Modern Illustration Part 5

CHAPTER IV.

ILl.u.s.tRATION IN GERMANY, SPAIN, AND OTHER COUNTRIES.

In writing upon drawing on the Continent, I have heretofore found it only necessary to cla.s.sify ill.u.s.trators under three nationalities. In discussing ill.u.s.tration it seems to me that this question of nationality can be even further simplified. Italy and Spain have not produced a single original ill.u.s.trated book of real importance. Although several of the foremost ill.u.s.trators of the day were born in one or the other of these countries and partially educated there, they have left their native land as quickly as possible, for France or for Germany.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY MARTIN RICO. FROM A PEN DRAWING.]

In Italy the important publishing house of the Fratelli Treves, in Milan, has made many attempts to bring out fine books, the works of de Amicis being among their best-known productions, but this importance comes from their literary rather than artistic side; and I am not aware that the Fratelli Treves have ever done anything to surpa.s.s the "C'era una Volta" of Luigi Capuana, ill.u.s.trated by Montalti, published in 1885, a most extraordinary example of the skilful use of _papier Gillot_, or scratch paper. The Fratelli Treves issue a large number of magazines and papers, a certain amount of good newsy wood-engraving is seen in these, process having been almost entirely given up, especially in the leading ill.u.s.trated Italian weekly, "L'Ill.u.s.trazion Italiana." In Spain I know of no notable ill.u.s.trated books published of late. I may be labouring under a mistake, but I must frankly admit that I have never heard of, or seen any.[19] If they do exist I should be only too glad to have them brought to my notice. But there are two very good ill.u.s.trated papers, "Ill.u.s.tracion Espanola y Americana" and "Ill.u.s.tracion Artistica." To both, Fortuny, Rico, Vierge, and Casanova--especially Rico--have contributed important drawings. These journals are now almost entirely using wood-engravings, some of which are very good indeed. They are mainly, however, reproductions of the typical Spanish historical, or story-telling, machine which is turned out with such facility by a large number of Spaniards. But the bulk of the work is made up of _cliches_ from American papers and magazines, in which matter I find that even I have proved a useful mine.

[19] See note p. 78.

Dutch books are not remarkable. Here and there a good drawing may be found in a magazine called "Elsevir." Though in Holland there is an artist, H. J. Icke, who, in his studies from the old masters in pen and ink, evinces a power and brilliancy only equalled by reproductive etchers like Mr. Hole, Mr. Macbeth, or Mr. Short. The same is true of Belgium. Austria and Hungary have little to show, their ill.u.s.trators, like Myrbach, Marold, and Vogel, coming to Paris, or sending their work to Munich, for the publishers mainly ignore their own artists, and either send abroad for their designs, or borrow and adapt from other men's work with a recklessness which is charming. And yet, the only international black-and-white exhibition was held in Vienna a few years ago; while one of the best photo-engraving firms in the world, Messrs.

Anderer and Goschl, are located there. Russia and Scandinavia are equally unfortunate in the matter of ill.u.s.trated books, all of the artists of these countries being in Paris, London, or New York, and their work only finds its way back to their native countries as _cliches_. Men like Chelminski, Edelfelt, Repine, Pranishnikoff really owe all their reputation, not to their native land, but to the country of their adoption.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FROM AN ORIGINAL PEN DRAWING BY H. TEGNER.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PEN DRAWING. BY HANS TEGNER. FROM "HOLBERG'S COMEDIES"

(BOJESENS).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY ADOLPH MENZEL. PROCESS BLOCK FROM ORIGINAL DRAWING IN THE POSSESSION OF THE AUTHOR.]

There is, however, one little country that deserves more than a word of mention, and this is Denmark. For it can boast an ill.u.s.trator of individuality and character, Hans Tegner. His drawings for the jubilee edition of "Holberg's Comedies," published in Copenhagen in 1884 to 1888, must be ranked as masterpieces of graphic art. Though evidently based on the style of Menzel and Meissonier, they are quite individual; especially in the rendering of interiors crowded with people he has surpa.s.sed any living ill.u.s.trator. This book is also interesting from the fact that while it was being produced the change was made from _facsimile_ wood-engraving to process, and though the engraving of Hendricksen and Bork is excellent, the process blocks in some ways are even more interesting. The decorations to these volumes, head and tail-pieces, are as atrociously bad as Tegner's ill.u.s.trations in the text are good. There are also a number of lesser artists, Danes and Norwegians, who have done good work, but to name them would merely be to make a catalogue, as their work is never seen here.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY GOYA. FROM "CAPRICES."]

During the last three-quarters of a century German ill.u.s.tration has been absolutely dominated by Menzel. Not only has he been the leading spirit in his own country, whether he was influenced originally by Meissonier or not, but he has himself influenced the entire world of ill.u.s.trators, his drawings having been received with rapture and applause by artists wherever they have been shown. And, most interesting of all, he is a man who has been perfectly able, throughout his long life, to adapt himself to the various radical changes and developments which have been brought about in reproduction and printing. Commencing with lithography, he produced the amazing series of drawings of the uniforms of Frederick the Great. Next, taking up drawing on wood, he introduced exquisite _facsimile_ work into his own country, educating his own engravers, Unzelmann, Bentworth and the Vogels, in his edition of the "Works of Frederick the Great." Later on he drew much more largely and boldly for the "Cruche Ca.s.see," which was freely interpreted on wood. And now he has so arranged his beautiful drawings in pencil and chalk that they come perfectly by process. He is a man who recognizes fully that we have not got to the end of art, but that unless we are ever pushing onward, and striving for improvements, we may very easily get to the end of ourselves. He looks backward for nothing but design; he looks forward to the perfection of everything.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY GOYA. FROM AN ORIGINAL DRAWING (A PORTRAIT OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON) IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY FORTUNY. FROM A PEN DRAWING.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY JOSEPH SATTLER. FROM "THE DANCE OF DEATH" (GREVEL).]

Following Menzel, and encouraged by "Fliegende Blatter," which started in the early forties, came Wilhelm Dietz, whose studies of armies on the march, and of peasants at work or at play, are inimitable. He, too, has been followed by Robert Haug and Hermann Luders. Dietz was the mainstay for years of "Fliegende Blatter," the only weekly comic paper of which it can be said, that during the half century of its existence it has been not only at the head of its contemporaries, but has on the artistic side left far behind any pretended rival.

Germany has for the last half century, too, possessed a remarkable school of interpretative wood-engravers: men who have been able to take a large picture, which they have either drawn on the wood themselves or had drawn for them, and produce out of it an excellent rendering, which would print perfectly in black and white, under the rapid requirements of a steam-press. The work of these engravers can be seen any week in the "Ill.u.s.trirte Zeitung," "Uber Land und Meer," and the other weeklies.

Wood-engraving has been treated as a serious profession for years in Germany, as a Professorship of the art was held in the Berlin Academy before the beginning of this century by J. F. G. Unger, who died in 1804. Even in Vienna, a Professorship has been established for many years. The trouble with German wood-engravers, however, has been that most of the work, though signed by the name of one man, is produced really by another. From one of these engraving shops, that of Braun and Schneider, issued a year after its establishment "Fliegende Blatter," in 1844. Save for Menzel, most of the work in the middle of the century was of that heavy, pompous, ponderous sort which we call German, and, though good in its way, is now well forgotten. The best-known of all these shops was that of Richard Brend'amour, who since 1856 has been established in Dusseldorf, though he has branches--an artist with branches!--in Berlin, Leipzig, Stuttgart, Munich, and Brunswick. Still, as he seems to have been able to get an extremely good set of apprentices and workmen, who were the real artists, a great amount of very interesting work has been turned out, and _cliches_ from his excellent blocks have been used all over the world.

One sort of decorative design, developed by a German, or, I presume, a Pole, Paul Konewka, though his work, was, I believe, first published in Copenhagen, is the silhouette; Konewka has had imitators everywhere, but none of them have surpa.s.sed him. His edition of "Faust" is one of the best-known examples. Retche's outline drawings for Shakespeare are also good.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY DE NITTIS. PEN DRAWING FROM "PARIS ILl.u.s.tRe."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY W. BUSCH. FROM "BALDUIN BAHLAMM" (MUNICH, Ba.s.sERMANN).]

Following the cla.s.sical tradition of Overbeck and Kaulbach, but changing it rather into mysticism and decadence through the influence of Bocklin, and probably the pre-Raphaelites in England, has been developed a school of mystical decorators who are unequalled, unappreciated and curiously unknown outside of their own country. The chief of these men is Max Klinger. Like his master, Bocklin, and like Schwabe in France, he brings both his mysticism and his drawing up to date, and makes no attempt to bolster up faulty design and incomplete technique by primitiveness, or quaintness, or archaism. For his ill.u.s.trations Klinger usually makes an elaborate series of pen drawings, and then etches from these. The only example which I know of in England available for study is a copy of the Apuleius which is in South Kensington, and this is not by any means one of his most successful books, as the etchings are hard and tight, and the inharmonious decorations which surround the small prints in the text are crude and unsatisfactory. To know Klinger's work one must visit the Print Rooms in the Museums of Berlin and Dresden.

Another group have devoted themselves to lithography. H. Thoma in this has been probably the most successful, but in the exhibition held this year in Vienna he was closely followed by Otto Greiner, W. Steinhausen, and Max Dasio. Their work may be seen in "Neue Lithographem," by Max Lehers, published in Vienna. Whether there are two or three men of the name of Franz Stuck who draw, or whether it is the same Franz Stuck who produces the mystic arrangements and the burlesques of them, the decorative vignettes and the absurd caricatures in "Fliegende Blatter,"

I do not know. I only do know that it is all very well worth study, and very amusing and interesting.

Busch and Oberlander, Meggendorfer, and Hengler, are names so well known that their mere mention raises a laugh, and that, if anything, is the mission of those artists: while Harburger's and Aller's marvellous studies of character, and Rene Reinecke's exquisite renderings in wash of fashionable life, marvellously engraved by Stroebel, can be seen every week printed in the pages of "Fliegende Blatter" and other papers. The works of Hacklander, published in Stuttgart, have been ill.u.s.trated mainly by process by that clever band of artists of whom Schlittgen, Albrecht, Marold, Vogel, and others are so much in evidence.

The German monthly magazines, like "Daheim," "Kunst fur Alle," "Felz und Meer," "Die Graphischen Kunste," etc., are very notable, especially "Kunst fur Alle," which seems to me to be about the best-conducted art magazine in the world. Altogether the arts of ill.u.s.tration and reproduction, and the business of publishing, in Germany are apparently in a most healthy condition. It could scarcely be otherwise, however, when we consider that one of the greatest ill.u.s.trators in the world is still alive and at work there, as well as the most curious mystics, the most amusing comic draughtsmen, and the most conscientious and clever realists.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FROM ETCHING BY GOYA. FROM "CAPRICES."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DEATH THE FRIEND. LINE DRAWING BY RETHEL.

REDUCED FROM A WOOD-ENGRAVING BY H. BURKNER.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY H. SCHLITTGEN. FROM "EIN ERSTER UND EIN LETZTER BALL"

(STUTTGART, KRABBE).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY MAROLD. FROM "ZWISCHEN ZWEI REGEN" (STUTTGART, KRABBE).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY FRANZ STuCK. FROM BIERBAUM'S "FRANZ STuCK," MUNICH (ALBERT AND CO.).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY GARCIA Y RAMOS. GIPSY DANCE. Process block, from pen and wash drawing.]

_Note._--A recent visit to Spain shows me to be quite mistaken in this matter. A very fine book has lately been published in Barcelona by a Seville artist, F. Garcia y Ramos, "La Tierra di Maria Santissima," and though Senor Garcia y Ramos is greatly indebted to Fortuny, Rico and Vierge, he has made a very notable series of designs; he has also contributed several drawings to a comparatively new Spanish paper,--"Blanco y Negro"--which has printed very good work by a group of young men in Madrid, the most distinguished of whom is Senor Huertas. Another artist on the staff is Jiminez Lucena; he is realistically decorative. The most popular man in Spain, after the artists of "La Lidia"

(the organ of the Bull Ring), is Angel Pons, who, however, is but an echo of Caran d'Ache. "La Lidia" is ill.u.s.trated entirely by lithography and in colour; the designs, often full of go and life, are the work of D. Perea. I find, too, that the French work of 1830 was seen and known in Spain, that some books were produced in the style of "Paul and Virginia," with drawings by Spaniards, though I imagine they were all engraved either in Paris, or by French engravers who went to Spain. The work, however, is but a reminiscence of the French, and simply curious as showing the power of the Romanticists, but more especially of Meissonier as an ill.u.s.trator. The most interesting of these books is "Spanish Scenes," ill.u.s.trated by Lameyer, engraved by G. Fernandez, rather in the manner of Gavarni. But there is one Spaniard who as an ill.u.s.trator is unknown, at least to artists--for he only produced one set of designs for publication--but who is universally known in almost every other branch of art, F.

Goya. The only widely published and generally circulated publications, the bank-notes of Spain, are the work of this artist, and they reflect little credit on him. His etchings are to be found in all great galleries; but, interesting as they are, they give no idea of the amazing drawings in chalk, wash, and ink, in which mediums they were produced. Even in Madrid the originals are but little known; the greater number are in the Library of the Prado, the National Museum, inaccessible to the ordinary visitor: but a small selection, undescribed, and not even in the catalogue, are placed upon a revolving screen in the Room of Drawings; but as this is almost always closed, most people leave Madrid without even being aware of the existence of the greatest treasures possessed by the museum after the Velasquez. On this screen are the designs for the bull-fights, admirably described by T. Gautier, in his "Voyage en Espagne," from the literary artist's point of view, but from the artistic stand-point, they are quite the most uninteresting of all, and do not in the slightest express the great pa.s.sion Goya is said to have always shown for the n.o.blest sport in the world.

It is rather to the exquisite designs in red chalk for the "Scenes of Invasion," that one sees him at his best. Here he is the direct descendant of Callot, only there is a power in his work that Callot never possessed. It is, I am now certain, from these designs that Vierge obtained many of his ideas--although they are worked out in an entirely different fashion. The drawings for the "Caprices" are in pen and wash, and are as much finer than the aquatints made from them, as the aquatints are superior to the caricatures of any of his contemporaries. As Goya pa.s.sed, an exile, the latter part of his life in France, his work must have been known to the men of 1830. He died in 1828, just as the few lithographs he has left show that he was aware of the work of Delacroix in that newly invented art.

Still, Goya cannot be called an ill.u.s.trator, for none of his work was published as ill.u.s.tration; yet, at the same time, it is so well adapted to that end that it is perfectly incomprehensible that these drawings have not only never been published, but I am informed they have never even been photographed. The two that are in this book are from the "Caprices," those of the "Invasion" are too delicate to stand the necessary reduction. The portrait of Wellington in red chalk is in the British Museum.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY W. L. WYLLIE, A.R.A. PEN DRAWING FROM "THE MAGAZINE OF ART."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY J. W. NORTH. FROM A DRAWING ON THE WOOD IN THE POSSESSION OF THE AUTHOR.]

CHAPTER V.

ENGLISH ILl.u.s.tRATION.

It is in England alone, that ill.u.s.tration, like many other things, has been taken seriously. Ponderous volumes have been written about it, as well as clever essays. It seemed at first sight rather unnecessary to repeat what has been said so well by Mr. Austin Dobson, for example, in his chapter on modern ill.u.s.trated books in Mr. Lang's "Library,"

especially as he has added a postscript to the edition of 1892 which is supposed to bring his essay up to that date. But there are other ways of looking at the matter, and I have tried not to repeat what Mr. Dobson has said, nor yet to trench upon the preserves of Mr. C. G. Harper and Mr. Hamerton, or Mr. Blackburn.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY HUGH THOMSON. FROM "OUR VILLAGE" (MACMILLAN).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY RANDOLPH CALDECOTT. FROM "THE ELEGY ON A MAD DOG"

(ROUTLEDGE).]

It appears to me, that before discussing the English ill.u.s.trators of to-day, it might be well to take a glance at the state of English ill.u.s.tration. English ill.u.s.tration has during the last twenty years suffered tremendously from over-writing and indiscriminate praise and blame. I suppose that among artists and people of any artistic appreciation, it is generally admitted by this time that the greatest bulk of the works of "Phiz," Cruikshank, Doyle, and even many of Leech's designs are simply rubbish, and that the reputation of these men was made by critics whose names and works are absolutely forgotten, or else, by Thackeray, d.i.c.kens, and Tom Taylor, whose books they ill.u.s.trated, and who had absolutely no intelligent knowledge of art, their one idea being to log-roll their friends and ill.u.s.trators. It is true, however, that some of Doyle's designs, like those in "Brown, Jones, and Robinson," were extremely amusing, though too often his rendering of character was brutal, as, for example, in the "Dinner at Greenwich" in the "Cornhill" Series. Technically, there is little to study, even in his most successful drawings. Leech's fund of humour was no doubt inexhaustible, but one cannot help feeling to-day that his work cannot for a moment be compared to that of Charles Keene. Some of his best-known designs, the man in a hot bath for instance, praised by Mr.

Dobson may be amusing, but the subject is quite as horrible as a Middle Age purgatory. Leech was the successor in this work of Gillray and Rowlandson, and though his designs appealed very strongly to the last generation, they do not equal those of Randolph Caldecott, done in much the same sort of way. Though some of the editions containing the engravings from these men's drawings sell for fabulous prices, on account of their rarity, one may purchase to-day for almost the price of old paper, lovely little engravings after Birket Foster, and the other followers of the Turner school; while drawings after Sir John Gilbert, and later, Whistler, Sandys, Boyd Houghton, Keene, Du Maurier, Small, Shields, and the other men who made "Once a Week," "Good Words," and the "Shilling Magazine," really the most important art journals England has ever seen, can be picked up in many old book-shops for comparatively nothing. Of the best period of English ill.u.s.tration there are but few of the really good books that cannot be purchased for, at the present time, less than their original price. And only the works of one painter who did ill.u.s.trate to any extent, Rossetti, command an appreciable value. For this, the fortunate possessors of his drawings have to thank Mr. Ruskin, who, himself, is by no means a poor ill.u.s.trator. Some of his work in "Modern Painters," "Stones of Venice," "Examples of Venetian Architecture," is excellent, while his original drawings at Oxford are worth the most careful study. Many of Rossetti's designs are, it is true, very beautiful, and probably others were; one can see that from, the few which were never engraved. But the bulk of his drawings are certainly not so good as those which several people working in London are producing to-day.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BY TURNER. FROM ROGERS' "ITALY," 1830.]