" (BELL, 1867).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY G. DU MAURIER. FROM A WOOD-ENGRAVING. "THE ENGLISH ILl.u.s.tRATED MAGAZINE."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY ARTHUR HUGHES. WOOD-ENGRAVING FROM GORDON HAKE'S "PARABLES" (CHAPMAN AND HALL).]

In England, from 1860 to 1870 some very remarkable drawings were made and engraved upon the block. During the years just before the introduction of photography, Walker, Pinwell, Keene, Sandys, Shields, and Du Maurier were ill.u.s.trating. To a certain extent, they seem to have insisted upon their work being followed. Between 1870 and 1880, when the actual change was made from drawing on wood to drawing on paper, even a larger number of men were at work. The "Graphic" and the "Century" were founded, and enormous were the improvements in France and Germany. But between 1880 and 1890 came the greatest development of all.

For these years saw the perfecting and successful practice of mechanical reproduction: that is, the photographing of drawings in line upon a metal plate or gelatine film, the biting of them in relief on this plate, or the mechanical growth of a plate on the gelatine, resulting in the production of a metal block which could be printed along with type.

This method of replacing the wood-engraver by a chemical agent has, however, been the aim of every photographer since the time of Niepce, who made the first experiments, while the process was patented by Gillot on the 21st of March, 1850.[16] These ten years are also noted for the invention of what is now generally known as the half-tone process: that is the reproduction by mechanical means of drawings in wash, or in colour, worked out in Europe by the Meisenbach process, in America by the Ives method. In many ways wood-engraving as a trade or business has been, it may be only temporarily, seriously damaged. However, in the very short period since mechanical reproduction has been introduced, those wood-engravers who really are artists have been doing better work, because they can now engrave, in their own fashion, the blocks they want to. The art of wood-engraving has progressed if the trade has languished.

[16] In France the credit for the invention is given to Dr. Donne, who, about 1840, discovered that certain acids could be used to bite in the whites or the blacks of a daguerreotype. See also French chapter.

The most modern of these developments are worthy of special notice both in Europe and America. But before pointing out the changes and results that have come from them, it may be well to say something about process.

Upon this subject there are two widely differing factions. It is not at all curious that the artists, the men who practise the art of ill.u.s.tration, should be found almost unanimously on one side, while the critics, whose business it is to preach about an art of which they know nothing in practice, are ranged upon the other. There are a few critics of intelligence, who understand the requirements and limitations of both process and wood-engraving, just as there are hack and superior ill.u.s.trators who neither know nor care anything about any form of reproduction.

Many advantages are claimed for wood-engraving. The print from an engraving on wood gives, it is said, a softer, richer, fuller impression than the print from the mechanically engraved process block. But not in one case out of a hundred thousand is the wood block itself printed from: the ill.u.s.tration which delights the critics has, in reality, been printed from a cast of the block made of exactly the same metal as the cast from the process block, and the softness, the velvety quality, is therefore due to the imagination of the critic who is unable to tell the difference. Indeed, to distinguish between a mechanically produced block and one engraved on wood, provided the subject of the drawing is reasonably simple, is so difficult, that when neither of the blocks is signed, no living expert on the subject would venture an off-hand opinion. Between good _facsimile_ engraving and good process there is really no difference at all, excepting in a few particulars. For in the mechanically engraved process block, to use the ordinary term, the lines made by the artist on paper, are photographed directly on to the metal plate; these lines are protected by ink which is rolled upon them with an ordinary ink roller, the sticky ink adhering to the lines of the photograph, and nowhere else. This inked photograph is then placed in a bath of acid, and the exposed portions are eaten away; the zinc or other metal block is set up with a wooden back, type high, and is ready to print from. The process is so ridiculously simple that it can be done in a very few hours.

Process blocks for line work, and nearly always half-tone blocks, have to be finished by a clever engraver especially employed for the purpose.

It is very hard for him, as it leaves him no chance for original work, but in course of time it is hoped that the process will be so perfected that the services of the engraver can be dispensed with. There are other methods, such as that of using swelled gelatine, to produce the same results, but the biting of zinc that I have described is the most popular.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY G. R. SEYMOUR. WOOD-ENGRAVING FROM "THE MAGAZINE OF ART" (Ca.s.sELL).]

In the case of the wood-engraving, the drawing is photographed in the same way on the wood block, but the engraver proceeds slowly, tediously, and laboriously with his tools to cut away the wood and leave the lines in relief. This requires an amount of devotion to painstaking drudgery which is appalling. As many days will be given to the production of a good wood-engraving, as hours are needed to produce a good process block. The results obtained by a first-cla.s.s wood-engraver on the one hand, on the other by the first-cla.s.s mechanical reproduction which is always watched by a first-cla.s.s man, may be so close as to be indistinguishable. But there is no artistic gain in employing the wood-engraver, while great artistic loss is involved, since the latter, who can scarce enjoy doing this sort of thing, is compelled to waste his time in competing with a chemical and mechanical combination which does the work just as well; besides, there is as much difference in the cost as in the methods themselves, a process block being worth about as many shillings as the wood-engraving is pounds. As the results are equal, I see no reason why the publisher should be called upon to pay this large sum of money, unless he wishes to, simply for what is absolutely a fad.

I admit, however, that _facsimile_ engravings by the early Englishmen and Frenchmen, and some of the Americans and Danes of the present day, are worth quite as much money as is asked for them. But I am just as certain that mechanical engravers will go on improving their mechanical process until _facsimile_ wood-engravers are left in the rear. Ordinary good process work, which can be printed with type, is, at the present moment, equal to any _facsimile_ wood-engraving. The more elaborate methods, such as the photogravure of Amand Durand, are infinitely better, and only to be compared to etching.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES. FROM THE ORIGINAL DRAWING FOR GATTY'S "PARABLES" (BELL, 1867).]

To contrast the mechanical reproductions of black and white wash, or colour drawings with wood-engravings after them is, however, another matter. Many drawings, owing to the medium in which they are done, will not as yet reproduce well mechanically. Indeed, to have one's drawings rendered satisfactorily, by the half-tone process, requires such an enormous experience and knowledge of the improvements continuously being made in the many different methods used by the different process men, that the artist, if he kept posted in all the developments and modifications, would have very little time left to produce works of art of his own. On the other hand, the artist may admire the work of a sympathetic wood-engraver whom he is delighted to trust with his drawings: it is always a pleasure to see the translation of a good drawing by a good wood-engraver. From the point of view of engraving, nothing is more hopelessly monotonous than process; for the aim of the process-man, as of some of the best wood-engravers, is to render the drawing in wash, or in colour, so well, that there should be no suggestion of the methods by which the results are obtained: to give the drawing itself, and this is exactly, in the majority of cases, what the artist wants. Naturally, he prefers an absolute reproduction of his drawing, to somebody else's interpretation of it. He is not eager to have another person interpret his ideas for the public; he would rather the public should see what he has done himself with his own hands. This reasonable desire process now begins to realize. By the half-tone process, a photograph is made of a drawing with either a microscopically ruled gla.s.s plate or screen in front of it, which breaks up the flat tones into infinitesimal dots, or squares, or lozenges; or else, there is impressed into the inked photo, in some one of a dozen ways, a dotted plate which will give the same effect.[17] These dots, squares, or lozenges lend a grain to the flat washes, translating them into rectilinear relief, yielding a printing surface,--accomplishing, in a word, the same end as the wood-engraver's translation of flat washes into lines and dots. The great objection hitherto to half-tone process has been, especially in large reproductions, that the squares or lozenges produce a mechanical look which is entirely absent from a good wood-engraving, the very essence of engraving being variety and, therefore, interest in the lines drawn with the graver. The crucial point, however, is this: even the greatest wood-engraver, in reproducing a drawing made in tone, is forced to translate this tone by lines or dots; in fact, instead of the wash, to give lines which do not exist in the original drawing. Though he may be so clever as to succeed in reproducing the actual values of the original, which he rarely does, he has still entirely altered the original appearance of the work. The object of the half-tone process is to give, not only these actual values, so often missed by the engraver, but also the brush-marks and the washy or painty look of the original, a result much further beyond the powers of any wood-engraver, than beyond the possibilities of process at the present day. It is said that process reproduction is but a mechanical makeshift, and this is a term of reproach against it. But it must be evident that wood-engraving, especially for the reproduction of wash, and, in a less degree, of line drawings, is a far more mechanical makeshift. There is no possible way in wood of representing the wash, while in reproducing line on the block, at least two cuts are required with the graver to get what the mechanical process gives at once. Moreover, as soon as the line drawing becomes at all complicated, it is impossible for the engraver to follow it on the wood block.

[17] This method, I believe, is no longer used.

Therefore, it seems to me that the strictures which have been applied to process are far more applicable to wood-engraving. Now that wood-engraving has become a medium for the reproduction of any and every sort of design, it has stepped quite outside its proper province. Almost anything can be done with a block of wood and a graver, but it must be evident to people of average intelligence that a very great gulf separates those things which possibly can be done, from those which rationally should be attempted. Still, to-day any subject that can be engraved on wood may be printed; and if one likes to try experiments, why should he be stopped? The wood-engraver of to-day has been compelled to suppress and efface himself. When he proposes to reproduce another man's designs, if he is really a great wood-engraver, he recognizes that his sole function is to render the original, faithfully giving as much of the artist's handiwork as possible, and as little of his own. That this must be to many a most galling and annoying position is evident. But to rebel against it is absurd, and for the engraver to tamper with an artist's original design is as unwarrantable as for an editor to change an author's ma.n.u.script after the final proof has left the writer's hands.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY WALTER CRANE. PROCESS BLOCK FROM A WOOD-ENGRAVING BY EDMUND EVANS, IN COLOURS IN "BEAUTY AND THE BEAST" (ROUTLEDGE).]

There have been two, or perhaps three, great periods of producing works of art on the block. First, that of the old woodcuts, which were undoubtedly great, though what the draughtsmen thought of them we shall never really know. Secondly, the period of Bewick, who engraved his own designs, and therefore was his own master, doing what he wanted. And thirdly, to-day, the greatest revival of all. Mr. Timothy Cole, in his interpretations of the old masters (though some of the painters whom he has reproduced might object to certain things in his reproductions, they could but admit that never before have such beautiful pictures been made out of their own), has suggested one field for the artist who is a wood-engraver; the creation of masterpieces in his own medium of the painted masterpieces of other, or of his own time. Again, we have a man like Mr. Elbridge Kingsley working directly from nature, and producing the most amazing and interesting results; or M. Lepere, who is engraving his own designs exactly as Bewick did, or else giving us those marvellous originals in colour, only equalled by the j.a.panese who, for ages, have been masters among wood-cutters; or Mr. Kreull, who is doing marvellous portraits on the block.

With so broad a scope at its service in the hands of artists, wood-engraving is not in the slightest danger. With the added possibilities of making new experiments, such as printing from lowered blocks, reviving chiaroscuro, and an infinitude of other processes open to the artistic wood-engraver, there is no probability of its becoming a lost art. I have nothing but the highest praise for the work of men like Cole, Kingsley, Gamm, French Jungling, Baude, Kreull, Florian, Hendriksen, Bork, Hooper, and Bis...o...b.. Gardner. This modern _facsimile_ wood-engraving is magnificent in its way, and is quite as legitimate and decorative as any of the old work, only process is bound to supersede the greater part of it. Wood-engraving has survived the mediaeval mechanical limitations which were imposed upon it by the primitiveness of the printing-press, but which have been made into its chief merits.

It has survived the ghastly period immediately succeeding Bewick, when the sole end of the engravers on wood was to imitate the engraver on steel or on copper. It has survived the stage of the shop run by a clever business-man who merged the individuality of all his artists and engravers into that of his own firm. It has survived the backing of Mr.

Linton, which at one time threatened to kill it entirely. And the strain put upon it by magazine-editors and book-publishers has been relieved by the intervention of mechanical process.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY KATE GREENAWAY. KEY BLOCK WOOD-ENGRAVED BY EDMUND EVANS FOR COLOUR PRINTING. FROM "MOTHER GOOSE" (ROUTLEDGE).]

I believe that it will continue and flourish as an original art, side by side with process, until it runs against another of the snags or quicksands which every half century seem to imperil it. Still, at the present moment, its artistic outlook is very bright,--so also is that of process.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DETAIL OF "THE DENTATUS" ENGRAVED ON WOOD BY HARVEY, AFTER HAYDON.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY E. ISABEY. FROM "PAUL AND VIRGINIA." Engraved by Slader.]

CHAPTER III.

FRENCH ILl.u.s.tRATION.

The nearer we approach our own time, the more difficult it becomes to write of ill.u.s.tration. For, although it is the duty of an editor, and even of an artist, to note all that is going on around him, at the present time this is almost impossible, so great is the output from the press, so varying are the fortunes of many artists. The man who, one day, promises to revolutionize all ill.u.s.tration, the next, disappears, or, worse still, becomes absolutely common-place. And process supersedes process with a rapidity that is perfectly bewildering.

But it seems best to begin with modern ill.u.s.tration in France, where the greatest activity has, until lately, existed. In the decade from 1875 to 1885, nowhere in the world were such big men working, or having their work so well reproduced. Fortuny and Rico, settled in Paris, were exhibiting their marvellous drawings. If Meissonier had ceased to ill.u.s.trate, Dore, Detaille, De Neuville, and Jacquemart were at the height of their powers. The first great book ill.u.s.trated by process appeared in the midst of this period: Vierge's "Pablo de Segovie,"

published in 1882; while the last years saw the appearance of the Guillaume series which, it was believed, would prove to be the final triumph of process. At the same time Baude, Leveille, Lepere, and Florian were busy producing their masterpieces of wood-engraving.

Publishing houses were issuing the most artistic journals, probably, the world has ever seen: "La Vie Moderne," "L'Art," "La Gazette des Beaux-arts," "Paris Ill.u.s.tre," "La Revue Ill.u.s.tree," "Le Monde Ill.u.s.tre," "L'Ill.u.s.tration," and "Le Courrier Francais."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY GAVARNI. FROM "PARISIANS BY THEMSELVES."

Reduced from the wood-engraving.]

But from 1885 onward, there has been a change, and this change is not difficult to account for. There are too many ill.u.s.trators and too few publishers--I mean publishers worthy of the name--and, most important, too few real artists.