preaching of untruth is one of the chief; and it is curious to find his
biographer, knowing this, and reasoning, as German critics nearly always
do, from acquired knowledge, not perception, imagine instantly that he
sees hypocrisy in the face of Holbein's preacher. "How skillfully,"
says Dr. Woltmann, "is the preacher propounding his doctrines; how
thoroughly is his hypocrisy expressed in the features of his
countenance, and in the gestures of his hands." But look at the cut
yourself, candidly. I challenge you to find the slightest trace of
hypocrisy in either feature or gesture. Holbein knew better. It is not
the hypocrite who has power in the pulpit. It is the _sincere_ preacher
of untruth who does mischief there. The hypocrite's place of power is in
trade, or in general society; none but the sincere ever get fatal
influence in the pulpit. This man is a refined gentleman--ascetic,
earnest, thoughtful, and kind. He scarcely uses the vantage even of his
pulpit,--comes aside out of it, as an eager man would, pleading; he is
intent on being understood--_is_ understood; his congregation are
delighted--you might hear a pin drop among them: one is asleep indeed,
who cannot see him, (being under the pulpit,) and asleep just because
the teacher is as gentle as he is earnest, and speaks quietly.
88. How are we to know, then, that he speaks in vain? First, because
among all his hearers you will not find one shrewd face. They are all
either simple or stupid people: there is one nice woman in front of all,
(else Holbein's representation had been caricature,) but she is not a
shrewd one.
Secondly, by the light and shade. The church is not in extreme
darkness--far from that; a gray twilight is over everything, but the sun
is totally shut out of it;--not a ray comes in even at the
window--_that_ is darker than the walls, or vault.
Lastly, and chiefly, by the mocking expression of Death. Mocking, but
not angry. The man has been preaching what he thought true. Death laughs
at him, but is not indignant with him.
Death comes quietly: _I_ am going to be preacher now; here is your own
hour-glass, ready for me. You have spoken many words in your day. But
"of the things which you have spoken, _this_ is the sum,"--your
death-warrant, signed and sealed. There's your text for to-day.
89. Of this other picture, the meaning is more plain, and far more
beautiful. The husbandman is old and gaunt, and has passed his days, not
in speaking, but pressing the iron into the ground. And the payment for
his life's work is, that he is clothed in rags, and his feet are bare on
the clods; and he has no hat--but the brim of a hat only, and his long,
unkempt gray hair comes through. But all the air is full of warmth and
of peace; and, beyond his village church, there is, at last, light
indeed. His horses lag in the furrow, and his own limbs totter and fail:
but one comes to help him. 'It is a long field,' says Death; 'but we'll
get to the end of it to-day,--you and I.'
90. And now that we know the meaning, we are able to discuss the
technical qualities farther.
Both of these engravings, you will find, are executed with blunt lines;
but more than that, they are executed with quiet lines, entirely steady.
Now, here I have in my hand a lively woodcut of the present day--a good
average type of the modern style of wood-cutting, which you will all
recognize.[R]
The shade in this is drawn on the wood, (not _cut_, but drawn, observe,)
at the rate of at least ten lines in a second: Holbein's, at the rate of
about one line in three seconds.[S]
91. Now there are two different matters to be considered with respect to
these two opposed methods of execution. The first, that the rapid work,
though easy to the artist, is very difficult to the wood-cutter; so that
it implies instantly a separation between the two crafts, and that your
wood-cutter has ceased to be a draughtsman. I shall return to this
point. I wish to insist on the other first; namely, the effect of the
more deliberate method on the drawing itself.
92. When the hand moves at the rate of ten lines in a second, it is
indeed under the government of the muscles of the wrist and shoulder;
but it cannot possibly be under the complete government of the brains. I
am able to do this zigzag line evenly, because I have got the use of the
hand from practice; and the faster it is done, the evener it will be.
But I have no mental authority over every line I thus lay: chance
regulates them. Whereas, when I draw at the rate of two or three seconds
to each line, my hand disobeys the muscles a little--the mechanical
accuracy is not so great; nay, there ceases to be any _appearance_ of
dexterity at all. But there is, in reality, more manual skill required
in the slow work than in the swift,--and all the while the hand is
thoroughly under the orders of the brains. Holbein deliberately
resolves, for every line, as it goes along, that it shall be so thick,
so far from the next,--that it shall begin here, and stop there. And he
is deliberately assigning the utmost quantity of meaning to it, that a
line will carry.
93. It is not fair, however, to compare common work of one age with the
best of another. Here is a woodcut of Tenniel's, which I think contains
as high qualities as it is possible to find in modern art.[T] I hold it
as beyond others fine, because there is not the slightest caricature in
it. No face, no attitude, is pushed beyond the degree of natural humor
they would have possessed in life; and in precision of momentary
expression, the drawing is equal to the art of any time, and shows power
which would, if regulated, be quite adequate to producing an immortal
work.
94. Why, then, is it _not_ immortal? You yourselves, in compliance with
whose demand it was done, forgot it the next week. It will become
historically interesting; but no man of true knowledge and feeling will
ever keep this in his cabinet of treasure, as he does these woodcuts of
Holbein's.
The reason is that this is base coin,--alloyed gold. There _is_ gold in
it, but also a quantity of brass and lead--willfully added--to make it
fit for the public. Holbein's is beaten gold, seven times tried in the
fire. Of which commonplace but useful metaphor the meaning here is,
first, that to catch the vulgar eye a quantity of,--so-called,--light
and shade is added by Tenniel. It is effective to an ignorant eye, and
is ingeniously disposed; but it is entirely conventional and false,
unendurable by any person who knows what chiaroscuro is.
Secondly, for one line that Holbein lays, Tenniel has a dozen. There
are, for instance, a hundred and fifty-seven lines in Sir Peter Teazle's
wig, without counting dots and slight cross-hatching;--but the entire
face and flowing hair of Holbein's preacher are done with forty-five
lines, all told.
95. Now observe what a different state of mind the two artists must be
in on such conditions;--one, never in a hurry, never doing anything that
he knows is wrong; never doing a line badly that he can do better; and
appealing only to the feelings of sensitive persons, and the judgment of
attentive ones. That is Holbein's habit of soul. What is the habit of
soul of every modern engraver? Always in a hurry; everywhere doing
things which he knows to be wrong--(Tenniel knows his light and shade to
be wrong as well as I do)--continually doing things badly which he was
able to do better; and appealing exclusively to the feelings of the
dull, and the judgment of the inattentive.
Do you suppose that is not enough to make the difference between mortal
and immortal art,--the original genius being supposed alike in both?[U]
96. Thus far of the state of the artist himself. I pass, next to the
relation between him and his subordinate, the wood-cutter.
The modern artist requires him to cut a hundred and fifty-seven lines in
the wig only,--the old artist requires him to cut forty-five for the
face, and long hair, altogether. The actual proportion is roughly, and
on the average, about one to twenty of cost in manual labor, ancient to
modern,--the twentieth part of the mechanical labor, to produce an
immortal instead of a perishable work,--the twentieth part of the labor;
and--which is the greatest difference of all--that twentieth part, at
once less mechanically difficult, and more mentally pleasant. Mr. Otley,
in his general History of Engraving, says, "The greatest difficulty in
wood engraving occurs in clearing out the minute quadrangular lights;"
and in any modern woodcut you will see that where the lines of the
drawing cross each other to produce shade, the white interstices are cut
out so neatly that there is no appearance of any jag or break in the
lines; they look exactly as if they had been drawn with a pen. It is
chiefly difficult to cut the pieces clearly out when the lines cross at
right angles; easier when they form oblique or diamond-shaped
interstices; but in any case some half-dozen cuts, and in square
crossings as many as twenty, are required to clear one interstice.
Therefore if I carelessly draw six strokes with my pen across other six,
I produce twenty-five interstices, each of which will need at least six,
perhaps twenty, careful touches of the burin to clear out.--Say ten for
an average; and I demand two hundred and fifty exquisitely precise
touches from my engraver, to render ten careless ones of mine.
97. Now I take up Punch, at his best. The whole of the left side of John
Bull's waistcoat--the shadow on his knee-breeches and great-coat--the
whole of the Lord Chancellor's gown, and of John Bull's and Sir Peter
Teazle's complexions, are worked with finished precision of
cross-hatching. These have indeed some purpose in their texture; but in
the most wanton and gratuitous way, the wall below the window is
cross-hatched too, and that not with a double, but a treble line (Fig.
4).
There are about thirty of these columns, with thirty-five interstices
each: approximately, 1,050--certainly not fewer--interstices to be
deliberately cut clear, to get that two inches square of shadow. Now
calculate--or think enough to feel the impossibility of calculating--the
number of woodcuts used daily for our popular prints, and how many men
are night and day cutting 1,050 square holes to the square inch, as the
occupation of their manly life. And Mrs. Beecher Stowe and the North
Americans fancy they have abolished slavery!
[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
98. The workman cannot have even the consolation of pride; for his task,
even in its finest accomplishment, is not really difficult,--only
tedious. When you have once got into the practice, it is as easy as
lying. To cut regular holes WITHOUT a purpose is easy enough; but to cut
_ir_regular holes WITH a purpose, that is difficult, forever;--no tricks
of tool or trade will give you power to do that.
The supposed difficulty--the thing which, at all events, it takes time
to learn, is to cut the interstices neat, and each like the other. But
is there any reason, do you suppose, for their being neat, and each like
the other? So far from it, they would be twenty times prettier if they
were irregular, and each different from the other. And an old
wood-cutter, instead of taking pride in cutting these interstices smooth
and alike, resolutely cuts them rough and irregular; taking care, at the
same time, never to have any more than are wanted, this being only one
part of the general system of intelligent manipulation, which made so
good an artist of the engraver that it is impossible to say of any
standard old woodcut, whether the draughtsman engraved it himself or
not. I should imagine, from the character and subtlety of the touch,
that every line of the Dance of Death had been engraved by Holbein; we
know it was not, and that there can be no certainty given by even the
finest pieces of wood execution of anything more than perfect harmony
between the designer and workman. And consider how much this harmony
demands in the latter. Not that the modern engraver is unintelligent in
applying his mechanical skill: very often he greatly improves the
drawing; but we never could mistake his hand for Holbein's.
99. The true merit, then, of wood execution, as regards this matter of
cross-hatching, is first that there be no more crossing than necessary;
secondly, that all the interstices be various, and rough. You may look
through the entire series of the Dance of Death without finding any
cross-hatching whatever, except in a few unimportant bits of background,
so rude as to need scarcely more than one touch to each interstice.
Albert Duerer crosses more definitely; but yet, in any fold of his
drapery, every white spot differs in size from every other, and the
arrangement of the whole is delightful, by the kind of variety which the
spots on a leopard have.
On the other hand, where either expression or form can be rendered by
the shape of the lights and darks, the old engraver becomes as careful
as in an ordinary ground he is careless.
The endeavor, with your own hand, and common pen and ink, to copy a
small piece of either of the two Holbein woodcuts (Figures 2 and 3) will
prove this to you better than any words.
100. I said that, had Tenniel been rightly trained, there might have
been the making of a Holbein, or nearly a Holbein, in him. I do not
know; but I can turn from his work to that of a man who was not trained
at all, and who was, without training, Holbein's equal.
Equal, in the sense that this brown stone, in my left hand, is the
equal, though not the likeness, of that in my right. They are both of
the same true and pure crystal; but the one is brown with iron, and
never touched by forming hand; the other has never been in rough
companionship, and has been exquisitely polished. So with these two men.
The one was the companion of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. His father was
so good an artist that you cannot always tell their drawings asunder.
But the other was a farmer's son; and learned his trade in the back
shops of Newcastle.
Yet the first book I asked you to get was his biography; and in this
frame are set together a drawing by Hans Holbein, and one by Thomas
Bewick. I know which is most scholarly; but I do _not_ know which is
best.
101. It is much to say for the self-taught Englishman;--yet do not
congratulate yourselves on his simplicity. I told you, a little while
since, that the English nobles had left the history of birds to be
written, and their spots to be drawn, by a printer's lad;--but I did not
tell you their farther loss in the fact that this printer's lad could
have written their own histories, and drawn their own spots, if they had
let him. But they had no history to be written; and were too closely
maculate to be portrayed;--white ground in most places altogether
obscured. Had there been Mores and Henrys to draw, Bewick could have
drawn them; and would have found his function. As it was, the nobles of
his day left him to draw the frogs, and pigs, and sparrows--of his day,
which seemed to him, in his solitude, the best types of its Nobility. No
sight or thought of beautiful things was ever granted him;--no heroic
creature, goddess-born--how much less any native Deity--ever shone upon
him. To his utterly English mind, the straw of the sty, and its
tenantry, were abiding truth;--the cloud of Olympus, and its tenantry, a
child's dream. He could draw a pig, but not an Aphrodite.
102. The three pieces of woodcut from his Fables (the two lower ones
enlarged) in the opposite plate, show his utmost strength and utmost
rudeness. I must endeavor to make you thoroughly understand both:--the
magnificent artistic power, the flawless virtue, veracity,
tenderness,--the infinite humor of the man; and yet the difference
between England and Florence, in the use they make of such gifts in
their children.
For the moment, however, I confine myself to the examination of
technical points; and we must follow our former conclusions a little
further.
[Illustration: I.
Things Celestial and Terrestrial, as apparent to the English Mind.]
103. Because our lines in wood must be thick, it becomes an extreme
virtue in wood engraving to economize lines,--not merely, as in all
other art, to save time and power, but because, our lines being
necessarily blunt, we must make up our minds to do with fewer, by many,
than are in the object. But is this necessarily a disadvantage?
_Absolutely_, an immense disadvantage,--a woodcut never can be so
beautiful or good a thing as a painting, or line engraving. But in its
own separate and useful way, an excellent thing, because, practiced
rightly, it exercises in the artist, and summons in you, the habit of
abstraction; that is to say, of deciding what are the essential points
in the things you see, and seizing these; a habit entirely necessary to
strong humanity; and so natural to all humanity, that it leads, in its
indolent and undisciplined states, to all the vulgar amateur's liking of
sketches better than pictures. The sketch seems to put the thing for him
into a concentrated and exciting form.
104. Observe, therefore, to guard you from this error, that a bad sketch
is good for nothing; and that nobody can make a good sketch unless they
generally are trying to finish with extreme care. But the abstraction of
the essential particulars in his subject by a line-master, has a
peculiar didactic value. For painting, when it is complete, leaves it
much to your own judgment what to look at; and, if you are a fool, you
look at the wrong thing;--but in a fine woodcut, the master says to you,
"You _shall_ look at this, or at nothing."
105. For example, here is a little tailpiece of Bewick's, to the fable
of the Frogs and the Stork.[V] He is, as I told you, as stout a reformer
as Holbein,[W] or Botticelli, or Luther, or Savonarola; and, as an
impartial reformer, hits right and left, at lower or upper classes, if
he sees them wrong. Most frequently, he strikes at vice, without
reference to class; but in this vignette he strikes definitely at the
degradation of the viler popular mind which is incapable of being
governed, because it cannot understand the nobleness of kingship. He
has written--better than written, engraved, sure to suffer no slip of
type--his legend under the drawing; so that we know his meaning:
"Set them up with a king, indeed!"
106. There is an audience of seven frogs, listening to a speaker, or
croaker, in the middle; and Bewick has set himself to show in all, but
especially in the speaker, essential frogginess of mind--the marsh
temper. He could not have done it half so well in painting as he has
done by the abstraction of wood-outline. The characteristic of a manly
mind, or body, is to be gentle in temper, and firm in constitution; the
contrary essence of a froggy mind and body is to be angular in temper,
and flabby in constitution. I have enlarged Bewick's orator-frog for
you, Plate I. c., and I think you will feel that he is entirely
expressed in those essential particulars.
This being perfectly good wood-cutting, notice especially its
deliberation. No scrawling or scratching, or cross-hatching, or '_free_'
work of any sort. Most deliberate laying down of solid lines and dots,
of which you cannot change one. The real difficulty of wood engraving is
to cut every one of these black lines or spaces of the exactly right
shape, and not at all to cross-hatch them cleanly.
107. Next, examine the technical treatment of the pig, above. I have
purposely chosen this as an example of a white object on dark ground,
and the frog as a dark object on light ground, to explain to you what I
mean by saying that fine engraving regards local color, but not light
and shade. You see both frog and pig are absolutely without light and
shade. The frog, indeed, casts a shadow; but his hind leg is as white as
his throat. In the pig you don't even know which way the light falls.
But you know at once that the pig is white, and the frog brown or green.
108. There are, however, two pieces of chiaroscuro _implied_ in the
treatment of the pig. It is assumed that his curly tail would be light
against the background--dark against his own rump. This little piece of
heraldic quartering is absolutely necessary to solidify him. He would
have been a white ghost of a pig, flat on the background, but for that
alternative tail, and the bits of dark behind the ears. Secondly: Where
the shade is necessary to suggest the position of his ribs, it is given
with graphic and chosen points of dark, as few as possible; not for the
sake of the shade at all, but of the skin and bone.
109. That, then, being the law of refused chiaroscuro, observe further
the method of outline. We said that we were to have thick lines in wood,
if possible. Look what thickness of black outline Bewick has left under
our pig's chin, and above his nose.
But that is not a line at all, you think?
No;--a modern engraver would have made it one, and prided himself on
getting it fine. Bewick leaves it actually thicker than the snout, but
puts all his ingenuity of touch to vary the forms, and break the
extremities of his white cuts, so that the eye may be refreshed and
relieved by new forms at every turn. The group of white touches filling
the space between snout and ears might be a wreath of fine-weather
clouds, so studiously are they grouped and broken.
And nowhere, you see, does a single black line cross another.
Look back to Figure 4, page 54, and you will know, henceforward, the
difference between good and bad wood-cutting.
110. We have also, in the lower woodcut, a notable instance of Bewick's
power of abstraction. You will observe that one of the chief characters
of this frog, which makes him humorous,--next to his vain endeavor to
get some firmness into his fore feet,--is his obstinately angular
hump-back. And you must feel, when you see it so marked, how important a
general character of a frog it is to have a hump-back,--not at the
shoulders, but the loins.
111. Here, then, is a case in which you will see the exact function that
anatomy should take in art.
All the most scientific anatomy in the world would never have taught
Bewick, much less you, how to draw a frog.
But when once you _have_ drawn him, or looked at him, so as to know his
points, it then becomes entirely interesting to find out _why_ he has a
hump-back. So I went myself yesterday to Professor Rolleston for a
little anatomy, just as I should have gone to Professor Phillips for a
little geology; and the Professor brought me a fine little active frog;
and we put him on the table, and made him jump all over it, and then the
Professor brought in a charming Squelette of a frog, and showed me that
he needed a projecting bone from his rump, as a bird needs it from its
breast,--the one to attach the strong muscles of the hind legs, as the
other to attach those of the fore legs or wings. So that the entire
leaping power of the frog is in his hump-back, as the flying power of
the bird is in its breast-bone. And thus this Frog Parliament is most
literally a Rump Parliament--everything depending on the hind legs, and
nothing on the brains; which makes it wonderfully like some other
Parliaments we know of nowadays, with Mr. Ayrton and Mr. Lowe for their
aesthetic and acquisitive eyes, and a rump of Railway Directors.
112. Now, to conclude, for want of time only--I have but touched on the
beginning of my subject,--understand clearly and finally this simple
principle of all art, that the best is that which realizes absolutely,
if possible. Here is a viper by Carpaccio: you are afraid to go near it.
Here is an arm-chair by Carpaccio: you who came in late, and are
standing, to my regret, would like to sit down in it. This is consummate
art; but you can only have that with consummate means, and exquisitely
trained and hereditary mental power.
With inferior means, and average mental power, you must be content to
give a rude abstraction; but if rude abstraction _is_ to be made, think
what a difference there must be between a wise man's and a fool's; and
consider what heavy responsibility lies upon you in your youth, to
determine, among realities, by what you will be delighted, and, among
imaginations, by whose you will be led.
FOOTNOTES:
[Q] By Mr. Burgess. The toil and skill necessary to produce a facsimile
of this degree of precision will only be recognized by the reader who
has had considerable experience of actual work.
[R] The ordinary title-page of Punch.
[S] In the lecture-room, the relative rates of execution were shown; I
arrive at this estimate by timing the completion of two small pieces of
shade in the two methods.
[T] John Bull, as Sir Oliver Surface, with Sir Peter Teazle and Joseph
Surface. It appeared in Punch, early in 1863.
[U] In preparing these passages for the press, I feel perpetual need of
qualifications and limitations, for it is impossible to surpass the
humor, or precision of expressional touch, in the really golden parts of
Tenniel's works; and they _may_ be immortal, as representing what is
best in their day.
[V] From Bewick's AEsop's Fables.
[W] See _ante_, Sec. 43.
LECTURE IV.
THE TECHNICS OF METAL ENGRAVING.