: Modern Illustration by Pennell Joseph - Illustration of books

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There are two or three seventeenth-century drawings on the wood at South Kensington, and some, I believe, in the British Museum.

On paper.

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 , 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.

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. 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.

In France the credit for the invention is given to Dr. Donn?, 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.

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.

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.

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 , 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. Lep?re, 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.

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.

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