THE METHODS OF TO-DAY; THEIR ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT.
Modern illustration belongs essentially to our own times, to our own
generation. To the last quarter of the eighteenth century several
writers on the subject have traced its beginning. But in a measure only
is this theory justified by fact. All dates are difficult and elusive.
It is not easy to point to the exact year when the old came to an end
and the new began. Even in cases when a certain date, 1830 for example,
seems to mark a positive barrier, it does so only because, with constant
use, it has become the symbol of a certain change.
But the cause of this modern development is not hard to discover. It was
the application of photography to the illustration of books and papers
which established the art on a new basis. As the invention of printing
gave the first great impetus to illustration, so surely has it received
its second and more important from the invention of photography. The
gulf between primitive illuminated manuscripts and Holbein's "Dance of
Death" is not wider than that which separates the antiquated "Keepsakes"
and "Forget-Me-Nots" from the "Century Magazine" and the "Graphic." The
conditions have entirely altered.
Greater ease of reproduction, greater speed, greater economy of labour
have been secured, as well as greater freedom for the artist, and
greater justice in the reproduction of his design. As a consequence,
illustration has increased in popularity, the comparative cheapness of
production placing it within reach of the people who have ever taken
pleasure in the art, since the days when all writing was but
picture-making; it has gained artistically, since the fidelity of the
_facsimile_ now obtained has induced many an artist of genius, or
distinction, to devote himself wholly to black and white. If, on the one
hand, this popularity threatens its degradation (foolish editors and
grasping publishers flooding the world with cheap and nasty illustrated
books and periodicals), on the other, the artistic gain promises to be
its salvation, for not in the days of Dürer himself was so large a
proportion of genuinely good work published.
[Illustration: BY CHARLES KEENE. FROM A PEN DRAWING IN THE POSSESSION OF
THE AUTHOR.]
The first attempt to photograph a drawing on the block for the purpose
of engraving, is said to have been made in England, in 1851 or 1852, by
Mr. Langton, an engraver in Manchester, assisted by a photographer whose
name unfortunately has not been preserved. It may be granted that this
was the first attempt. But artistically it was of small importance,
as nothing, so far as I know, directly came of it. That the process was
well enough known in 1865 is proved by the following extracts from the
"Art Student" of that year: "The picture is obtained in the usual way,
and the film of collodion afterwards removed by using a pledget of
cotton moistened in ether. A block so prepared works as well under the
graver as an ordinary drawing." But I do not believe that even this
process of photographing on the block was very practically used.[11] To
take one case in point, the "Amor Mundi" by Sandys, published in the
"Shilling Magazine" for April, 1865, which I reproduced by photogravure
in "Pen Drawing and Pen Draughtsmen:"[12] the plate was made from a
negative taken from this design after it had been drawn on the block.
Mr. Swain has told me that he photographed the drawing, because he was
so delighted with the original (which he was about to cut to pieces)
that he wanted to preserve an exact copy. Now, had the art of
photographing drawings on wood been generally known, Mr. Swain would
have photographed the drawing on to another block, reversing the
negative, and kept the original. Instead, he simply photographed the
original before it was engraved. The same thing is said to have been
done with some of Rossetti's illustrations for Tennyson; while Messrs.
Dalziel kept back their "Bible Gallery" for many years, until drawings
could be decently photographed on the wood. But the practical
application of photography to the transferring of drawings to wood
blocks, although probably known about as long ago as 1850, in a few
offices is scarcely practised to-day. I think, however, one may safely
say that about the year 1876 this practice became fairly general; one
may therefore, for the sake of convenience, take the year 1876 as the
date of the beginning of modern illustration.
[11] I am mistaken in this, as many of Pinwell and North's
drawings, made on paper in 1865-66 for Dalziel, were
photographed on wood.
[12] First edition 1889.
As this change is probably the most important in the whole history of
the art, I think it may be well to explain shortly how drawings were
produced before the introduction of photography, and how they are made
now.
[Illustration: BY CHARLES KEENE. FROM A PEN DRAWING IN THE POSSESSION OF
THE AUTHOR.]
Before the time of Dürer and Holbein, the artist was of small
importance; indeed, so too was the engraver, though we hear much about
him. The artist made his drawing either on a piece of paper or on the
block. Judging from some of the work in the Plantin Museum (the sole
place where we can obtain any actual data[13]), the design was made in
rather a free manner; the argument against this conclusion, of course,
is that comparatively few originals exist. There is, however, in the
British Museum a drawing of an Apollo by Dürer[14] on which are the
marks of a hard lead pencil, or metal point leaving a mark, used to
trace it, while the word "Apollo" in the mirror is written backwards.
On the other hand, in the old Herbals are cuts of the artist making his
drawing from nature, the draughtsman putting it on the block, and the
wood-cutter cutting it. When we come to engraving on metal, we find
that, though the wood-cutter need not have been an artist, he only
having to follow lines given him, or to make certain mechanical ones to
suit himself, the metal engraver was obliged to be an artist, because he
had to be able to copy the picture or design entrusted to him. But
mechanical aids were found for him too, with the result that the later
engravings on metals, as well as the old woodcuts, became the
productions of shops, in which certain parts were done by certain men,
and the real artist, whether he were draughtsman or engraver, had a
small share in the actual reproduction. The next stage was the entire
disappearance of the wood-cutter, when finally all books were
illustrated by means of steel and copper. With Bewick who, with a
graver, engraved his own designs on the end of the block, instead of
cutting them with a knife on the side of a plank, as everyone had
previously done,[15] there was introduced a new phase--the possibility
of drawing with a pen, or pencil, or brush, or wash, upon the whitened
surface of box-wood, a good medium, a design which should be absolutely
facsimiled by the engraver. The engravers of Bewick's time and until
about 1835 or 1840, being true artists and craftsmen, knew that their
business was to engrave the artist's design as accurately and carefully
as they could, since what the latter wanted was the absolute _facsimile_
of his work and none of their suggestions. But by the fifties, the
artist either had become wholly indifferent to the way in which his work
was engraved, or else he was absolutely under the thumb of the
engravers. His entire style, all his individuality, was sacrificed for
the benefit of the engraving shop, from which blocks after him were
turned out. The head of the firm whose signature they bore may never
have done a stroke of work on them. Even a man strong as Charles Keene
was completely broken up by this system, though he may not have realized
it. Artists were told that they must draw in such a way that the
engravers could engrave them with the least time, trouble, and expense.
Two attempts were made to escape from the wood-engraver who was again
endeavouring to reduce everything to a _facsimile_ of steel: by the use
of steel plates themselves, as in the case of the later editions of
Rogers' "Italy;" and also, by the practice of aquatint and lithography,
in France by such men as Gavarni and Daumier, and in England by Prout,
Roberts, Harding, Nash, and Cotman. But lithography in this country, as
a method of illustrating books and papers, never can be said to have
become very popular, though in France for years its employment was
general.
[13] There are two or three seventeenth-century drawings on
the wood at South Kensington, and some, I believe, in the
British Museum.
[14] On paper.
[15] At least, he was the first man to do important artistic
wood-engraving.
The art of wood-engraving was dying in the clutch of the engraver, when
an artless process came to its aid. For, at this crisis it was
discovered that a drawing made in any medium, upon any material, of any
size (so long as proportion was regarded), might be photographed upon
the sensitized wood-block in reverse. The importance of the discovery
will be appreciated when it is remembered that, before this, the poor
artist, if he were drawing the portrait of a place directly on the
block, was compelled to draw it the exact size it was to be engraved, to
reverse it himself, and to have his actual drawing destroyed by
engraving through it. Once photography was used, the drawing could be
made of any size, it was mechanically reversed, the original was
preserved, and the artist was free. Gone, however, according to the
engraver, was the engraver's art. It is true that the wood-chopper
disappeared: the man who could not draw a line himself, and yet would
pretend that his mechanical lines, made with a graver or ruling machine,
were more valuable than the artist's, and who had no hesitancy in
changing the entire composition of a subject if he did not like it. But
his disappearance was a great gain. In his place there arose the latest
school of wood-engravers. Many of the new were perhaps no better than
the old men, for not knowing how to draw, not being artists, they
directed their energies often to the meaningless elaboration of
unimportant detail. But at least this work could always be corrected,
now that the original drawing was preserved and could be compared with
the print from the engraved block.
[Illustration: BY M. E. EDWARDS. FROM GATTY'S "PARABLES" (BELL, 1867).]
[Illustration: BY G. DU MAURIER. FROM A WOOD-ENGRAVING. "THE ENGLISH
ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE."]
[Illustration: BY ARTHUR HUGHES. WOOD-ENGRAVING FROM GORDON HAKE'S
"PARABLES" (CHAPMAN AND HALL).]
In England, from 1860 to 1870 some very remarkable drawings were made
and engraved upon the block. During the years just before the
introduction of photography, Walker, Pinwell, Keene, Sandys, Shields,
and Du Maurier were illustrating. To a certain extent, they seem to
have insisted upon their work being followed. Between 1870 and 1880,
when the actual change was made from drawing on wood to drawing on
paper, even a larger number of men were at work. The "Graphic" and the
"Century" were founded, and enormous were the improvements in France and
Germany. But between 1880 and 1890 came the greatest development of all.
For these years saw the perfecting and successful practice of mechanical
reproduction: that is, the photographing of drawings in line upon a
metal plate or gelatine film, the biting of them in relief on this
plate, or the mechanical growth of a plate on the gelatine, resulting in
the production of a metal block which could be printed along with type.
This method of replacing the wood-engraver by a chemical agent has,
however, been the aim of every photographer since the time of Niepce,
who made the first experiments, while the process was patented by Gillot
on the 21st of March, 1850.[16] These ten years are also noted for the
invention of what is now generally known as the half-tone process: that
is the reproduction by mechanical means of drawings in wash, or in
colour, worked out in Europe by the Meisenbach process, in America by
the Ives method. In many ways wood-engraving as a trade or business has
been, it may be only temporarily, seriously damaged. However, in the
very short period since mechanical reproduction has been
introduced, those wood-engravers who really are artists have been doing
better work, because they can now engrave, in their own fashion, the
blocks they want to. The art of wood-engraving has progressed if the
trade has languished.
[16] In France the credit for the invention is given to Dr. Donné,
who, about 1840, discovered that certain acids could be used
to bite in the whites or the blacks of a daguerreotype. See
also French chapter.
The most modern of these developments are worthy of special notice both
in Europe and America. But before pointing out the changes and results
that have come from them, it may be well to say something about process.
Upon this subject there are two widely differing factions. It is not at
all curious that the artists, the men who practise the art of
illustration, should be found almost unanimously on one side, while the
critics, whose business it is to preach about an art of which they know
nothing in practice, are ranged upon the other. There are a few critics
of intelligence, who understand the requirements and limitations of both
process and wood-engraving, just as there are hack and superior
illustrators who neither know nor care anything about any form of
reproduction.
Many advantages are claimed for wood-engraving. The print from an
engraving on wood gives, it is said, a softer, richer, fuller impression
than the print from the mechanically engraved process block. But not in
one case out of a hundred thousand is the wood block itself printed
from: the illustration which delights the critics has, in reality, been
printed from a cast of the block made of exactly the same metal as the
cast from the process block, and the softness, the velvety quality, is
therefore due to the imagination of the critic who is unable to tell the
difference. Indeed, to distinguish between a mechanically produced block
and one engraved on wood, provided the subject of the drawing is
reasonably simple, is so difficult, that when neither of the blocks is
signed, no living expert on the subject would venture an off-hand
opinion. Between good _facsimile_ engraving and good process there is
really no difference at all, excepting in a few particulars. For in the
mechanically engraved process block, to use the ordinary term, the lines
made by the artist on paper, are photographed directly on to the metal
plate; these lines are protected by ink which is rolled upon them with
an ordinary ink roller, the sticky ink adhering to the lines of the
photograph, and nowhere else. This inked photograph is then placed in a
bath of acid, and the exposed portions are eaten away; the zinc or other
metal block is set up with a wooden back, type high, and is ready to
print from. The process is so ridiculously simple that it can be done in
a very few hours.
Process blocks for line work, and nearly always half-tone blocks, have
to be finished by a clever engraver especially employed for the purpose.
It is very hard for him, as it leaves him no chance for original work,
but in course of time it is hoped that the process will be so perfected
that the services of the engraver can be dispensed with. There are other
methods, such as that of using swelled gelatine, to produce the same
results, but the biting of zinc that I have described is the most
popular.
[Illustration: BY G. R. SEYMOUR. WOOD-ENGRAVING FROM "THE MAGAZINE OF
ART" (CASSELL).]
In the case of the wood-engraving, the drawing is photographed in the
same way on the wood block, but the engraver proceeds slowly, tediously,
and laboriously with his tools to cut away the wood and leave the lines
in relief. This requires an amount of devotion to painstaking drudgery
which is appalling. As many days will be given to the production of a
good wood-engraving, as hours are needed to produce a good process
block. The results obtained by a first-class wood-engraver on the one
hand, on the other by the first-class mechanical reproduction which is
always watched by a first-class man, may be so close as to be
indistinguishable. But there is no artistic gain in employing the
wood-engraver, while great artistic loss is involved, since the latter,
who can scarce enjoy doing this sort of thing, is compelled to waste his
time in competing with a chemical and mechanical combination which does
the work just as well; besides, there is as much difference in the cost
as in the methods themselves, a process block being worth about as many
shillings as the wood-engraving is pounds. As the results are equal, I
see no reason why the publisher should be called upon to pay this large
sum of money, unless he wishes to, simply for what is absolutely a fad.
I admit, however, that _facsimile_ engravings by the early Englishmen
and Frenchmen, and some of the Americans and Danes of the present day,
are worth quite as much money as is asked for them. But I am just as
certain that mechanical engravers will go on improving their mechanical
process until _facsimile_ wood-engravers are left in the rear. Ordinary
good process work, which can be printed with type, is, at the present
moment, equal to any _facsimile_ wood-engraving. The more elaborate
methods, such as the photogravure of Amand Durand, are infinitely
better, and only to be compared to etching.
[Illustration: BY SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES. FROM THE ORIGINAL DRAWING FOR
GATTY'S "PARABLES" (BELL, 1867).]
To contrast the mechanical reproductions of black and white wash, or
colour drawings with wood-engravings after them is, however, another
matter. Many drawings, owing to the medium in which they are done, will
not as yet reproduce well mechanically. Indeed, to have one's drawings
rendered satisfactorily, by the half-tone process, requires such an
enormous experience and knowledge of the improvements continuously being
made in the many different methods used by the different process men,
that the artist, if he kept posted in all the developments and
modifications, would have very little time left to produce works of art
of his own. On the other hand, the artist may admire the work of a
sympathetic wood-engraver whom he is delighted to trust with his
drawings: it is always a pleasure to see the translation of a good
drawing by a good wood-engraver. From the point of view of engraving,
nothing is more hopelessly monotonous than process; for the aim of the
process-man, as of some of the best wood-engravers, is to render the
drawing in wash, or in colour, so well, that there should be no
suggestion of the methods by which the results are obtained: to give the
drawing itself, and this is exactly, in the majority of cases, what the
artist wants. Naturally, he prefers an absolute reproduction of his
drawing, to somebody else's interpretation of it. He is not eager to
have another person interpret his ideas for the public; he would rather
the public should see what he has done himself with his own hands. This
reasonable desire process now begins to realize. By the half-tone
process, a photograph is made of a drawing with either a microscopically
ruled glass plate or screen in front of it, which breaks up the flat
tones into infinitesimal dots, or squares, or lozenges; or else, there
is impressed into the inked photo, in some one of a dozen ways, a dotted
plate which will give the same effect.[17] These dots, squares, or
lozenges lend a grain to the flat washes, translating them into
rectilinear relief, yielding a printing surface,--accomplishing, in a
word, the same end as the wood-engraver's translation of flat washes
into lines and dots. The great objection hitherto to half-tone process
has been, especially in large reproductions, that the squares or
lozenges produce a mechanical look which is entirely absent from a good
wood-engraving, the very essence of engraving being variety and,
therefore, interest in the lines drawn with the graver. The crucial
point, however, is this: even the greatest wood-engraver, in reproducing
a drawing made in tone, is forced to translate this tone by lines or
dots; in fact, instead of the wash, to give lines which do not exist in
the original drawing. Though he may be so clever as to succeed in
reproducing the actual values of the original, which he rarely does, he
has still entirely altered the original appearance of the work. The
object of the half-tone process is to give, not only these actual
values, so often missed by the engraver, but also the brush-marks and
the washy or painty look of the original, a result much further beyond
the powers of any wood-engraver, than beyond the possibilities of
process at the present day. It is said that process reproduction is but
a mechanical makeshift, and this is a term of reproach against it. But
it must be evident that wood-engraving, especially for the reproduction
of wash, and, in a less degree, of line drawings, is a far more
mechanical makeshift. There is no possible way in wood of representing
the wash, while in reproducing line on the block, at least two cuts are
required with the graver to get what the mechanical process gives at
once. Moreover, as soon as the line drawing becomes at all complicated,
it is impossible for the engraver to follow it on the wood block.
[17] This method, I believe, is no longer used.
Therefore, it seems to me that the strictures which have been applied to
process are far more applicable to wood-engraving. Now that
wood-engraving has become a medium for the reproduction of any and every
sort of design, it has stepped quite outside its proper province. Almost
anything can be done with a block of wood and a graver, but it must be
evident to people of average intelligence that a very great gulf
separates those things which possibly can be done, from those which
rationally should be attempted. Still, to-day any subject that can be
engraved on wood may be printed; and if one likes to try experiments,
why should he be stopped? The wood-engraver of to-day has been
compelled to suppress and efface himself. When he proposes to reproduce
another man's designs, if he is really a great wood-engraver, he
recognizes that his sole function is to render the original, faithfully
giving as much of the artist's handiwork as possible, and as little of
his own. That this must be to many a most galling and annoying position
is evident. But to rebel against it is absurd, and for the engraver to
tamper with an artist's original design is as unwarrantable as for an
editor to change an author's manuscript after the final proof has left
the writer's hands.
[Illustration: BY WALTER CRANE. PROCESS BLOCK FROM A WOOD-ENGRAVING BY
EDMUND EVANS, IN COLOURS IN "BEAUTY AND THE BEAST" (ROUTLEDGE).]
There have been two, or perhaps three, great periods of producing works
of art on the block. First, that of the old woodcuts, which were
undoubtedly great, though what the draughtsmen thought of them we shall
never really know. Secondly, the period of Bewick, who engraved his own
designs, and therefore was his own master, doing what he wanted. And
thirdly, to-day, the greatest revival of all. Mr. Timothy Cole, in his
interpretations of the old masters (though some of the painters whom he
has reproduced might object to certain things in his reproductions, they
could but admit that never before have such beautiful pictures been made
out of their own), has suggested one field for the artist who is a
wood-engraver; the creation of masterpieces in his own medium of the
painted masterpieces of other, or of his own time. Again, we have a man
like Mr. Elbridge Kingsley working directly from nature, and producing
the most amazing and interesting results; or M. Lepère, who is engraving
his own designs exactly as Bewick did, or else giving us those
marvellous originals in colour, only equalled by the Japanese who, for
ages, have been masters among wood-cutters; or Mr. Kreull, who is doing
marvellous portraits on the block.
With so broad a scope at its service in the hands of artists,
wood-engraving is not in the slightest danger. With the added
possibilities of making new experiments, such as printing from lowered
blocks, reviving chiaroscuro, and an infinitude of other processes open
to the artistic wood-engraver, there is no probability of its becoming a
lost art. I have nothing but the highest praise for the work of men like
Cole, Kingsley, Gamm, French Jüngling, Baude, Kreull, Florian,
Hendriksen, Bork, Hooper, and Biscombe Gardner. This modern _facsimile_
wood-engraving is magnificent in its way, and is quite as legitimate and
decorative as any of the old work, only process is bound to supersede
the greater part of it. Wood-engraving has survived the mediæval
mechanical limitations which were imposed upon it by the primitiveness
of the printing-press, but which have been made into its chief merits.
It has survived the ghastly period immediately succeeding Bewick, when
the sole end of the engravers on wood was to imitate the engraver on
steel or on copper. It has survived the stage of the shop run by a
clever business-man who merged the individuality of all his artists and
engravers into that of his own firm. It has survived the backing of Mr.
Linton, which at one time threatened to kill it entirely. And the strain
put upon it by magazine-editors and book-publishers has been relieved
by the intervention of mechanical process.
[Illustration: BY KATE GREENAWAY. KEY BLOCK WOOD-ENGRAVED BY EDMUND
EVANS FOR COLOUR PRINTING. FROM "MOTHER GOOSE" (ROUTLEDGE).]
I believe that it will continue and flourish as an original art, side by
side with process, until it runs against another of the snags or
quicksands which every half century seem to imperil it. Still, at the
present moment, its artistic outlook is very bright,--so also is that of
process.
[Illustration: DETAIL OF "THE DENTATUS" ENGRAVED ON WOOD BY HARVEY,
AFTER HAYDON.]
[Illustration: BY E. ISABEY. FROM "PAUL AND VIRGINIA." Engraved
by Slader.]