"THE graphic influence!" my readers may exclaim, "what existence has
design apart from this, since the depicting power with whatever pencil,
brush, modelling tool, chisel, pen is by its very nature bound up with
it?"
That is quite true, yet for all that there is discernible a very
distinct line of cleavage in art, a distinction of spirit and aim which
seems to have divided or characterized artists and epochs from the very
earliest.
I have often alluded to the drawings of the prehistoric cave men.
These graphic outlines of animals, although generally incised upon
the handles of weapons, always appear to me to indicate the purely
naturalistic aim as distinct from the ornamental sense, as if the first
object of the primitive artist had been to get as exact a profile as
possible of the animals he knew; just as a modern artist, with superior
facilities of pencil and paper, might make sketches at the Zoological
Gardens without any idea of making them parts of a decorative design.
The main difference seems to be that in purely graphic or naturalistic
drawing individual characteristics or _differences_ are sought
for, while in ornamental or decorative drawing typical forms or
_correspondences_ are sought for.
[Illustration: PREHISTORIC GRAPHIC ART OF THE CAVE MEN.]
[Illustration: PREHISTORIC GRAPHIC ART OF THE CAVE MEN.]
In the course of the development of historic art in different countries
and among different peoples, under different social and political
systems, we may yet discern a kind of strife for ascendency between
these two principles, which still divide the world of art; and though
in the most perfect art the two are found reconciled and harmonized,
as being really two sides of the same question, the general feeling
for art seems to swing from one side to the other, like the tides in
ebb and flow. At one time human feeling in art seeks to perpetuate
types, symbols, and emblems of the wonder of life and the mysteries of
the universe, as in the art of ancient Egypt. At another its interest
is absorbed in the representation of individual characteristics and
varieties, striving to follow nature through her endless subtleties and
transformations, as in our own day; when the different aims inspiring
our artists might be set down as--
(1) The desire to realize, or to represent things as they _are_.
(2) The desire to realize, or to represent things as they
_appear_ to be.
Under whatever differences of method or material, I believe it will be
found that this real difference of mental attitude behind them accounts
for the varieties we see, that is to say, in any genuine and thoughtful
work.
Every sincere artist naturally desires to _realize_ his conception to
the best of his ability, in the most harmonious and forceful way; but
in the course of the development of a work of art of any kind there are
problems to be solved at every turn.
Is it a piece of repeating surface ornament we are designing? We feel
we must subordinate parts to the whole, we must see that our leading
structural lines are harmonious, we cannot emphasize a bit of detail
without reference to the total effect. We may find the design wants
simplifying, and have to strike out even some element of beauty. Such
sacrifices are frequently necessary. Our love of naturalism may induce
us to work up our details, our leaves and flowers, to vie with natural
appearance in full light and relief, until we find we are losing the
repose and sense of quiet planes essential to pattern work, and getting
beyond the capacities of our material, so that we may realize that even
skill and graphic power may be inartistic if wrongly applied or wasted
in inappropriate places.
Is it a landscape we desire to transcribe or express upon paper or
canvas? Sun and shadow flit across it, changing every moment dark to
light and light to dark, so that the general emphasis and expression
of the scene constantly vary, like the expression of a human face, as
we watch it. Which shall we choose? Which seems the most expressive,
the most beautiful? Again, shall we content ourselves with a general
superficial impression, leaving details vague? Shall we aim at truth
of tone, or truth of local colour? Shall we dwell on the lines of
the composition? Shall we spend all our care upon getting the planes
right, or rely for our main interest upon light and shade and delicate
definition of detail?
All these different problems belong to graphic representation of
nature, to graphic methods of drawing and design, and the work of
different artists is distinguished usually by the way in which they
seem to feel--the particular aspect or truth on which they mostly dwell
in their work.
Even the most abstract symbolic or ornamental drawing in pure outline
must have some graphic quality, though intentionally limited to the
expression of few facts.
The method by which an ancient Egyptian painter or hieroglyphic carver
blocked out a vulture or a hawk, relying either solely on truth of
mass or silhouette, or on outline and emphatic marking of the masses of
the plumage, or the salient characteristics, such as claws and beak,
although extremely abstract, was full of natural truth and fact as far
as it went, and left no doubt as to the birds depicted.
[Illustration: Egyptian Treatment of Birds (from painted
Mummy Cases, British Museum)]
Something of the same kind of quality is found in Japanese drawings
of birds, with less severity and monumental feeling. The graphic or
naturalistic feeling is strongest and the individual accidents are
dwelt upon. In modern European natural history drawings of birds and
animals, we often lose this bold graphic sense of character in the
general aspect, while small superficial details of plumage and textures
are carefully attended to. There is often less life though actually
more likeness. The general tendency in the development of the art of
a people seems to have been from the formal, monumental, and symbolic
type of representation and design in strict relation to architectural
structure and decoration, towards freer naturalism, individual
portraiture, and a looser graphic style.
[Illustration: A FOWLER. WALL PAINTING. NINETEENTH DYNASTY
(BRITISH MUSEUM).]
We may trace this tendency even in the strictly monumental and
stereotyped art of ancient Egypt, which notably in the portrait
sculpture even of the ancient empire is remarkable for extraordinary
realism; and in the wall paintings of the later period of the Theban
empire (as in the tomb of Beni Hasan), which show considerable freedom
and vitality.
[Illustration: JAPANESE GRAPHIC ART. FROM "THE HUNDRED BIRDS OF BARI."]
[Illustration: JAPANESE GRAPHIC ART. FROM "THE HUNDRED BIRDS OF BARI."]
A most notable example of realism is the famous "Scribe" in the Louvre,
a coloured statuette, believed to date from the fifth or sixth dynasty,
of extraordinary vitality. The eyes consist of an iris of rock crystal,
surmounting a metal pupil, and set in an eyeball of opaque white quartz.
Greek sculpture, again, shows a gradual development from the archaic
period, in which it resembles early Asiatic art, up to the refinement,
freedom, and beauty of design of the Phidian period, when the balance
between naturalistic feeling and monumental feeling appears to have
been perfect. Then later, as the result of a desire for more obvious
naturalism and dramatic expression, we get quite a different feeling
in the sculptures of the frieze of the great altar at Pergamos,
which represents the strife of the gods and the Titans--a tremendous
subject, worked out with extraordinary power, skill, and learning in
alto relievo; but despite the energy and dramatic movement, after the
delicacy and reposeful beauty of the Parthenon sculptures, we feel that
these qualities have been gained at a considerable cost and loss; but
it is interesting as representing the more realistic and dramatic side
of Greek art.[11]
[11] The original slabs are in the Berlin Museum, but casts of some may
be seen at South Kensington.
[Illustration: EGYPTIAN SCRIBE. PORTRAIT STATUETTE. FIFTH OF SIXTH
DYNASTY (LOUVRE).]
But the grace and charm of Greek art never seemed really to die out.
All the best Roman art was inspired by it, if not actually carried
out by Greek artists; and, owing to Greek colonies, Greek traditions
had long been naturalized in Italy, where they found a congenial
soil. Fine portrait sculpture was done in the imperial period--as the
Augustus and the head of Julius Cæsar and many other well-known busts
testify. Also the truth and beauty of some of their animal sculpture
we may see in the fine style of the frieze of sacrificial animals
discovered in 1872 in the Forum. We seem to see the Greek spirit in the
decorative splendour of the Byzantine period, and again, in Italian
dress, inspiring the painters and sculptors of the early Renascence,
in the work of Giotto, Ghiberti, and Donatello for instance. With
the development of Gothic architecture in the thirteenth century
a new and distinct feeling for naturalism arose, which influenced
through architecture all the arts of design. In fact, all through the
Gothic period design seems to have had more the character of a vital
organic growth, controlled by a certain tradition and the influence
of architectural style, yet within these limits and those of the
material of its expression developing an extraordinary freedom both
of invention and graphic power, which culminated at the end of the
fifteenth century, or was perhaps absorbed by the classicism of the
Renascence. Thirteenth century Gothic sculpture at its best, as we find
it in France, has almost the simplicity, grace, and natural feeling
of Greek work. This may be seen in the figures from the west front of
Auxerre Cathedral, and also in the porch of Amiens; and in the portrait
effigies of this period and onwards through the three centuries in
those of our own cathedrals and churches we find abundant evidence of
graphic power in careful and characteristic portraiture, united with
beauty of design in detail and decorative effect.
[Illustration: SCULPTURED FRIEZE DISCOVERED IN THE FORUM, 1872.]
[Illustration: SCULPTURE FROM AUXERRE CATHEDRAL. THIRTEENTH CENTURY.]
[Illustration: SCULPTURE FROM AMIENS CATHEDRAL. FOURTEENTH CENTURY.]
What we should call realism comes out wonderfully in the treatment of
the statue of St. Martha at St. Urbain, Troyes, a work of the fifteenth
century.
Gothic art, too, was a familiar art, intimate and sympathetic with
human life in all its varieties.
In the beautiful illuminated Psalters, Missals, Books of Hours, and
chronicles of the Middle Ages, the life of those days is presented in
bright and vivid colours. We see the labourers at work in the fields,
ploughing, sowing, reaping, threshing, treading the wine-press. We see
the huntsman, the fisherman, and the shepherd; the scribe at his work,
the saint at his prayers, the knight at arms. The splendour and pomp
of jousts and tournaments, with all their bright colour and quaint
heraldry; we see the king in his ermine, and the beggar in his rags,
the monk in his cell, the gallant with his lute--delicate miniatures
often set in burnished gold, and adorned with open fret-work or borders
of flowers and leaves.
These borders in course of time from a purely fanciful ornamental
character become real leaves, flowers or fruit, as in the Grimani
Breviary, attributed to Memling, the famous Flemish painter, where the
borders are in some pages naturalistic paintings of leaves and berries,
birds and butterflies, on gold grounds with cast shadows. Here we get
the naturalistic feeling dominating again and the pictorial skill of
the miniaturist triumphing, but the effect is still rich and ornamental.
When the printing press in the middle of the fifteenth century began
to rival the scribe with his manuscript, it offered in the woodcut a
new method to the artist, which led to a new development of graphic
power and design by means of line and black and white, though at first
intended merely as a method of furnishing the illuminator with
outlined designs as book illustrations and ornaments to be filled in
with colour and gold.
[Illustration: ST. MARTHA (ST. URBAIN, TROYES).]
[Illustration: MEMLING. "DELIVERANCE OF ST. PETER" (GRIMANI BREVIARY).]
[Illustration: MEMLING. "DAVID PLACING THE ARK IN THE TABERNACLE"
(GRIMANI BREVIARY).]
The black and white effect, however, grew to be liked for its own sake:
not only was it found to afford a considerable range of decorative
effect by different treatment of line and solid black, but the
graphic designer found in the rich vigorous woodcut line a suggestive
and emphatic means of expression. The best artists of the time gave
themselves to the work, and notably in Germany, the home of the
invention of printing itself. Cologne, Mainz, Augsburg, Ulm, Nuremberg
were all famous centres of activity in the printer's art, as well as
Venice and Florence, Basle and Paris.
Up to the end of the fifteenth century the Gothic and ornamental
feeling is still dominant in the treatment of the design of woodcuts in
books, and most instructive and suggestive they are in simplicity of
method and line, and directness of expression.
Characteristic German work of Gothic feeling and considerable graphic
force is seen in the woodcuts of the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493)
designed by Michael Wolgemuth, the master of Albert Dürer. In these
vigorous cuts we may plainly see the tradition of that Gothic feeling
and style of graphic design afterwards developed in the work of the
great German designer.
The splendid woodcuts of Dürer's "Apocalypse," and of the "Little
Passion," and the design called "The Cannon" (1518), give us further
insight into his method of drawing and his graphic power; and one can
hardly go to stronger or better examples for the study of expression
by means of bold line work, a command of which is most valuable to
designers in all materials, though, of course, especially so to those
who desire to make black and white drawing their principal pursuit. For
Dürer's finer line treatment on copper there is no better example
than the portrait of Erasmus.
[Illustration: ALBERT DÜRER. "THE APOCALYPSE."]
[Illustration: ALBERT DÜRER. PORTRAIT OF ERASMUS, 1526.]
[Illustration: ALBERT DÜRER. "THE CANNON," 1513.]
The style of drawing shown in these woodcuts was no doubt to a great
extent determined by the nature of the method of cutting the block.
The drawing on the smooth plank--not on the cross section of the tree,
as in modern wood-engraving--was actually cut with a knife, not a
graver. Each line had to be excavated, as it were, from the surface,
the ground or white part sunk each side, so as to make it take the ink
and print the impression of its surface sharply upon the paper in the
press. These conditions would necessarily lead to a certain economy of
line both as to quantity and direction, and would favour the use of
bold outline and lines expressive of relief surfaces or shadow arranged
in a comparatively simple way, and often running into solid black,
as in small folds of drapery and details. The drawing was probably
done with a reed or quill pen, which latter still remains perhaps the
best tool for emphatic, graphic drawing on the scale of book designs,
since it offers the maximum possibility of effect with the minimum of
simplicity and economy of means. Its only rival (though it may also be
regarded as a useful auxiliary to the pen) is the narrow flexible brush
point, and this has the advantage of spreading more easily into solid
blacks, though more likely to lead one into looseness of style owing to
its very facility.
Fine and firm graphic draughtsmanship and rich design, with a fine
sense of the decorative value of armorial bearings and processional
grouping, may be seen in the famous series of woodcuts called "The
Triumphs of Maximilian," in which Albert Dürer and Hans Burgmair
co-operated. That is to say each did a large proportion of the designs.
It was a very vast work for wood-engraving. The scheme was in two
parts, one consisting of a design of a triumphal arch, in general idea
in emulation of the old Roman imperial triumphal arches. This part of
the work consisted of ninety-two blocks which, when put together, form
one woodcut 10½ feet high by 9 feet wide. This part was all designed
and drawn upon the blocks by Albert Dürer, and engraved by Hieronymus
Andreæ.
[Illustration: ALBERT DÜRER. "LITTLE PASSION." THE TAKING DOWN FROM THE
CROSS.]
[Illustration: HANS BURGMAIR. GROUP OF KNIGHTS FROM "THE TRIUMPHS OF
MAXIMILIAN."]
The second part consisted of the triumphal procession and the triumphal
car of Maximilian and his Queens, designed by Dürer, as well as other
allegorical and heraldic cars and warlike machines, and cars with
officers of the court, groups of knights in armour, men-at-arms of all
kinds, country people, and even groups of African savages. Sixty-six of
the designs of the procession are due to Hans Burgmair.
It is noteworthy that the general scheme for this triumph was first
painted on large sheets of parchment, which still exist in the Imperial
Library at Vienna; and the woodcuts followed this more or less in
design, Dürer's drawings being a freer rendering, while Burgmair's
are supposed to keep more closely to the painted scheme of the
miniaturists, though it is quite possible they may both have furnished
sketches for the miniaturists' version also. This great undertaking,
however, was never finished, and its progress came to an end with the
death of the emperor in January, 1519. The work was supposed to have
been commenced in 1512.
For more purely ornamental effect in black and white the rich, bold,
yet sensitive outline of the Venetian and Florentine woodcuts should be
studied, and their use of solid black.
The amount of graphic expression and even of statement of natural fact
which can be put into pure outline alone is, of course, enormous.
The value of the graphic illustrative capacity of the woodcut was
soon discovered and utilized by the writers of natural histories and
compilers of Herbals of the early days of printing onwards.
There is a beautiful Herbal written by Dr. Fuschius (whose name we
seem to have perpetuated in the Fuchsia). It was printed at Basle in
1542, and the drawings are fine examples of what outline can do, and
remarkable for a combination of beautiful style united with natural
truth and decorative feeling. One of the horned poppy is here given.
The book is also interesting in the portraits of the draughtsmen and
wood-engraver, or _formschneider_, given at the end.
The woodcuts of the plants given in the Herbal of Matthiolus, where
more lines of surface and shadow are introduced, are vigorous and
good, full of style and character, and expressive of the salient facts
of growth. The same may be said of those in our own Gerard's Herbal,
though the impressions are not generally so bright or good; but then
it was produced during the decline of the printer's art, in the later
years of the sixteenth century.
Though used for purely illustrative purposes, much as the cuts put into
modern dictionaries to make certain facts clear to the mind, these
woodcuts have always, over and above fidelity to the main facts of
growth and character, a sense of design. They are not merely drawings
of plants, but they are well put together as panels or spaces of
design, and effectively though unobtrusively ornament the page.
For expressive and sensitive line and touch in the rendering of
flowers, the Japanese artists are remarkable, and their books, printed
from wood-blocks cut on the plank in the old European way, are full
of spirit and suggestiveness. Drawn on the wood with a pointed
brush, which is occasionally spread to yield solid black, or turned
sideways, or dragged, to vary the quality of the line, they show that
extreme ease and facility in the expression of form by simple means
which only long practice, direct work, and intimate knowledge and close
observation of nature could produce. The added flat and delicate tints
of colour enhance the effect and give them a decorative beauty entirely
their own, though planned in the spaces they occupy in a totally
different spirit from the old Herbal woodcuts we have been considering.
They belong in the main rather to the second point of view or artistic
impulse in art, which I characterized at the beginning as the desire
to represent without prepossession the appearances of things; which
delights in accidents, in unexpectedness, and sometimes, it must be
confessed, in downright ugliness and awkwardness, it seems to me--what
in short is sometimes called "impressionism," which has been largely
influenced by Japanese art.
[Illustration: HORNED POPPY. FROM FUCHSIUS' "DE HISTORIA STIRPIUM,"
1542.]
[Illustration: JAPANESE PLANT DRAWING. WOODCUT PRINTED IN COLOUR.]
[Illustration: JAPANESE PLANT DRAWING. WOODCUT FROM A BOTANICAL WORK.]
Mediæval brasses are often very fine in the quality and use of outline,
and show a wonderful amount of exact characterization in portraiture,
as well as beauty of ornamental effect in the use of plain surfaces
relieved upon rich pattern work, and good disposition of draperies.
Those of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, more especially the
Belgian examples, are very useful to study for these things, as well
as for the fine taste, the simplicity, and the broad artistic feeling
shown under the strict limitation of the material, while they are
remarkable for extraordinary delineation of character by very simple
means--the lines and sunk parts being incised in the smooth brass
plate and filled in with black encaustic substance, while the colours
of the heraldry are frequently enamelled. Note the beautiful lines
of the drapery in the example given from Bruges, and the fine relief
of the figures upon the rich diapered ground. In England the figures
and borders were cut out in the brass and inserted in the stone slab,
which formed the background; but the Flemish brasses show a different
treatment, the figures being relieved upon a rich diapered ground, also
incised upon the brass, which takes the form of a complete panel or
plate covering the stone slab.
[Illustration: BRASS OF JORIS DE MUNTER AND WIFE (BRUGES, 1439). FROM
CREENY'S "MONUMENTAL BRASSES."]
One may trace in the later brasses the efforts of the designer to
gain more relief and graphic emphasis in his figures by introducing
lines of shading and cross lines and greater complexity generally, as
well as a tendency to escape the limits of the panel, no doubt under
the influence of the rising power of pictorial art, which from the
Renascence onwards seems to have dominated by its influence all the
other arts. But in the case of brasses the beauty of design, the charm
and simplicity of the earlier treatment, as well as the rich decorative
effect, disappear with the attempt to render complexities of effect and
qualities of drawing for which the material and purpose were unsuited.
The same change of feeling left its mark upon the sculptor's work in
sepulchral monuments and effigies, which, in the Gothic period up to
the end of the fifteenth century, are frequently refined and beautiful
pieces of delicate portraiture, wrought with extreme care and
elaboration, with a strong yet restrained sense of the ornamental value
of the detail; but which, under the pictorial influence and the search
for more obvious and superficial naturalism, became more or less forced
in effect and vulgarized in sentiment as well as execution, and finally
lost in classical artificiality and theatric pomp.
[Illustration: KING ERIC MENVED AND QUEEN INGEBORG OF DENMARK
(RINGSTEAD, 1319). FROM CREENY'S "MONUMENTAL BRASSES."]
In simple draughtsmanship and purely graphic design, too, it is
noticeable that, with the introduction of the copper-plate and the
attempt to get in book illustrations something like pictorial values
and chiaroscuro, how, by degrees, vigour of design and feeling for good
line work was lost.
The revival of the woodcut even under Bewick did little to help line
design--its former close companion. Bewick and his school developed
the woodcut from the pictorial point of view, and with the object of
demonstrating the capacity of the wood for rendering certain fine
textures and tones as against steel and copper. Their great principle
was the use of white line, not unheard of even in the early printing
days, as a frontispiece to a German book ("Pomerium de Tempore,"
Augsburg, 1502) of the early sixteenth century testifies.
Bewick's birds, which are remarkable for the delicate, truthful way in
which the plumage is rendered, are as much the work of a naturalist as
of an artist, and they show but little design or feeling apart from
this.
Although William Blake and Edward Calvert made notable use of the
woodcut, it was not really until about the middle of the century that
any serious attempt was made in the direction of the revival of line
and pen drawing for the sake of its expressive vigour, ornamental
possibilities, and autographic value. Probably it really began with
German artists like Schnorr (who did a series of Bible pictures more or
less after the manner of Holbein), Alfred Rethel, and Moritz Schwind.
Rethel's two large woodcuts, "Death the Friend" and "Death the Enemy,"
are tolerably well known and show strong draughtsmanship and tragic
force, recalling in their intensity and vigour the work of Dürer and
the old German masters.
[Illustration: CHARLES KEENE. REDUCED FROM A HALF-PAGE DESIGN IN
"PUNCH."]
In England the revival of line design arose out of the Pre-Raphaelite
movement (a movement certainly influenced by the study of early Italian
as well as German and Flemish art), and was illustrated by the work of
some of the leaders of that movement themselves.
The drawings (engraved on wood by the brothers Dalziel) by D. G.
Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and Millais, which illustrate the edition of
Tennyson's poems published in 1857, show perhaps the first definite
experiments in this direction.
The pages of the journal "Once a Week," started in 1859, were the means
of the introduction of new and powerful designers in line, such as
Frederick Sandys, Charles Keene, E. J. Poynter, and Frederick Walker.
The first three showed unmistakable evidence of a study of the manner
of German Renascence woodcuts, but it was allied to the matter of
modern thought and naturalism. With a freer graphic naturalism of a
different order, Walker united a certain grace and sentiment derived
from classic sculpture, curiously mixed with a Dutch-like domestic
feeling. In his black and white drawing he shows, too, I think, to some
degree the influences of the photograph, which since those days has
had so obvious an effect upon art and artists.
[Illustration: LINLEY SAMBOURNE. REDUCED FROM A FULL-PAGE DESIGN IN
"PUNCH."]
"Once a Week," which introduced these with other artists to the public,
was started by the proprietors of "Punch," which had long maintained
and still maintains an effective and legitimate field for graphic
drawing in line rendered by the facsimile wood-block. The work of
John Leech and Richard Doyle is well known, the former, with a light
and somewhat loose touch registering the fashions and foibles of
English life from week to week, with extraordinary spirit, humour, and
character, often conveyed by very slight means.
Sir John Tenniel, with his more serious and heavier style, continued
until recently to give his familiar allegories of the political
situation; this style again has, I think, been influenced by German
work.
Then Charles Keene brought in a kind of impressionistic naturalism,
expressed by a method of his own, having a look of great freshness and
directness, like crisp sketches from nature.
Du Maurier developed a different style, less vigorous but more graceful
in drawing, and with certain leanings at one time to the romantic
Pre-Raphaelitism he used his pencil occasionally to caricature.
In Mr. Linley Sambourne we see a designer and draughtsman of
considerable power. His pen-line is vigorous and his drawing solid and
graphic, with considerable feeling for style, but showing, I think, the
influence of the photograph in the rendering of light and shade.
In quality of line there is a certain kinship with the work of Mr.
Phil May, a later addition to the staff, though his treatment is very
different. He represents, indeed, rather the modern impressionist
feeling in line drawing influenced by the Japanese; his outlines are
often extraordinarily graphic, and convey a great amount of character
with very slight variation, and very little detail; but there is rather
a noticeable tendency towards awkward composition and ugly or repulsive
types.
[Illustration: PHIL MAY. FROM "PUNCH."]
As a work giving some of the more serious and carefully studied designs
in line and black and white of modern artists, engraved on wood, might
be mentioned the Bible projected by the brothers Dalziel, a portion
only of which was completed, consisting of a series of fine drawings by
Holman Hunt, Madox Brown, E. J. Poynter, Frederic Leighton, and others.
They are more perhaps in the nature of isolated pictures than book
illustrations, but they are full of good and careful work.
The earlier etchings of Mr. Whistler are full of delicate drawing
of the picturesque detail of old waterside houses, as in the famous
"Wapping," which even survived translation into a process block in the
"Daily Chronicle."
We have now a vast public apparently interested in, and accustomed
to, graphic representation in black and white, through the continual
multiplication of cheap illustrated newspapers, magazines, and
books, and the continual invention and adaptation to the press of
cheap photographic and automatic means of reproduction, which have
almost entirely displaced the woodcut as a popular medium for the
interpretation of graphic art.
In these cheap forms of pictorial art the photograph continues to gain
ascendency not only as a medium for reproduction, but as a substitute
for original artistic invention and design. Now while in the former
province it is of enormous practical value, in the latter, I think,
it bids fair to be extremely seductive and injurious to the growth of
healthy artistic taste and capacity.
Modern painting and draughtsmanship have for a long time shown the
influence of the photograph (which for certain illusory qualities of
lighting and relief cannot be approached), and so, no doubt, artists
themselves have prepared the way for its popularity, and perhaps even
usurpation of the dominion of popular art.
So far, however, as photographic effect is preferred, and the
mechanical tone-block is preferred to the pen-drawing and woodcut, it
means the loss of character, of the personal element, of distinctive
artistic style. It means, in short, the substitution of scientific
invention and mechanical method for artistic imagination, observation,
and variety--surely this would be a most unfortunate exchange.