_WHAT IS ILLUSTRATION?_
The craving for pictures, that is, for illustrations, is as old as the
world. The cave-dweller felt it when he scratched on the walls of his
house, or carved the handle of his battle-axe; one there was "who
stayed by the tents with the women, and traced strange devices with a
burnt stick upon the ground." Others painted themselves blue, and
were beautiful; and these were the first illustrators.
The Egyptians were the most prolific, and their works may be found,
monuments more durable than brass, not alone in their places, but
scattered to all the corners of the earth.
From the Egyptians and the Assyrians we may skip, offending but the
archæologist and the pedant, to the illuminators who threw their light
on the Dark Ages. They changed their methods from carving to tracing,
and their mediums from stone and papyrus to parchment and vellum.
But always these illustrations were single works of art, they were not
reproduced, and only duplicated by copying by hand.
Beautiful as are the manuscripts, they play but a small and
unimportant part in the history of illustration, when compared with
the block books that follow them; though block printing is but a
natural evolution from the stamp on the bricks of the Egyptian, or the
painting on the vases of the Etruscan.
The block books, more often loose sheets, were printed from designs,
picture and text, cut on the wood, in one piece, sometimes possibly
engraved in metal. These blocks, being inked, and having sheets of
paper placed on their inked surfaces, and the paper being rubbed, gave
off an impression; as many blocks having to be cut as there were
pages, and as many impressions having to be taken from each block as
there were copies desired. The first of these illustrated blocks is
the St. Christopher, 1423, though playing-cards, produced in the same
way, were known much earlier.
It is only, however, with the invention of printing with movable
types, practised by the Chinese centuries before we ever thought of
it, that illustration, in its modern sense, may be said to have been
created; though printing with movable type is but the cutting up into
separate letters of the pages of the block books. As soon as the
artist was able to make his design upon a block of wood, have that
engraved, and set up in the press with movable type, and print from
it, a new art was discovered.
From the day of Gutenberg and Schœffer, illustration has, in the main,
never changed; new methods have been employed, new processes for
making the blocks have been perfected, but an illustration still
continues to be a design on a wood block or metal plate, so cut,
engraved, or etched as to produce a printing surface from which
impressions may be taken, either in connection with type, when we call
it letterpress or relief printing, or separate from the type, when it
usually becomes intaglio or plate printing.
These methods have undergone, and still are undergoing, incessant
modifications, developments, and improvements; and anyone who wishes
to take up illustration as a profession or a study, must learn the
rudiments of the science, as well as master the great principles of
art, if he wishes to succeed.
To-day, the methods of making the design are many, but the methods of
reproducing it are virtually endless; still one must try to learn
something of the most important, and the more one understands the
requirements of drawing for engraving and printing, the better will be
the results obtained.
In the fifteenth century one had but to design the picture on the side
of a plank, write in the text in reverse, cut everything else away,
wet the block thoroughly, ink the face of it, lay damp paper over it,
and rub or press the back of the sheet of paper till the ink came off
on it, producing a print.
To-day one must understand drawing in all sorts of mediums, know
something of the effect of photographing a drawing on to the wood
block or metal plate, take at least an intelligent interest in
engraving on wood and metal, understand process and lithography, and
be prepared to struggle with that terrible monster, the modern
steam-press, and its slave, the modern printer. To do this
intelligently requires, not only a training in Art, but in the arts
and sciences of engraving, reproduction, printing; and it is to these
arts and sciences that I propose to call your attention.
An illustration--using the term in its artistic sense--is a design
intended to give an artist's idea of an incident, episode, or
topographical site, or it may be but a mere diagram referred to by a
writer; and an illustrator is one who makes pictures or illustrations
which illustrate or explain his own text, or that of another writer.
An illustration really is a work of art, or rather it should be, which
is explanatory; but, as a matter of fact, so too is all graphic art,
explanatory of some story, sentiment, emotion, effect, or fact; and it
would be very difficult indeed to point out when art is not
illustrative.
As the word is used to-day, however, an illustration is a design made
for the purpose of publication in book or magazine or paper. The
fashion of making such designs to accompany lettering or type is, as I
have shown, as old as the art of writing. The art of illustration, or
rather the existence of illustration as a separate craft, and of
illustrators as a distinct body of craftsmen, is virtually the growth
of this century, more properly of the last sixty years since the
invention of illustrated journalism.
Until the other day illustration had no place among the Fine Arts,
and it has been said that, to win renown, an illustrator must achieve
it in some other branch of art.
A few great artists of the past have made illustrations which will be
prized for ever, and to-day these men are spoken of as illustrators;
with Dürer and Holbein it was but one of the many forms of art in
which they excelled, but they were not altogether given up to it.
To-day, however, illustration is the most living and vital of the Fine
Arts, and among its followers are found the most able and eminent of
contemporary artists.
It cannot, however, be said that this prominence which has been so
suddenly thrust upon illustration is altogether due to its increase in
artistic excellence; there are a number of other reasons.
Illustration has indeed reached technically, on the part of artist,
engraver, and printer, such a point of perfection, that it has at
length forced critics and amateurs to give it the attention it has so
long demanded.
More important reasons are the developments in reproduction and
printing, started, and to a great extent carried on, merely to lessen
the cost of production, but capable of giving better and truer results
in the hands of intelligent craftsmen, than anything previously known.
Still, cheapness in reproduction by process, cheapness in the cost of
printing, has enabled numbers of absolutely ignorant people (ignorant,
that is, of art), but possessed of, they think, fine commercial
instincts, to start illustrated papers and publish illustrated books.
The result has been that an army of out-of-works in other fields of
art, of immature or even utterly untrained students, escaping from the
hard labour and drudgery of an art school, ignorant even of the fact
that great illustrators have always studied and worked before they
have found a chance to start, have rushed into illustration. They are
led blindly by the advice of the blind, they find even manuals on the
subject written authoritatively by people who are either not artists,
engravers, or printers, or, if they do pretend to practise any of
these arts and crafts, are unknown and unheard of among the artists
with whom they would rank themselves; and more wonderful still, the
pupils of these blind leaders of the blind find publishers and
printers ignorant enough to employ them; but not so ignorant as to pay
more than the wage of an inferior servant for the worthless work
supplied them.
There are many of these papers, magazines, and books being published
to-day--eminent authors even contribute to their pages; but the
illustrations they contain are more primitive in their depth of
ignorance than the work of the cave-dwellers, and would be equally
valuable to future ages if it were not that they were mainly made up
of an unintelligent cribbing, and stealing from photographs and other
men's work.
Therefore, as a mass, instead of advancing, illustration is sinking
lower and lower, owing to the action of those who pretend to be its
patrons; at the present moment we find ourselves in a critical
situation, good work crowded out by mediocrity--because mediocrity is
cheaper--real artists lost sight of amid the crowd of squirming,
struggling, advertising hacks. Any spark of originality is stamped out
if possible. The mere attempt to say anything in one's own fashion is
a crime, and on all sides the prayer for the extinction of the artist
is heard; after him will go the process man as the commercial wood
engraver has vanished, and then--well, things will take a new start,
good work will be done, and we may as well prepare for the time coming
soon, when cheapness and nastiness, having struggled to the bitter
end, will kill each other for want of something better.
Still, to-day, as good work is being done as ever there was; only
cheapness has to shriek so loud, and advertise so large, to be seen at
all, that people are deafened by the shrieking, and at times the best
is but seen through a glass, darkly. Nevertheless, good art will as
surely live as bad will perish. Let us then endeavour not only to
learn what good work is, but how to do it. In the near future this
will be absolutely necessary. When one sees the greatest artists in
England drawing for penny papers, one realises that illustration is
only apparently in a bad way, that really we are entering upon a
second renaissance, that this is but the dark moment before the dawn.
As a preliminary, and also a final, word to you, I would say, you must
draw, draw, draw first, last, and all the time, and until you can
draw, and draw well, you cannot illustrate.
The study, therefore, of the equipment of the illustrator should be
our aim--what he must do before he can make good illustrations, then,
how he is to make them.