rejuvenated and refined the mishandled and discredited woodcut, by
substituting cross-grained blocks of boxwood and the graver, for
planks and the knife--was championed in America by Dr. Alexander
Anderson. None of the early American wood-engravers were endowed with
great artistic gifts, but ere long the steady demand by publishers
brought to the fore men of acknowledged ability. Their achievements
are plentifully illustrated in books and magazines; the “Still-life
with the Peacock,” engraved by W. J. Linton, a well-known writer on
wood-engraving, is reproduced here as a reminder of their skill.
Originally the tendency of wood-engraving, or white-line engraving, as
it is sometimes called, had been to obtain effects by white lines (the
natural expression of the graver on the black surface of the block) and
by black and white masses. As the wood-engraver grew proficient in
his technique, he widened his field by imitating the effect of etching
or engraving on copper, in rivalry with this form of illustration.
In this he succeeded so well that the other, more expensive modes of
adornment were largely driven from the field of book illustration.
With the advent of photography, the design could be fixed upon the
wood block mechanically, accurately, without the trouble of a careful
drawing. The values of tone in the photograph relieved the engraver
from the work of translating color-values into black and white. The
blending half-tones of the photograph invited close imitation, and
thus _tone-engraving_ developed, with its masses of fine lines, close
together, merging into tone. Beautiful results were achieved in this
way by men like Jüngling, French, Timothy Cole, Wolf, and many other
engravers; but soon the human hand was dispossessed altogether by
the half-tone plate which makes the photographic image printable by
mechanical means alone.
[Illustration: STILL-LIFE WITH THE PEACOCK
Wood-engraving. W. J. Linton]
The great European revival of etching extended to the United States in
the seventies. It proved a fruitful period, with names like the Morans,
Ferris, Farrar, Duveneck, Charles Platt, and many others which might
be mentioned. The vogue of etching, it will be remembered, was short
because mediocrities soon glutted the market and sent purchasers to
other fields for a while. Interest in the process has awakened again of
late, but that is matter of too recent date to be discussed in these
few pages.
X
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
From a survey of prints in their varying national aspects, we have
arrived now at that vast period of an art increasingly cosmopolitan,
the nineteenth century. In these last hundred years nationality has
blended together to a great extent; travel is not the serious matter
of former times, a pastime rather than a venture; all races have
intermingled in the great world-centers; students from far and near
congregate in the centers of art. All these factors, and many others,
contribute in making artistic expression individual, less and less
national in character. No sudden phase, this, rather an insensible
general trend toward individuality as the great requisite in an
artist’s work. The masterpieces of the fine arts had been interpreted
by means of prints since the sixteenth, and especially since the
advent of the “classical” engravers in the eighteenth, century. The
increasing number of these reproductive prints made it ever easier for
an artist to acquaint himself, in a way, with the great achievements
of the past. Finally photography, and in its wake the photo-mechanical
processes, brought a flood of exact documents invaluable for study, a
lure to imitation for the unimaginative or indolent, a spur to the real
artist, helpful in forming his own powers.
[Illustration: PLATE FROM THE BOOK OF JOB
William Blake]
Individuality seems the keynote of the nineteenth century; hence it
may be as well not to bind ourselves to headings and subdivisions,
but rather to roam at large through this enormous sphere. Goya, of
whom we spoke in a preceding chapter, belongs here by right, and with
Fortuny forms the Spanish contingent in the new awakening of the
graphic arts. In England there lived, about the turn of the century, a
visionary poet and great artist, William Blake, who fluently expressed
himself in strangely fascinating compositions of religious or
fantastic import, doubtless familiar to us all. Our concern is not
with Blake’s drawings, in which he adds the charm of exquisite color
to his command of expressive form. A plate taken from his remarkable
series of illustrations to the Book of Job, shows his powerful, poetic
conception of the beginning of life, when the world was young and the
morning stars sang together. In a totally different way, illustrative
of another phase of this same new awakening, the work of Daniel
Chodowiecki shows a man concerned with the world which surrounds him.
We see him here, at work in the midst of his family, on his little
illustrations which went forth in their hundreds to embellish the
bountiful stream of German literature.
[Illustration: THE HOME OF A PAINTER
Daniel Chodowiecki]
Goya’s vivid, realistic allegories, Blake’s fantastic, powerful
conceptions, Chodowiecki’s living portrayal of the world of his day,
no longer follow the beaten track of imitative work,--all these
activities point to a new phase in art. All this seems a reaction,
a protest against the mental attitude, the set standards and ideals
of the eighteenth century. The vignette, so gay and graceful in the
hands of Eisen, Gravelot, or Moreau, had lost much of its _esprit_ in
the heavier, more sober style of the Empire. The classical engraver
was still in power, on the Continent as well as in England, where
Boydell issued, in 1803, his monumental series of illustrations
to Shakespeare’s plays in large folio plates. On the other hand,
Constable had broken away from the accepted standards of landscape
composition; he painted his native countryside as he saw it. England
frowned upon him for this heresy, but his art was joyfully acclaimed in
France. There arises everywhere a buoyant, youthful spirit, conscious
of infinite possibilities, filled with unbounded aspirations. The
leaders in the movement emancipate themselves from the sterile cult
of precedent; they blaze new trails into the vast unknown, in their
search for truth. Kant’s philosophy, Darwin’s theory of evolution,
sufficiently denote the trend of the times; in literature, this is the
period of Byron, Scott, Wordsworth, of Manzoni, of Goethe, of Nodier,
Balzac, Victor Hugo. Barrye carries realism into his sculpture and such
men as Delacroix, Decamps, and Célestin Nanteuil carry romanticism into
French painting and French prints. Men, these, whose imaginative souls
rebel against petrified classicism and formal, abstract beauty, and
this protest of the young and ardent against the tyranny of the “old
and accepted order of things” has been heard ever since,--sometimes
the voice of coteries, sometimes that of individuals: Constable’s, for
instance, which helped France in its remarkable awakening. His simple
creed was faithfully transposed in terms of mezzotint by David Lucas.
Unfortunately these effective landscape mezzotints are so fleeting in
their delicate effects that they can be appreciated only in engraver’s
proofs. The relative position of Constable and Turner, in English
landscape, has been, not inaptly, compared with that of Van Dyck and
Rubens in Flemish art. Certainly J. M. W. Turner was a sun in the
English firmament, the painter of imposing canvases and water-colors of
haunting loveliness; the leader likewise in a stupendous development of
landscape engraving revealed in series like his “England and Wales” and
his vignettes for “Roger’s Italy” among others of equal fame. Supreme
among his prints stands a set known as “Liber Studiorum,” undertaken
in rivalry with Claude Lorrain, whose memoranda sketches of pictures
painted constitute the “Liber Veritatis,” engraved subsequently in
England by Earlom. In his “Liber”[5] Turner proceeds to display his
art in all its versatility, engraving some of the plates himself
and closely supervising the mezzotinting of the others. This “Inverary
Pier,” his own throughout, is a glorious vision of morning on the
shores of Loch Fyne. The night mists are clearing in the sunlight; a
luminous haze still trails along between the hills, beyond the quiet
water. The scene suggests unbounded space and calm, peaceful beauty.
Another plate, “Æsacus and Hesperie,” carries us into the depth of
the woods. The figures are mere accessories: what we potently feel is
the fragrant shade, emphasized by a slanting shaft of sunlight, which
gleams on soil, branch, and leaf, and builds a pathway of light amidst
the luminous shadows.
[5] A series of one hundred plates, seventy-one of which
were published by the artist, then discontinued, because
financially unsuccessful.
[Illustration: INVERARY PIER
From “Liber Studiorum.” J. M. W. Turner]
[Illustration: ÆSACUS AND HESPERIE
From “Liber Studiorum.” J. M. W. Turner]
* * * * *
In the early nineteenth century two new processes demand recognition:
wood-engraving and lithography. The former, reviewed in the preceding
chapter with reference to its development in America, speedily gained
in technical perfection at the hands of English engravers. It spread
far and wide in Europe, adapting itself to the charming illustrations
of Ludwig Richter and doing full justice to the expressive, accurate
line of Adolph von Menzel’s pen-and-ink work. Light and vivacious
in the vignettes of Tony Johannot, Gigoux, Célestin Nanteuil, it
grows somber in Doré’s designs for the Bible and for Dante’s “Divina
Commedia.”
[Illustration: CHRIST DISPUTING WITH THE DOCTORS
Adolph von Menzel]
Shortly after the advent of wood-engraving, lithography appears, and
offers the tempting inducement of utmost technical simplicity to
the artist. The drawing is made on the stone or on transfer paper
with lithographic ink or crayon; the transferring and preparation of
the stone (or metal plate) with acid, gum, and water is left to the
printer. No wonder that the process found wide favor and that it was
put to a great variety of uses: innumerable portraits, endless series
of views, costume plates, music titles, reproductions of pictures. In
the hands of artists the process proves its merit by such prints
as “Christ Disputing with the Doctors,” by Adolph von Menzel, that
untiring pioneer of realism in Germany. The scene with its masterly
characterization is astonishing in the play of expression on each face
and figure. In France both processes burst into profuse bloom with
the awakening of romanticism. The thirties and forties bring a wealth
of notable lithographic productions, the work of Delacroix, Isabey,
Géricault, Decamps, Diaz, and a host of other artists. Gavarni uses
this easy medium to portray in thousands of sketches the life of all
Paris. Daumier portrays the frailties of humanity in his cartoons
for “Charivari” and “La Caricature,” or else wields his crayon as a
formidable political weapon; in the print selected for illustration he
shows us Louis Philippe at the death-bed of a political offender “who
can now be released, being no longer dangerous.”
[Illustration: CARTOON ON LOUIS PHILIPPE
Honoré Daumier]
The fortunes of France, fraught with conquest under the first
Napoleon, sink to humdrum levels with the Restoration. For years all
recollection of the Emperor and his _Grande Armée_ is embittered by
the final disaster. But passing years restore the luster of former
great exploits, and gradually these become a favorite subject for
illustration. The field is well covered by Charlet’s military scenes,
though none of these approach the grandeur and skill displayed by
Auguste Raffet. In his “Midnight Review” we see innumerable hosts of
shades, passing in review before the phantom emperor on his white
charger; an immense concourse insensibly merging into the mists of
night.
In the forties there is a welcome revival of etching, Charles Jacque
being one of the pioneers, skillful alike in his handling of acid and
dry-point. His theme is the peasant’s life, his setting the wooded,
undulating region about Barbizon: broad, sunny fields, thriving
farms, pastures with cattle, sheep, and pigs, for which he shows an
especial predilection. The peasant, here, is no longer the joyous,
carousing, merry being of Ostade’s fancy. In the plates of Millet and
Jacque we see him at his daily labors and the woman at her household
tasks, as in the “Woman Churning,” by Jean François Millet, drawn in
sober, telling lines, and evoking by some subtle magic a sense not
only of the scene before us, but of her surroundings and her whole
labor-laden life.
[Illustration: MIDNIGHT REVIEW
Auguste Raffet]
[Illustration: WOMAN CHURNING
J. F. Millet]
We must pass with a mention even such masters as Corot and Daubigny,
both of whom have left us spirited examples, in etching, of their
masterly interpretation of nature. The period we now reach brings a
flood of etching, and it is but natural that the sketchy freedom,
the suggestiveness sought by this new school, should conflict with
the set, time-honored traditions of engraving. That serious old
gentleman--Engraving--did not approve of the rollicking youngster who
knocked at the gates of the Academy and the Institut for admission.
The battle, after all, was not so much a quarrel between etching
and engraving; rather a contest between formula _versus_ original
thought. Both in England and France the same conflict arose, the
etchers calling the other side mechanical, petrified; the engravers
retorting that etching, “even in the hands of Rembrandt, is uncertain,
blundering.” This dictum of Ruskin and the fiery rejoinder by Sir
Seymour Haden are matters of history. Our illustration, the dry-point
“Sunset in Ireland,” will sufficiently show that the president of the
Painter-Etchers’ Society was as apt with the etching-point as he was
formidable in debate. The painter-etcher is an originating artist,
but the success of his creations on the copper depends a good deal on
the skill of the printer, who can, by differences of inking, wiping,
pressure, and heat make an impression hard or soft in effect, rich and
dark or pale and silvery at wish. To a man of James McNeill Whistler’s
exquisite sensibilities and refined taste this thought of
dependence on another for his subtle effects of light and tone could
not but prove unendurable. Therefore he installed a press at his home
and did his own printing of choice impressions, realizing in these,
to the fullest extent, the possibilities of effectiveness and beauty
which we admire in his etchings. Art has been defined as a selection
from the truth, and, indeed, the elimination of unimportant detail and
the accenting of the essentials make for the great charm in Whistler’s
etchings as well as in his numerous lithographs. From this versatile
genius, delightful in his rendering of the human figure and likeness,
who evokes with equal facility the shimmering vistas of Venetian
lagoons or the quaintness of an old French street, who can fascinate
with a fleeting glimpse of a fish-shop, or make a lovely vision of a
foggy reach of the Thames, we must now turn to one who has forever
fixed in his plates a truthful yet ideal likeness of old Paris. “Le
Petit Pont” by Charles Meryon is a characteristic plate with heavy
shadows, fine feeling for structural essentials, endless modifications
of light, and with Notre Dame made duly impressive by lifting it high
above the nearer buildings. Every plate has a character of its own,
with here and there a weird reminder of the artist’s ultimate mental
doom. Only a poet could have conceived a plate like the “Stryge,” that
evil figure on Notre Dame, surveying the vast field of his conquests.
[Illustration: SUNSET IN IRELAND
Sir Seymour Haden]
[Illustration: THE DOORWAY. VENICE
James McNeill Whistler]
[Illustration: LE PETIT PONT
Charles Meryon]
* * * * *
As we survey the reproductive processes, they are drawn, one and all,
into the current of new, original expression. Innovators appear even in
the conservative camp of engraving; Ferdinand Gaillard, for instance,
an _engraver_, in that he _uses_ the graver, though he uses it in a
manner to him particular, expressive of minutest detail. “My aim,” he
says, “is not to charm but to be truthful. My art consists in saying
all.” And he expresses “all” in this wonderful portrait of Dom
Prosper Guéranger. No detail has escaped him in his scrutiny of this
strong, bright face with its searching, clear eyes. A counterpart of
Gaillard--a painter-engraver similarly minute and precise with his
burin--is Stauffer-Bern, a Swiss of German training.
[Illustration: DOM PROSPER GUÉRANGER
Ferdinand Gaillard]
[Illustration: GIRL BATHING
Anders Zorn]
[Illustration: EXPULSION FROM PARADISE
From “Eva und die Zukunft.” Max Klinger]
Now, if we compare a print of the early times with the technical
creations of our present day, we cannot but realize the increased
demands made upon the artist. The phenomena of light must be ever
studied anew, in the endeavor to attain new, effective, convincing
ways of expression--not merely of color and form as heretofore, but of
atmosphere, of light, of vibrating, living, I had almost said “moving,”
nature. Hence impressionism; hence, also, daring experiments like this
girl bathing, by Anders Zorn, the Swedish painter-etcher. Here is a
distinct _outdoor_ feeling; the breeze and sun, the modeling of rock,
and the softly rounded nude body against its hard face. Everything is
done with long, slashing strokes, with hardly any definite outline; a
wonderful display of skill. Another illustration, the “Expulsion from
Paradise,” by that German master of many arts, Max Klinger, shows us an
effect of most intense expression of light in the glaring foreground,
where a merciless sun beats down on the first couple: a world all the
more arid by contrast with the cool, shady woodland behind the huge,
guarded gateway.
The nearer we approach to the present day, the more difficult, even
painful, becomes the work of selection; painful because of the many
gems barred from inclusion by the necessary restriction of space. A
longer review, including men like Lalanne, Legros, Lepère, Schmutzer,
Gevger, Munch, Liebermann, Bone, Cameron, Bauer, would needs have to
include many others, and disproportionately swell this closing chapter.
If the few prints mentioned--a very few picked from a field immensely
rich--should awaken in the reader a desire for further exploration
in this world of prints, the purpose of these pages will have been
achieved.
THE END
BOOKS RECOMMENDED FOR STUDY OF PRINTS
To those bent on further inquiry into the subject of prints, two books
of prime importance can be most warmly recommended, namely:--
_Hind, Arthur M._ A Short History of Engraving and etching, with
full bibliography, classified list and index of engravers. Boston,
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1908.
(An excellent, comprehensive book, with exhaustive lists and
indexes, dealing with intaglio prints up to the present day.)
_Kristeller, Paul._ Kupferstich und Holzschnitt in vier
Jahrhunderten. Berlin, Bruno Cassirer, 1905.
(A masterly review of the whole field of prints, including
woodcuts, but unfortunately exclusive of the nineteenth century.
This also contains an extensive bibliography.)
The careful perusal of either book will provide a good foundation, and
the excellent lists of books at the end of each of them will safely
guide the reader in his subsequent studies.
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
U.S.A
* * * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unpaired quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unpaired.
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs
and outside quotations.