_ILLUSTRATIVE ART: PAST AND PRESENT_
[Illustration: I]T is not my purpose, nor is it within my province as an
artist and illustrator, to give the history of illustrative art, with
its rise and development; I leave that side of the subject to such
masters as William Andrew Chatto, Austin Dobson, and David Croal
Thomson, with the other specialists who devote themselves to the
historical as well as the critical qualities of artists, past and
present.
My present intention is to write as a workman about the work he is
constantly engaged upon. I wish to describe the qualities of the
different illustrators as they have impressed and influenced my work,
trusting that in this I have a fair, open, and useful field before me.
I approach the subject with the greatest diffidence, because, when a man
begins to analyse his own particular work, he occupies the peculiar
position of being his own critic, and must either make a sacrifice of
his feelings--i.e. his vanity, and natural desire to cover up his
weaknesses and pose only on his few strong parts,--for, of course, every
man who has had experience must know in his inmost consciousness his
strength and failings (although it may not always be advisable to reveal
the knowledge even to himself, far less to his critical friends),--or
else be ruthless and strip himself bare for the benefit of those coming
after him.
If I were only a critic, I could enter the lists in a jocund spirit and
tilt away right and left as critics mostly do, satisfied that no one
could pierce my armour and place me _hors de combat_; but when a knight
goes to the tournament with armour a little worse designed than many of
the coats of mail he is facing, or, at least, when he is aware of the
sad fact, he does not ride forth so joyfully.
Nevertheless I shall endeavour, as far as possible, to lay aside my
_amour propre_ for the sake of my readers and give them the benefit of
my experience, even although I may be wounded badly while I am doing so.
I take a few of the illustrated books which lie handiest to me at this
moment, and make them the text for my remarks, which, as I have already
said, I intend to make strictly practical rather than historical;
therefore, I shall only touch upon illustrative work in the more
distant past in so far as it may apply to the canons which I have laid
down for myself to follow, and no further.
An illustrated book, to be perfect, ought to have nothing intrusive
about it; no single picture ought to assert itself unduly, and so make
the text with the other illustrations appear mean, washy, or weak. If
the keynote struck is to be rugged strength, let there be no incongruity
of super-refined and delicate lines; let the text be bold and assertive
enough to suit the quality of the illustrations from the title-page to
the end, so that the reader's eye may get accustomed at once to take a
distant view of the whole, and not have to push the book back from him
to arm's length on the one page, and bring it close to his eyes at the
next. Books are like pictures, or ought to be--either gallery works, or
produced for the cabinet; either to be admired from the distance, or
else examined with a microscopic lens.
[Illustration: ST. CHRISTOPHER]
A coarsely painted picture requires a strongly designed frame; a book
with coarse or strong effects in its illustrations also requires a
strong text, deep head-lines, massive headings and title-page, and
ornate binding; and to see the full beauty of this, and how perfect is
the harmony of the lettering and edge-lines, I can only refer my readers
to one of the earliest of wood engravings--the 'St. Christopher,' dated
1423 (original in the possession of Earl Spencer).[14] This seems to me
a very perfect specimen of what ought to be, in quality and just
balance. The drawing is in outline, massive and decided all through,
without a single unnecessary line; the descriptive lettering is
black-letter with broad band round it. In its present position, in the
centre of the modern text, it suggests two ideas--either that it is too
coarse for its present surroundings, or else that the text is too fine;
therefore, to be seen to proper advantage it ought to be enclosed in a
black-letter text. Contrast this as to general harmony with the two
_reduced_ copies of outline work on page 72 in the same work; here the
illustrations, although bold in the original, by reason of the
reduction, have been brought more into unity with the modern type. You
can see both pictures and text in the first glance without any extra
effort, whereas in the 'St. Christopher' page, the picture intrudes
itself, and almost requires to be covered before the reader can enjoy or
settle down to the text. Of course, in a work of this kind, where
different specimens of engraving must be shown, the authors have no
choice in the matter, and perfect unity cannot be studied.[15]
[Illustration: HISTORY OF THE VIRGIN MARY]
Looking over these old engravings, one cannot help being struck, not
only with the boldness and decision of the technique, but also with the
consummate restraint and knowledge of effect displayed by the worker.
Perhaps amongst our modern living men Walter Crane is the only artist
who exhibits a similar courage and grasp of the essentials. (See his
'Queen Summer,' published by Cassell & Co., for some of the best and
most characteristic work he has yet given to the public in book form.)
The next stage in illustrative art which we have to mention is where
cross-hatching has been introduced, to give depth and richness to the
shadows. The earliest style of work shows only outlines, which are in
many cases to be preferred to more elaborate work, particularly when
inserted with the text; after this, shadows are suggested by single
lines, as in the specimens which I have quoted.
Cross-hatching appears to have been used first in the year 1486, in a
frontispiece to the Latin edition of 'Breydenbach's Travels,' which was
printed at Mentz by Erhard Reuwich. The name of the artist is not
known--a sample of modesty characteristic of the early inventors; for
the work upon this plate is as beautiful and elaborate as it is unique
at this early date. With the introduction of cross-hatching, used at
first directly, horizontally and perpendicularly, we get the _feeling_
of colour and tone in illustrative work which are its most pronounced
features at the present day. In this we have advanced, and are still
advancing, day by day to a perfection of feebleness, with lack of
distinctive character and force. In outline drawing we have not improved
since the close of the fifteenth century--to wit, the Poliphili of 1499,
where the lines are perfectly modulated to suggest light edges and
shadows.
[Illustration: ALBERT DÜRER'S APOCALYPSE]
We next come to the beautiful work of Albert Dürer, where he uses the
cross-hatching diagonally, as it is executed at the present day, with
broken lines and dots, where such were required. In fact, this rare
artist seems to have had all the tricks of the trade at his command, and
to have paused at no device in order to gain his effect. I shall not
describe any of his work here, as it is sufficiently well known, with
the influence it brought to bear upon illustrative art generally.
When taking up the practical side of an art, it is only a waste of time
to enumerate all the different workers who may have left their own
particular, if not always very prominent, marks in the pages of its
history. I would rather call attention, in the short space at my
disposal, to the men identified with the different great epochs, such as
the unknown outline workers, the men who aimed at tone and colour,
dating distinctly from the time of Albert Dürer; the distinctive
chiaro-oscuro workers, amongst whom I would exemplify Rembrandt; the
purely tone artists such as Turner, the grotesque in Hogarth and
Cruikshank; and next take our modern men who carry on the art at the
present day, and exemplify a few such prominent workers as Small,
Parsons, Barnard, and Abbey, although the army of first-class
illustrators is so large at the present day that it becomes a difficult
and ungracious task for me to mention names at all.
The different stages of progression in illustrative art may be broadly
defined after this fashion: the time when artists drew directly on the
wood with pencil or pen only, and engravers followed their hard lines;
the date when bold effects with Indian ink and Chinese white were
introduced, and engravers were permitted to use their own lines, and so
became liberated from the trammels, and could first lay claim to being
original artists, as well as the men who drew the designs which they
cut; the last and most satisfactory stage, when photography stepped in
and became the umpire between artist and engraver.
In the first stage the engraver was a mechanic pure and simple, unless
he drew his own design, or could take the liberty of improving upon the
artist's lines. If, however, it was an experienced artist, the engraver
simply copied, and did not trouble himself to think much, so long as he
got his lines out clean. In the second stage, when he had wash drawings
on the block, there was seldom any appeal from the artist; he had, it is
true, the option of lightening up his picture on the proof and saving
his reputation somewhat by making a few bold and hard lights where his
other effect had been lost; but this was all that was left to him,
because _his original drawing_ had been cut up.
[Illustration: BY CHRISTOPHER JEGHER, AFTER RUBENS]
Now the original drawing is seldom destroyed; it stands to the bitter
end, and settles any disputes between engraver and artist, because the
engraver works only upon a photograph from the original sketch, and has
it all along beside him to work from as a copy as well as to confute him
if he is a bungler, which is a right and proper state of things; for now
the indifferent artist cannot flatter himself or steal the reputation of
the skilful engraver, and the unqualified engraver cannot lay his faults
on the shoulders of the artist; each tub must stand upon its own bottom.
After Albert Dürer, with his delicacy and finish, as well as
spirituality and suggestiveness, we come to Rembrandt as the most
perfect master of chiaro-oscuro that the world has produced. At the
present day we cannot hope to surpass him; we are satisfied if we
approach somewhat near to his matchless gradations, depth of shadow, and
lustre.
There was considerably over a century between these two influences; but
it was a progressive century, as the numerous book-plates throughout
Europe can show. The school of Dürer gave the illustrator the first real
hint about colour; Rembrandt showed how much power may be had out of a
flat surface.
From Rembrandt to Bewick the merits of the different book plates vary.
Nature, however, did not occupy much room in their calculations. Bewick
was, perhaps, our first great realist, for all his studies were drawn
uncompromisingly from the object itself. Before his advent the
illustrators, like the novelists, were content to interest their
audience; but after Bewick it was found necessary to study accuracy as
well as sentiment and effect, and this we continue and try to improve
upon at the present day.
Hogarth, as an illustrator, gave a turn to art which it had not before.
It is always a pleasant thought to me, as a native of Britain, that,
while looking towards Germany and Holland for our early inspiration in
illustrative art, we must return to our own shores once again for its
revival, to Hogarth, Bewick, and Turner, with Constable (as a painter),
for the apostles of that realism, suggestiveness, and satire with which
the other nations now strive to lead off. As in literature, so in art,
we were the original creators of those styles, to acquire which our
students now go to France and Belgium.
Shakespeare made Goethe, Schiller, Hugo, and Zola. Constable and Turner
created the modern French school of Impressionists; Bewick the realistic
draughtsmen; Hogarth the satirists of the pencil. We may be a heavy
nation and apt to take a joke sadly, yet we have had our humourists also
who have been appreciated by other nations as well as by their own, and
perhaps a little more so.
Amongst modern men--that is, comparatively modern men--who have had a
great influence in book pictures, I would mention, in landscape art,
Turner as the first; in caricature, Cruikshank; and in general force of
black and white, Doré. These three, I think, I may safely place as
having the greatest influence in their different walks.
Turner I now quote as the most imitated painter and illustrator that
ever lived, which is about the surest test of his individuality that can
be given. Individualism as well as mannerism, alas! for the main body of
the imitators could pick up only the mannerisms, without getting one
touch of the genius which made him great--those bald sunlight effects
which somehow remind us after a grotesque and wearisome fashion of the
master whom they have vainly attempted to follow. How often have we
taken up a volume of steel engravings in the half light, thinking that
we had found a collection of Turner's works, until we brought them to
the light and realised our mistake at one stunning instant! The
invention and poetry were totally lacking, the effect dry and empty, and
the design meaningless.
Ruskin is quite right to go into raptures over the great genius of
Turner, and in this he shows his own perception of true poetic power,
inasmuch as he makes a mistake in overestimating Creswick's
black-and-white work; but that he should close his eyes to the glaring
faults of Turner, or rather, that he should call these faults virtues,
is simply reducing the weight of his critical influence until it is not
worth using. If he _will_ hold up for praise blemishes which even the
most ignorant can see for themselves, how is it possible for them to set
him up for a guide in matters which lie beyond their knowledge?
The tree work in most of Turner's illustrations and pictures is not
drawn from nature, and the trees have no natural characteristic about
them--in fact, they are monstrosities in the vegetable sense, and no
preacher in the world, no matter how eloquently he may discourse, would
be able to convince a gardener that these are the correct sort of trees
for these landscapes, or that the pictures would not have been improved
by properly-drawn trees in place of these unnatural monstrosities; and,
like the realistic gardener, I must also say that Mr. Ruskin could never
convince me that a single breath of the poetry would have been lost had
Turner drawn real instead of imaginary trees.
His ships are not the kind of craft which practical seamen would care to
venture beyond the harbour-bar in, if they even cared to risk their
lives so far to sea, although they may look very nice and picturesque to
a landsman's eye. Stanfield was a much more correct painter of ships,
in spite of all that Mr. Ruskin may have written to the contrary, as any
sailor could tell him; and, therefore, I contend that the drawings and
paintings of Turner would not have lost any of their poetic charm even
although he had tried a little more to please the sailors, and given to
them ships in which they might have been able to sail and fight.
At times, also, in spite of his exquisite drawing, his architectural
work is not beyond reproach, and may be pecked at by a very immature and
even budding professor of that exact science; yet in this department his
faults are trivial compared to his frailties in other departments.
The shapeless dolls which he introduced and so often crowded into his
compositions (with a few exceptions) are simply atrocious, and would not
have been tolerated from an inferior artist. In his illustrative work he
is seen at his very worst in this respect; witness most of the plates in
Moore's 'Epicurean,' the 'Rivers of France' series, &c.
But in his effects he stands unapproachable,--in his dreamy delicacy and
subtlety, his skies and water and aerial perspective,--in his
suggestiveness, multiplicity of detail and complete unity of the many
parts in one harmonious whole: the colour with which his
black-and-whites are invested is so thorough that any artist can define
each tint with which he would have coloured his black-and-whites, or
what he used in the sketches from which so many of his illustrations
were made.
For these great qualities Mr. Ruskin could not indeed praise him too
extravagantly, for these raised him leagues above any other landscapist,
before or after him, and might well excuse any other faults in detail;
but for all that, no critic has a right to extol in one artist what he
would justly condemn in any other.
His direct influence on illustrative art made a distinct epoch in this
branch. Artists no longer stuck to the hard-and-fast laws which had
curtailed them before; they became suggestive and poetic, and no longer
confined themselves to the stationary effects of mid-day, when objects
are seen photographically, but gave their pictures the atmosphere which
they so often lacked before. Turner is the father of the suggestive and
impressionist schools, and perhaps one of the ablest of his modern
disciples is Alfred Parsons, an artist who has had the genius to pick
out the best of his master without taking any of his faults; he has
imbibed the poetry and discarded the extravagance, and never in his most
dreamy effect does he lose his grip of nature. For the truth of my
remarks I would ask you to study two illustrations which lie handy to me
at this moment, where the effects are somewhat similar: the 'Rouen'
(from the Seine) by J. M. W. Turner; and 'Still Glides the Stream and
Shall for Ever Glide' (the River Duddon), by Alfred Parsons, which was
engraved in Vol. 75 of 'Harper's Magazine.'
I would now select a few of the illustrations from the most modern of
our artists and books to show how these lessons of Turner have been
utilised in the best sense at the present day, along with that rigid
adherence to nature which is one of the most prominent characteristics
of the nineteenth century, an exactitude for which we as artists are
indebted to the revelations of photography perhaps more than to any
advance in our own personal knowledge of nature, for I dare say the
artists of past times looked as lovingly and as keenly at nature as we
do to-day, only that they had no realistic camera to put them right in
their impressions, as we now have.
We know from the camera how a lightning-flash really looks, what a horse
is like when at full speed, the different actions of a bird's wing when
flying, the true shape of each wave in a storm, also the swing of
drapery in a high wind, and how men and women really appear when
excited; for before the days of instantaneous photography the painter
was apt to be deceived, and take as one several motions and effects.
When speaking of the direct influence of a great inventive genius like
Turner's or Constable's, I may point to works which do not bear the
smallest resemblance to their style and mannerisms; for instance, I may
point out a piece of work marked by all the characteristics of the
modern Flemish or French schools, or I may point to the work of a
figure-painter, and quote him as a conscious or unconscious follower of
Turner or Constable. It is very likely that the artist has gone to
France or Holland for his own art finish; nevertheless, those schools
which gave him his finish borrowed their own manipulative qualities from
either or both these rival painters.
In the new illustrated edition of 'Lorna Doone'--that masterpiece of
Blackmore's--I notice nine or ten Devonshire landscapes which are more
distinctly Turneresque than many of the modern books exhibit. They are
drawn as a rule with fidelity to nature, and engraved with sympathetic
tenderness, perhaps in some cases too tenderly and over-finished for the
purpose and effect. The most imitative and to me the least satisfactory
effect is 'Watchet on a Regatta Day'; the best, as far as sky-work is
concerned, is 'Dunkerry Beacon Fire.'
In this same volume W. Small exhibits his powers at their full strength
in his colossal figures, startling effects, rich shadows, and tender
backgrounds; the last picture of all simply swims in the colour and
lustre of mid-day.
C. W. Wyllie is another free and faithful worker who has had the best of
Turner and Constable measured out to him in a French fashion, as most of
our modern English work is fashioned. Davidson Knowles displays this
also in his dreamy suggestive work; William Hatherell, too; with a host
of others whom I cannot mention for want of space.
The modern tone or wash work, as exhibited in the 'American Magazine,'
'The Century,' 'Harper's,' 'Scribner's,' and in 'The Magazine of Art,'
shows the effect of Turner more and more every day. Fortunately the hard
and laborious reign of steel engraving is over; as, I think, nothing can
be more unsuitable to book illustrations than steel engraving, and
nothing more suitable than a first-class woodcut, when carefully mounted
and clearly printed. The steel is always hard and metallic, whereas the
wood gives all the tone and colour of the drawing; and now that we have
the numerous process inventions to reproduce pen-and-ink drawings, and
so give all the characteristics of the artist, it becomes only a waste
of time and money to employ an engraver of any talent to produce any
other kind of work except tone drawing; and as for the indifferent
workmanship which might have satisfied the public before the advent of
such magazines and papers as 'The Graphic,' 'Black and White,' 'The
English Illustrated Magazine,' 'The Magazine of Art,' with the American
works already mentioned, and others of the same class, the less
expensive process work, such as I generally use in my own books, is
infinitely to be preferred.
In speaking of George Cruikshank as an illustrator, I do not refer to
his qualities as a caricaturist, as those are sufficiently well known
from the numerous works he has left behind him, and of which some of the
finest specimens may be possessed for a few shillings by anyone so
desirous, in the re-issue of his 'Comic Almanack' published by Chatto &
Windus, where in the two bulky volumes may be had this artist's best
work during the best eighteen years of his art life.
It is his delicate outline and etching qualities that I would call
attention to, which have influenced the pen-and-ink workers of the
present day. Most of his designs were done on copper, but in a few cases
he worked for the engravers, and these do not show up so satisfactorily.
Indeed, although I believe it to be a law with 'Punch's' proprietors to
have all their pen-work engraved on wood, and thus keep to the old
traditions; artistically speaking, I think they are wrong, and suffer
accordingly, now that zincography is able to give the artist's work line
for line, with less of his delicate work lost and none of his
characteristics destroyed, as must be the case in many instances, even
with the finest wood-engraver. Indeed, I would rather have some of the
best work as given sometimes in 'Ally Sloper's Half Holiday' and
'Pick-me-up,' pure and simple as it is, than I would have the
wood-engraving imitations of pen-work in our national comic leader,
'Punch.'
'Punch,' as a high-class paper, appeals to a certain and select order of
readers, but in the sense that Cruikshank was comic it is not at all
funny. 'Ally Sloper' is the only paper of the present day to whom the
peculiar genius of the old caricaturists has descended; his Hogarthian
satire and Rabelaisian humour is, in this much-illustrated weekly paper,
reproduced in modernised costume and surroundings. Parisian nattiness
and smartness blend with the broad buffoonery with which Cruikshank
delighted his audience of the past generation. We are not so simple in
our tastes (more is the pity); therefore, instead of the horseplay of
the clown and harlequin, we have Tootsie Sloper and her erratic but
impecunious and disreputable parent, with her own Frivolity friends to
disport themselves through the pages; yet, inasmuch as 'The Comic
Almanack' faithfully held up, in its own particularly good-natured way,
the weaknesses and follies of the day in which it was produced, so does
this happy-go-lucky paper exhibit the froth of ours.
Ally Sloper is a distinct creation, as I may say also the Elder McNab
is; and as the first hits off the shady cockney, so, as a Scotchman, I
must own to the grotesque fidelity of the latter. For the past twenty
years I have watched the natural progress of the old humbug, Ally, and
at the present day can read about his ever-varied doings with
undiminished pleasure. To continue such a character without wearying old
readers for twenty years is, to me, the surest test of his vitality.
Like Rembrandt, Cruikshank's correctness of drawing might be objected
to, yet, like that other great master of the needle, no one could
surpass him in his knowledge of chiaro-oscuro and balancing of parts;
but it is in the subtlety of his lines, and the expression which he was
able to give with the least labour, that he stands unapproachable. At
the present day those who admire the dexterity with which Mr. Harry
Furniss can cram in multitudes of characters into his cartoons for
'Punch,' may only look at one of the crowded scenes on a small scale,
such as 'Lord Mayor's Day' in Cruikshank's 'Comic Almanack,' to see
where the inspiration comes from.
Before the revolution which photography caused in illustrative art, that
wonderful native of Strasburg, Gustave Doré, burst upon the art world
like a flaming meteor, and gave quite a turn to artists and engravers.
Before his coming, draughtsmen had worked on a white ground with a thin
first wash, afterwards hatching up the details with a four or six H
pencil; but Doré, in his frantic hurry to produce his exuberant fancies,
discarded all these slow methods, and used a black ground with a few
dashes of light and half-tone to express himself, as in some of his
Inferno scenes, or a thin wash of light grey and some lighter touches,
as in his Paradise pictures.
For example, 'The Vision of Death,' for flimsy yet immensely clever
touches of half-light and high-light on a jet-black block: here the
figure of Death with his scythe sits astride a reinless horse, with
figures of dragons, angels, and demons coming after him like vultures on
the wing.
This is one of the most effortless yet best balanced pictures in his
collection. As Doré worked, I should say he produced this conception in
about half an hour, if not less. The figures are rushing along pell-mell
amongst dark rolling clouds, and the artist has been in a similar hurry.
It is extravagant and theatrical, as all his work was, and sketchy in
the extreme: but it is about as good a sample as I can call attention to
for this description of art.
Doré's system was an extremely simple one, and straightforward. He fixed
on a single light, and set to gathering as much shadow about it as
possible,--a broad light, in which he placed as many of his characters
as he could cram,--and then set to fill out the shadows with as much
detail as he could cram into them; for a sample of this, see his 'The
Prince in the Banqueting Hall' (I quote from Cassell's Doré Gallery),
'The Mouth of Hell,' 'The Gathering of the Waters,' &c. &c. The
composition is of the same naïve character throughout most of his weird
and fantastic conceptions.
The workmanship, compared with the artistic work of to-day, is
atrociously coarse and unsatisfactory, although it suited his original
and fevered genius as no other style of work could have done. He flung
out his imaginings with a lavish hand, after the manner in which Rubens
painted many of his pictures, and he could not wait to finish off; yet,
take him all in all, he gave an impulse to book-plate work such as no
other illustrator had given before him, and made the workers coming
after him more courageous and less afraid of their masses.
In his Francesca groups, however, we have not this reproach to make
against him, and as for the drawing from which his masterpiece was
painted, or which was drawn from his picture, we can only stand and
admire. This is a perfect poem, and lifts his pencil from the ruck of
his other wreckage as much as the few exquisite lines which relate that
romantic episode rise out of the dreary monotony and catalogue of woes
which the Italian poet Dante treats us to in his faulty Inferno.
This Doré Gallery is not the book I would recommend a young artist to
have beside him as a guide unless he has been cramping his hand and mind
over such examples as Bewick; yet to anyone getting too finicky in his
work a brief study of Doré will do the same good that a short course of
scene-painting will do the landscape-painter; it will set him free, and
give him a little more 'go.' In such pictures as 'Samson destroying the
Philistines' he will learn how to make a vast crowd on a small scale as
well as, if not better than, from any other source.
Doré worked always at a furious pace and without much meditation; his
memory was so retentive that he could reproduce, or rather translate,
whatever he once looked upon. I believe he took no notes or sketches,
but trusted to his wonderful memory entirely. I have been told that he
went through Spain when preparing for his 'Don Quixote' at express
speed; that he painted his 'Christian Martyr' picture in six hours, and
did not retouch it. Salvator Rosa did the same with his work, painted a
picture between daylight and dark, and composed a poem when the lamps
were lit.
Doré could not paint directly from the model or from nature, as all true
artists ought to do, or else _force themselves_ to do. A student of mine
was once sketching outside when Doré came upon him and asked to have a
try at his sketch. My pupil was working in oil at the time, and, in
about five minutes after Doré had taken the brushes in his hand, he
returned them (with the oil and turpentine running down the handles, and
the canvas in a hopeless mess) with an impatient groan. When a boy I met
him once in London and raised him to the seventh heaven of delight by my
enthusiasm over his 'Christ leaving the Prætorium.' Doré never ceased
being a boy; but he was a very extravagant youngster.
What an overpowering crowd of lions he gives us in his 'Strange Nations
slain by the Lions of Samaria'! There were enough in that circumscribed
space to demolish an empire, almost as many lions as the 'Daily Graphic'
correspondent, the daring 'Randolph,' encountered during his late trip
to Africa: 'The glade appeared to be alive with them.'
Doré drew directly on the wood, as did all artists of his time, and as I
also did when I commenced illustrative work, and by his example taught
us brush-work instead of laborious pencil-work--_i.e._ we _painted_ our
subject, with perhaps the exception of a few finishing touches with a
fine brush, on to the block, choosing a light or dark tone for the
groundwork, as the subject required; and the less we did in the way of
finish, or rather pencil strokes, the better the engraver liked our work
and the better he worked himself. It is eighteen years ago since I did
my last drawing directly on the wood, and I for one was not sorry when
photography did this part of the work for me, for after that I could
work as I had been accustomed to do with my sketches, on paper and
cardboard.
To Mr. Bolton is due the honour of being the inventor of printing by
photography on to the wood, and this invention of his gave the biggest
push forward to book-work that it ever had.
Formerly when an artist had to paint his subject on the block, he was
forced to hold his brush and not lay on too much colour, or else the
engraver could not cut through his crust of Chinese white without danger
of taking off large scales. He had also to be careful not to wet the
block too much, as that would spoil it. The block sucked in the moisture
like blotting paper if he painted thinly; so that this, with a hundred
other troubles, curbed his dash very seriously.
Now we can pile on the paint as much as ever we like to get up our
effect, and leave adroit brush marks all over our original. The good
engraver likes the bold dash and characteristic brush-work of the
painter, and I must say he imitates it with rare skill and sympathy. The
photographic print on his block reproduces all these eccentricities of
the artist, and gives the appearance of the lumpy lights without
troubling the engraver to cut through any crust, for the film on the
block is infinitesimal in thickness. He works away at that film without
any unnecessary vexation, with the double advantage of having the
artist's sketch before him to study from as he goes along; the result of
all this being that the public have the opportunity of comparing the
artist's original work with the engravings, when they are shown in
exhibitions; and also the benefit of purchasing the original sketches
for their smoking-rooms or libraries; while the publisher or artist has
the decided advantage of being able to get some more money for the
designs, instead of having them totally destroyed by the engraver's
chisel--a boon all round which we owe to Mr. Bolton and his timely
invention.
I have often been asked how a book ought to be illustrated, and I wish
now to answer that question to the best of my artistic ability.
When a tradesman, a plumber for instance, is asked by a foolish
proprietor how many pipes he ought to lay on to his new property, it
would not be unnatural if even the honestest of that mysterious craft
were to reply, 'As many as you can afford, sir; the more the better!'
Perhaps I ought to go on that safe rule also; but as a foolish artist,
with a rigid sense of propriety, I must sink my own interest and regard
the book only as something outside myself.
My opinion is, that if a book is to be illustrated with more than a
frontispiece and vignette, it ought to be illustrated thoroughly
throughout. It ought to be an _édition de luxe_, or else a book with
only a frontispiece and vignette.
I think that every book bound in cloth ought to have a frontispiece at
least; if possible, also a vignette for the title-page. When I publish a
book I always try to persuade my publishers to go to this expense.
If it is a novel of a sensational or exciting nature it does not require
any more. The tasteful reader, when he takes up a book, likes to be
introduced to it with a well-drawn, finely-executed frontispiece; he
naturally looks at that first because it opens first to him.
He lingers for a space over that frontispiece, and is either attracted
or repelled by it. If it is a bald, commonplace group of figures,
without action or sentiment, something that he is in the habit of seeing
on every hand, if he is artistic or romantic he will be indebted to that
frontispiece; for, taking that as an index to the character of the work,
if he does not want commonplace, he will lay it down respectfully and
seek out some other amusement.
If the frontispiece has been drawn by a sympathetic artist, the interest
of the reader is touched straight off and he turns next to the
title-page.
Here he may find something to linger over, a dreamy vignette _à la_
Turner, or an artistic commonplace which may suit his purpose. I prefer,
as a book collector and a member of the Ex-Libris Society, a vignette
either quaint and unique, or else one dreamy, soft, and suggestive,
something of the style of the best editions of Sir Walter Scott, or of
the old world of art, such as Walter Crane can give us, or a delicious
Birket Foster, a Turner, or a Bewick; something which will tempt us,
providing the binding is good enough, to paste our book-plate inside
the cover and put it tenderly among the other kind friends of our
solitude on our shelves, _after_ we have read it--something, in fact,
which may tempt us to order from the publishers a special copy bound in
morocco, so that we may honour the artist who has delighted our eyes, as
Esther did Ahasuerus.
As a good man who has gained an audience by a favourable introduction I
would leave the author to do the rest. When once the reader has started
on the story, he (the reader) does not feel grateful for any
distraction. If the book is worth reading he wants to get right on with
it without any interruption; if, however, it fails to interest him, he
will lay it down after a few chapters and most likely send it on to some
friend, or lend it out, or bestow it upon some charitable institution,
or sell it with other works of the same kind to a second-hand
bookseller.
In a scientific work or a book treating on special subjects which
strictly require illustrations, so that the reader and author may be _en
rapport_, the illustrations may be few or many as the text requires.
This may be left to the author and the publisher entirely, because the
reader lays aside his artistic sense of unity for the sake of the
information he requires.
A properly illustrated book should be illustrated on every page. My
ideal of such a book is to have to every chapter a head and tail piece,
with marginal designs, running up and down wherever the text appears, in
pen-and-ink or etching, for I hold that only outline drawing can
harmonise with type as highly ornamental as possible. No tone-drawing
should ever be introduced where type appears; but each chapter or poem
ought to be separated by a full-page plate in tone, wood-engraving if
possible, or the best process tone-work.
As much attention should be paid to the index and fly-leaves as to the
other portions, whilst the binding should be in perfect harmony.
So the _édition de luxe_ will be looked at and admired with the
respectful care shown to a lady at a ball, while the book with
frontispiece and vignette will be fondled over as affectionate husbands
ought to fondle their well-dressed, but not over-dressed, wives.
[Illustration: A PANEL OF BLACK AND GOLD]