_WOOD ENGRAVING_--RISE AND PROGRESS--BLOCK BOOKS--DURER'S
INFLUENCE--HANS HOLBEIN--A RENAISSANCE--COMPARISON AND
JUSTIFICATION--THE ILLUSTRATOR
"It is therefore beautiful because it is alive, moving,
reproductive. It is therefore useful because it is symmetrical
and fair."--Emerson.
=Wood Engraving.=--The most animating event in the whole history of
engraving was the development of engraved wood blocks. Wood engraving
did not receive the impetus of a new discovery as did metal engraving at
a later period. It was to some extent a purely commercial enterprise,
the success of which was assured by an ever increasing interest
in pictorial art. Engraved wood blocks were used for purposes of
reproduction several centuries before their introduction into Europe.
Historians claim that it can be traced back to A.D. 930, when a form of
playing card was known to the Chinese, and printed by them from rough
wood engravings. The commercial intercourse of the Venetians with
Eastern nations would suggest a probability that their navigators
brought home some of these playing cards, and described the method of
their production to their countrymen.
The further we pursue our investigations, the more remarkable does this
tardy recognition of the utility of wood engraving appear to be. It is
true that somewhere about the middle of the thirteenth century legal
documents were stamped, and merchant marks made with engraved wood
blocks, but no extensive use was made of this method of reproduction
until a much later period.
The Low Countries claim credit for the first employment of engraved wood
blocks for commercial purposes. Many dispute this claim, but the amount
of credit at stake is so infinitesimal that it renders the contention
of little value. Until the time of that immense progress which wood
engraving made in Germany about the middle and towards the end of the
fifteenth century, no work of any artistic merit whatever had been
produced. The older prints may possess a certain historical or
antiquarian value, but otherwise are both crude and uninteresting.
=Block Books.=--The Mediaeval Block Books were the most important of the
early pictorial reproductions from engraved wood blocks. They also may
be traced to China, where, as early as the ninth century, they were used
for decorative as well as illustrative purposes. They retained their
primitive form for a long period after their first introduction to
Western civilisation, and it is interesting to note that the blocks,
and not the prints, were supplied to the monks,--the scholars of the
day,--the impressions being made by them as required. Towards the end
of the fourteenth century Dutch merchants, like the Venetians, paid
frequent visits to Chinese ports, when they too were impressed with the
novelty and utility of pictorial reproduction as practised in the East.
At any rate, pictorial sheets or cards, very similar in character to
the Chinese playing cards, were published in Holland about that period.
They bore pictures of the saints with the titles or legends engraved
alongside. The production of such prints was evidently a recognised
business during the early part of the fifteenth century, for there
are numerous entries in the civic records of Nuremberg concerning the
wood engraver "Formschneider" and cardmaker "Kartenmacher." It has been
ingenuously suggested that, for convenience, collections of these cards
were pasted into books; and the books available being chiefly of a
religious character, the idea of illustrating religious matter with
such pictures was readily suggested.
The next step was the application of block engraving and printing
to the production of volumes of a more pretentious character, the
most noteworthy of which were _The Apocalypsio sue Historia Sancti
Johannis_, the _Biblia Pauperum_, and the _Historia Virginis ex
Cantico Canticorum_. In another of these books, the _Speculum Humanae
Salvationis_, the titles were not engraved on the plates, but were
printed with movable types. This volume was published at Haarlem,
and was composed of fifty-eight plates--a very considerable production
with the materials then at the disposal of the publishers.
=Durer's Influence.=--In 1490 Albert Durer, who possessed a spirited
imagination and deep enthusiasm for his work, marked out a distinct era
of substantial progress, and impressed the art of wood engraving with
that expressive power of delineation which his truly remarkable genius
ever manifested.
Durer was an artist of somewhat variable characteristics, but the
diversity and amplitude of his productions afford conclusive evidences
of a remarkable industry and skill.
Like other artists of his time, and even of much later periods, he did
not engrave his own drawings. He may, of course, have engraved a few
blocks, but most, if not all of the wood engravings signed by Durer,
were executed by Jerome Rock.
Perhaps the most peculiar characteristic of Durer's designs was
the portrayal of scenes and figures of ancient history and myth in
well-defined imitation of his own surroundings and the conditions of
life then existing. Apropos of this, it was said that he turned the
New Testament into the history of a Flemish village.
Hans Holbein was another of the early artists who prepared their
drawings for the express purpose of reproduction by means of wood
engraving. That he fully appreciated the resources of his art there
can be no doubt, for he imbued his work with an expressive individual
force which was distinctly progressive and influential. His best known
production consists of forty-one engravings representing "Death--the
King of Terrors," in association with nearly every phase of human life.
Each one of these designs is a picture parable of remarkable power and
suggestiveness. The characteristic drawing and quaint expressiveness of
Holbein's illustrations merit unqualified admiration, and his graphic
use of pure line for pictorial expression stands almost unrivalled.
Hans Litzelburger engraved Holbein's designs. Towards the end of the
fifteenth and during part of the sixteenth centuries wood engraving
still received enthusiastic attention, and then, for sheer lack of
interest, fell rapidly into decay. Metal engraving was absorbing the
attention of the artistic world, and for many years wood engraving was
regarded as only fit for the reproduction of pictures which may be
charitably described as inartistic, and too often perhaps discreditable.
As far as our own country was concerned, it was not until the advent
of Thomas Bewick that this decadence received any effective check.
=A Renaissance.=--The Renaissance of wood engraving in England may be
dated from 1775, when Bewick engraved a picture entitled "The Hound,"
and received a prize offered by the Royal Society for the best engraving
on wood. Thomas Bewick was born in 1753, and fourteen years later he was
apprenticed to a metal engraver. It was indeed a fortuitous circumstance
which caused him to transfer his energies and his talents to wood
engraving, in which he displayed a rare skill and inimitable directness
of expression. He was probably the first wood engraver to adopt level
tinting in place of complicated and laborious cross hatching which was
then practised by his continental contemporaries. He usually preferred
to develop his drawing rather than attempt the production of extraneous
effects, and the subtle effectiveness of his pictures affords
incontrovertible proofs of the advantage of such substitution. Their
humour and pathos, vigour and fidelity, remain to this day as memorials
of the consummate, artistic skill and perceptive capacity of a truly
remarkable man. Bewick was a self-contained genius whose rugged emotions
would admit of but one form of pictorial expression, and that peculiarly
his own. His work was pregnant with masterly good sense, and ever
manifested a charming simplicity of purpose. He had but a modest
estimate of his ability as an engraver, and consequently rarely engraved
any other than his own drawings.
The exact measure of Bewick's influence on the art of wood engraving
for pictorial illustration and reproduction would be difficult to
satisfactorily determine. This much is certain, however, that through it
wood engraving was verified and popularised, and illustrated literature
received a stimulus which subsequent developments combined to maintain
and emphasise.
[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Old Wood Engraving (Erenburg Castle).
"Colour values and perspective can only be expressed by thick and
thin lines at varying distances apart."
_Block supplied by the London Electrotype Agency Ltd., from the
"Illustrated London News."_]
=A Comparison.=--There is a vast difference between the effects procurable
in an impression from a wood engraving and the print from an engraved
metal plate. In the former, colour values and perspective can only be
expressed by thick and thin lines at varying distances apart, the ink on
the prints being of the same density throughout, no matter how thick or
thin the lines may be. In metal engraving intermediary values may be
obtained by lines of the same thickness, if need be, but of varying
depth. The result is a strong, intense effect produced by the greater
body of pigment held by such portions of the lines as are cut deeply,
and the comparatively grey appearance of the shallower parts. It is
largely due to this that prints from engraved metal plates possess a
peculiar richness and depth of tone.
The commercial advantages generally claimed for engraved wood blocks
are the ease and rapidity with which impressions can be made from them
as compared with the metal plates, and also the fact that they can be
printed with type, _i.e._ letterpress, without any unusual preparations.
Granting the validity of these claims, it must follow that, owing to the
larger number of impressions made from wood engravings, their intrinsic
worth will be correspondingly less than the limited number of prints
made from engraved metal plates, and their commercial value will be
estimated accordingly.
=A Justification.=--The somewhat sweeping assertion that wood engraving
affords a medium of expression only for the blunter minds is not the
whole truth. Its strikingly bold conceptions and broad expressive
effects certainly appeal to the untrained eye or untutored mind more
than the artistic qualities of design and execution displayed in metal
engraving; but there is yet in the art of the wood engraver a well-nigh
inexhaustible store of artistic as well as pictorial effects. The
forcible character and charm of its productions are chiefly due to the
disposition and combination of the lines employed, and a variety of
texture which is thereby introduced. It affords also an exceptional
facility of execution, and an almost limitless power of realisation,
which gives to it a deservedly high place among the pictorial and
reproductive arts. The whole matter may be summed up in a statement
once made by a well-known artist and illustrator: "There is no process
in relief which has the same certainty, which gives the same colour and
brightness, and by which gradations of touch can be more truly rendered.
Few of our great artists, however, can be prevailed upon to draw for
wood engraving, and when they do undertake an illustration, say of a
great poem, the drawing, which has to be multiplied 100,000 times, has
less thought bestowed upon it than the painted portrait of a cotton
king." What wonder, then, at the retrogression of this facile and
graphic art of pictorial illustration.
[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Modern Wood Engraving (the Goose Fountain,
Nuremburg).
"The forcible character of wood engraving chiefly due to the disposition
and combination of the lines employed."
_Block supplied by the London Electrotype Agency Ltd., from the
"Religious Tract Society."_]
=The Illustrator.=--The employment of wood engravings in conjunction
with literature created a new phase of artistic work. The task of the
illustrator or designer is peculiar. He sketches out his design on the
wood block, and then passes it on to the engraver. His drawing is not
intended as a permanent form of pictorial art, but as a suggestive
sketch, which, while perfectly intelligible to the engraver, will be
free from such intricacies in its composition as might interfere with
its effective interpretation. The old wood engravers produced, line for
line, an exact facsimile of the artist's design. His work, no doubt,
required considerable skill and unremitting patience, but it was almost
devoid of independent thought or artistic feeling. The engraver to-day
must _translate_ the work of the illustrator so as to render the effect
of his design in such a form as will admit of rapid and effective
reproduction. The possibilities of the wood engraver's art, therefore,
are manifold. The artist's sketch may give a suggestion of light and
shade, and possibly some idea of its tone. The execution and elaboration
of the drawing is left almost entirely in the hands of the engraver.
Whether it will gain or lose by its translation will, to some extent,
depend upon his artistic perception as well as his manipulative skill.