Of The Decorative Illustration Of Books Old And New Part 6

It has already been pointed out how a copper-plate, requiring a different process of printing, and exhibiting as a necessary consequence such different qualities of line and effect, cannot harmonize with type and the conditions of the surface-printed page, since it is not in any mechanical relation with them. This mechanical relation is really the key to all good and therefore organic design; and therefore it is that design was in sounder condition when mechanical conditions and relations were simpler. A new invention often has a dislocating effect upon design. A new element is introduced, valued for some particular facility or effect, and it is often adopted without considering how--like a new element in a chemical combination--it alters the relations all round.

Copper-plate engraving was presumably adopted as a method for book-ill.u.s.tration for its greater fineness and precision of line, and its greater command of complexity in detail and chiaroscuro, for its purely pictorial qualities, in short, and its adoption corresponded to the period of the ascendancy of the painter above other kind of artists.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GERMAN SCHOOL. LATE XVITH CENTURY.

VIRGIL SOLIS, BIBLE. (FRANKFORT, SIGM. FEYRABEND, 1563.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: VENETIAN SCHOOL. LATE XVITH CENTURY.

ARTIST UNKNOWN. (VENICE, G. GIOLITO, 1562.)]

As regards the books of the seventeenth century, while "of making many books there was no end," and however interesting for other than artistic reasons, but few would concern our immediate purpose. Woodcuts, headings, initials, tail-pieces, and printers' ornaments continued to be used, but greatly inferior in design and beauty of effect to those of the sixteenth century. The copper-plates introduced are quite apart from the page ornaments, and can hardly be considered decorative, although in the pompous t.i.tle-pages of books of this period they are frequently formal and architectural enough, and, as a rule, founded more or less upon the ancient arches of triumph of Imperial Rome.

Histories and philosophical works, especially towards the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, were embellished with pompous portraits in frames of more or less cla.s.sical joinery, with shields of arms, the worse for the decorative decline of heraldry, underneath. The specimen given is a good one of its type from a Venetian book of 1562, and gives the earlier form of this kind of treatment.

Travels and topographical works increased, until by the middle of the eighteenth century we have them on the scale of Piranesi's scenic views of the architecture of ancient Rome.

The love of picturesqueness and natural scenery, or, perhaps, landscape gardening, gradually developing, concentrated interest on qualities the ant.i.thesis of constructive and inventive design, and drew the attention more and more away from them, until the painter, pure and simple, took all the artistic honours, and the days of the foundation of academies only confirmed and fixed the idea of art in this restricted sense in the public mind.

[Sidenote: HOGARTH.]

Hogarth, who availed himself of the copper-plate and publication in book form of his pictures, was yet wholly pictorial in his sympathies, and his instincts were dramatic and satiric rather than decorative. Able painter and designer as he was in his own way, the interest of his work is entirely on that side, and is rather valuable as ill.u.s.trating the life and manners of his time than as furnishing examples of book ill.u.s.tration, and his work certainly has no decorative aim, although no doubt quite harmonious in an eighteenth century room.

[Sidenote: STOTHARD.]

Chodowiecki, who did a vast quant.i.ty of steel frontispieces and ill.u.s.trations for books on a small scale, with plenty of character, must also be regarded rather as a maker of pictures for books than as a book decorator. He is sometimes mentioned as kindred in style to Stothard, but Stothard was much more of an idealist, and had, too, a very graceful decorative sense from the cla.s.sical point of view. His book designs are very numerous, chiefly engraved on steel, and always showing a very graceful sense of line and composition. His designs to Rogers' "Poems,"

and "Italy," are well-known, and, in their earlier woodcut form, his groups of Amorini are very charming.

Flaxman had a high sense of sculpturesque style and simplicity, and great feeling and grace as a designer, but he can hardly be reckoned as a book decorator. His well-known series to Homer, Hesiod, aeschylus, and Dante are strictly distinct series of ill.u.s.trative designs, to be taken by themselves without reference to their incorporation in, or relation to, a printed book. Their own lettering and explanatory text is engraved on the same plate beneath them, and so far they are consistent, but are not in any sense examples of page treatment or s.p.a.cing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: XIXTH CENTURY. WILLIAM BLAKE.

"SONGS OF INNOCENCE," 1789.]

[Sidenote: WILLIAM BLAKE.]

We now come to a designer of a very different type, a type, too, of a new epoch, whatever resemblance in style and method there may be in his work to that of his contemporaries. William Blake is distinct, and stands alone. A poet and a seer, as well as a designer, in him seemed to awake something of the spirit of the old illuminator. He was not content to ill.u.s.trate a book by isolated copper or steel plates apart from the text, although in his craft as engraver he constantly carried out the work of others. When he came to embody his own thoughts and dreams, he recurred quite spontaneously to the methods of the maker of the MS. books. He became his own calligrapher, illuminator and miniaturist, while availing himself of the copper-plate (which he turned into a surface printing block) and the printing press for the reproduction of his designs, and in some cases for producing them in tints. His hand-coloured drawings, the borderings and devices to his own poems, will always be things by themselves.

His treatment of the resources of black and white, and sense of page decoration, may be best judged perhaps by a reference to his "Book of Job," which contains a fine series of suggestive and imaginative designs.

We seem to read in Blake something of the spirit of the Mediaeval designers, through the sometimes mannered and semi-cla.s.sic forms and treatment, according to the taste of his time; while he embodies its more daring aspiring thoughts, and the desire for simpler and more humane conditions of life. A revolutionary fire and fervour constantly breaks out both in his verse and in his designs, which show very various moods and impulses, and comprehend a wide range of power and sympathy.

Sometimes mystic and prophetic, sometimes tragic, sometimes simple and pastoral.

Blake, in these mixed elements, and the extraordinary suggestiveness of his work and the freedom of his thought, seems nearer to us than others of his contemporaries. In his sense of the decorative treatment of the page, too, his work bears upon our purpose. In writing with his own hand and in his own character the text of his poems, he gained the great advantage which has been spoken of--of harmony between text and ill.u.s.tration. They become a harmonious whole, in complete relation. His woodcuts to Phillip's "Pastoral," though perhaps rough in themselves, show what a sense of colour he could convey, and of the effective use of white line.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

WILLIAM BLAKE.

WOODCUT FROM PHILLIP'S "PASTORAL."]

[Sidenote: EDWARD CALVERT.]

Among the later friends and disciples of Blake, a kindred spirit must have been Edward Calvert, whose book ill.u.s.trations are also decorations; the ma.s.ses of black and white being effectively distributed, and they are full of poetic feeling, imagination, and sense of colour. I am indebted for the first knowledge of them to Mr. William Blake Richmond, whose father, Mr. George Richmond, was a friend of William Blake and Calvert, as well as of John Linnell and of Samuel Palmer, who carried on the traditions of this English poetic school to our own times; especially the latter, whose imaginative drawings--glowing sunsets over remote hill-tops, romantic landscapes, and pastoral sentiment--were marked features in the room of the Old Water Colour Society, up to his death in 1881. His etched ill.u.s.trations to his edition of "The Eclogues of Virgil," are a fine series of beautifully designed and poetically conceived landscapes; but they are strictly a series of pictures printed separately from the text. Palmer himself, in the account of the work given by his son, when he was planning the work, wished that William Blake had been alive to have designed his woodcut headings to the "Eclogues."[3]

[3] A memoir of Edward Calvert has since been published by his son, fully ill.u.s.trated, and giving the little engravings just spoken of. They were engraved by Calvert himself, it appears, and I am indebted to his son, Mr. John Calvert, for permission to print them here.

[Sidenote: THOMAS BEWICK.]

To Thomas Bewick and his school is due the revival of wood-engraving as an art, and its adaptation to book ill.u.s.tration, quite distinct, of course, from the old knife-work on the plank. Bewick had none of the imaginative poetry of the designers just named, although plenty of humour and satire, which he compressed into his little tail-pieces. He shows his skill as a craftsman in the treatment of the wood block, in such works as his "British Birds;" but here, although the wood-engraving and type may be said to be in mechanical relation, there is no sense of decorative beauty or ornamental s.p.a.cing whatever, and, as drawings, the engravings have none of the designer's power such as we found in the ill.u.s.trations of Gesner and Matthiolus at Basle, in the middle of the sixteenth century. There is a very literal and plain presentment of facts as regards the bird and its plumage, but with scarcely more than the taste of the average stuffer and mounter in the composition of the picture, and no regard whatever to the design of the page as a whole.

[Ill.u.s.tration: XIXTH CENTURY. EDWARD CALVERT.

THE RETURN HOME.

THE FLOOD.

THE CHAMBER IDYLL.

FROM THE ORIGINAL BLOCKS DESIGNED AND ENGRAVED ON WOOD BY EDWARD CALVERT.

BRIXTON, 1827-8-9.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: XIXTH CENTURY. EDWARD CALVERT.

THE LADY AND THE ROOKS.

IDEAL PASTORAL LIFE.

THE BROOK.

FROM THE BLOCKS DESIGNED AND ENGRAVED ON WOOD BY EDWARD CALVERT. BRIXTON, 1827-8-9.]

It was, however, a great point to have a.s.serted the claims of wood-engraving, and demonstrated its capabilities as a method of book ill.u.s.tration.

[Sidenote: THE SCHOOL OF BEWICK.]

Bewick founded a school of very excellent craftsmen, who carried the art to a wonderful degree of finish. In both his and their hands it became quite distinct from literal translation of the drawing, which, unless in line, was treated by the engraver with a line, touch, and quality all his own, the use of white line,[4] and the rendering of tone and tint necessitating a certain power of design on his part, and giving him as important a position as the engraver on steel held in regard to the translation of a painted picture.

[4] A striking instance of the use of white line is seen in the t.i.tle page "Pomerium de Tempore," printed by Johann Otmar, Augsburg, as early as 1502. It is possible, however, that this is a metal engraving. It is given overleaf.

Such a book as Northcote's "Fables," published 1828-29, each fable having a head-piece drawn on wood from Northcote's design by William Harvey--a well-known graceful designer and copious ill.u.s.trator of books up to comparatively recent times--and with initial letters and tail-pieces of his own, shows the outcome of the Bewick school. Finally "fineness of line, tone, and finish--a misused word," as Mr. W. J. Linton says, "was preferred to the simple charm of truth." The wood engravers appeared to be anxious to vie with the steel engravers in the adornment of books, and so far as adaptation was concerned, they had certainly all the advantage on their side. The ornamental sense, however, had everywhere declined; pictorial qualities, fineness of line, and delicacy of tone, were sought after almost exclusively.

[Sidenote: STOTHARD AND TURNER.]

Such books as Rogers's "Poems" and "Italy," with vignettes on steel from Thomas Stothard and J. M. W. Turner, are characteristic of the taste of the period, and show about the high-water mark of the skill of the book engravers on steel. Stothard's designs are the only ones which have claims to be decorative, and he is always a graceful designer. Turner's landscapes, exquisite in themselves, and engraved with marvellous delicacy, do not in any sense decorate the page, and from that point of view are merely shapeless blots of printers' ink of different tones upon it, while the letterpress bears no relation whatever to the picture in method of printing or design, and has no independent beauty of its own.

Book ill.u.s.trations of this type--and it was a type which largely prevailed during the second quarter of the century--are simply pictures without frames.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

JOHANN OTMAR. (AUGSBURG, 1502.)]