Part 10

England was naturally the country where wood-engraving most flourished. The pupils of Bewick, particularly Charlton Nesbit and Luke Clennell, practised it with great merit, the former with a better knowledge of line-arrangement than Bewick, and the latter with extraordinary artistic feeling. The field, however, was not left wholly to those who had learned the art from Bewick. Robert Branston was, like Bewick, a self-taught wood-engraver; unlike Bewick, who was never trammelled by traditions, and was thus able to work out his own methods in his own way by the light of his own genius, Branston (Fig. 70), who had served an apprenticeship in engraving on copperplate, and had mastered the art of incising and arranging lines proper to that material, came to wood-engraving with all the traditions of copperplate-engraving firmly fixed in his mind and hand, and he founded a school which began where the art had left off at the time of its decline--in the imitation of the methods of engraving on copper. It is true that Branston sometimes admitted white line where he thought it would be effective, but he relied on black line for the most part. The wrong step thus taken led to the next. Engravers on copper began to draw designs on the block for wood-engravers to cut out. John Thurston, the most distinguished of these, drew thus for John Thompson, who, however, did not follow the lines with the servility of the engravers of the sixteenth century, but modified them as he engraved, changed the direction and character of the lines, and occasionally introduced white line. In the same way Clennell, who also engraved after John Thurston’s drawing, modified it, particularly in the disposal of the lights and shadows, and thus improved it by his own artistic powers. Merely in engraving simple lines Clennell’s artistic feeling placed him in a higher rank than even an engraver of the power of John Thompson, as may be seen in the cuts which these two men made after Stothard’s drawings in an edition of Rogers’s Poems (Fig. 71, 72); in this volume Clennell has given an effect which Thompson could not give. Branston’s engraving, in the same way, shows the craftsman’s skill and knowledge, but it lacks the artistic quality of the rival school of Nesbit and Clennell. The imitation of the manner of copperplate, which Branston introduced, became common, and was developed in the work of Orrin Smith and William Harvey, in which wood-engraving lost its distinctive virtues. This school, nevertheless, was popular, and its engravings were used to illustrate important works to which for a long time copperplate-engraving alone had been considered equal; thus wood-engraving once more encroached upon its rival’s ground.

Meanwhile the great illustrated magazines and papers, to which wood-engraving owes so much of its encouragement, sprang up, and with them the necessity for rapid work, and the temptation to be satisfied with what satisfied the public taste. Cruikshank and Seymour prepared the way for the designers, Leech, Gilbert, Tenniel, and the Dalziels, the latter engravers themselves, and carelessness in engraving accompanied carelessness in drawing; but from the latter charge Tenniel’s designs must be excepted. These artists were inferior in natural endowment to even the lesser artists of the sixteenth century, and their work was made worse by the negligent rendering of their engravers, who were not characterized either by the fidelity of the old craftsmen, or the skill and knowledge of Thompson, or the artistic sense of Clennell, but were merely inefficient workmen employed to cut lines drawn for them as rapidly as possible. Mr. Linton made an attempt to introduce the practice of rendering artists’ drawings by lines conceived and arranged by the engraver himself; but the current was too strongly set in another direction, and the engraver kept his old position of mechanic employed to clear out the designers’ lines. The work which was produced by this method in great quantities was in the mass not valuable either for the art shown in the design or for the skill of the engraver, but derived its interest and popularity from qualities which have little connection with fine art. No great works were produced; and it is only here and there that separate prints of value are to be found, among which those by Edmund Evans in Birket Foster’s edition of Cowper’s Task deserve to be mentioned.

Upon the Continent the development of wood-engraving was by no means so great as in England, but some excellent work has been done by the pupils of Thompson, who went to Paris by Didot’s invitation; these men, of whom MM. Best and Leloir were the most distinguished, together with MM. Brevière, Porret, and Lavoignat, produced some cuts of considerable value both in book-illustration and in the art magazines. In Germany, too, wood-engraving counts some good workmen among its following, but the German woodcuts, of which the two (Figs. 73, 74) here given are favorable examples, remain inferior for the most part to either the English or French.

Wood-engraving, however, has been practised in our time less as a fine art than as a useful art; and if little that is valuable for artistic worth has been executed by engravers since the days of Nesbit, Clennell, and Thompson, the application of wood-engraving for merely useful purposes has been of the greatest service. It has become a most powerful instrument of popular education; it imparts the largest share of the visual knowledge which the people have of the things they have not directly seen; its utility as a means of instruction by its representation of the objects with which science deals, and the mechanical contrivances and processes which science employs, and also as a means of influence in caricature and of simple popular amusement, is incalculable; and, notwithstanding its low level in art, there can be no doubt that it frequently assists the exercise of the popular imagination, and sometimes generates in the better-endowed minds among the people a real sympathy with the higher products of art and an appreciation of them. These utilities, indeed, so overbalance its value simply as a fine art as to give it a distinctive character, when its practice now is compared with that of any previous time; as, formerly, it reflected the aspects of changing civilization, now it reflects the peculiar character of our time, and shows how great has been the gain in the popular hold upon the material comforts of life and upon intelligence, and how great has been the loss in the community’s appreciation of purely artistic results. This is especially true of the earlier American practice of the art, which seldom resulted in any work of artistic value.

The history of wood-engraving in America, until recent years, is comparatively insignificant. In art, as in literature, the first generation of the Republic followed the English tradition almost slavishly; the engravers, indeed, showed hardly any individuality, and left no work of permanent value. During Colonial times some very rude apprentice-work on metal had been produced; but the first certain engraving in wood bears date of 1794, and was from the hand of Dr. Alexander Anderson (1775-1870), a physician by profession, but with a natural bent toward the art, which he had played at from boyhood, and finally made the principal business of his life. The sight of some of Bewick’s early work had determined him to employ wood as a material in place of the type-metal on which he had previously engraved in relief, and the example of Bewick taught him to use white line. At that time, and for many years afterward, the art was applied mainly to the production of cuts for advertisements, labels, and the like, as a servant of trade; its use for illustration simply was confined almost wholly to juvenile books. The engravers who at the beginning of the century introduced the art in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Haven were few, and, for the most part, self-taught; usually they merely copied English cuts, and thus they reflected in their poorer work the manner of successive English schools; but at least they kept the art alive, and handed it on through their pupils. Dr. Anderson was the best of them; yet, although he was free and bold in his handling of white line, and once or twice attained an excellence that proved him a worthy pupil of Bewick, he left nothing of enduring interest, and the work of his fellows met with even swifter forgetfulness. Woodcuts of really high value were not produced in America until Joseph Alexander Adams (b. 1803), one of the young engravers encouraged by Dr. Anderson, began to do his best work (Figs. 75, 76), about 1834, and applied his talents to the illustration of the Bible, published by the Harper Brothers in 1843, with which wood-engraving may be properly said to have begun its great career in this country. This volume was embellished by sixteen hundred cuts, executed under the supervision of Mr. Adams, and plainly exhibits the capacities and limitations of the art at that time. Other illustrated books followed this from the same press, and from that of the Putnams; the cuts in the papers and magazines, established during the second quarter of the century, became more numerous, and the attention paid by the American Tract Society to the engravings in its various publications had great influence in encouraging and improving the art. The work of this first half-century, however, as a whole, does not deserve any great praise; in judging it, the inexperience of the engravers and the difficulties of printing must be remembered; but in its inferior portions it is marked by feebleness and coarseness, and in its better portion by a hardness and stiffness of line, a lack of variety and gradation in tone and tint, and a defect in vivacity and finish. There are here and there exceptional cuts to which these strictures would not apply, but the body of the work is vitiated either through an incomplete control of his materials by the engraver, or through an evil imitation of copperplate-drawing by the designer. Where the engraver was also the designer the work is usually of higher value.

With the second half of the century began that expansion of the press, that increase in the volume and improvement in the quality of the reading provided for the public through newspapers and magazines, which has been one of the most striking and important results of democratic institutions. The Harpers’ Monthly Magazine was established in 1850, and it was followed within a decade by several illustrated periodicals; during the civil war there was naturally a slackening in this development, but, upon its close, numerous new illustrated weekly or monthly publications began their longer or shorter career, among them those issued by the Scribners, which were to have so important a bearing on the history of wood-engraving. The art naturally received a great impetus from this demand upon its resources; it rapidly advanced; and being encouraged farther by the popularity of the new and beautifully illustrated gift-books of the Boston and New York publishers, it has taken the leading place in the artistic interests of the country.

The scope of this volume does not allow any detailed account of the works of American engravers individually; but while the increased productiveness and improved technique of the art during the third quarter of the century are being noticed, it would be unjust to make no mention of the quiet, careful, and refined woodcuts of Mr. Anthony, or of the long and unflinching fidelity of Mr. Linton, with its reward in admirable work, or of the exquisite skill of Mr. Henry Marsh, the best of American engravers of that period. The latter’s marvellous rendering of insect life in the illustrations to Harris’s Insects Injurious to Vegetation, published in 1862, can never be forgotten by any who have been fortunate enough to see the artist-proofs. His work is in the manner of copperplate-engraving, and affords one of the few instances in which wood-engraving has equalled the rival art in fineness, delicacy, softness, and gradation of tone. Whatever the critic’s theory may be, he must remember that genius has a higher validity than reason, and must acknowledge such work as this to be its own justification. Unfortunately, the cuts in the published volume were not--perhaps at that time could not be--printed with the success they deserved. The work of these three engravers illustrates what advance had already been made in skilful line-arrangement and in technique before 1870, about which time the indications of an approaching change in the art became plainly evident. Since then progress has been uninterrupted, swift, marked by bold experiments and startling surprises. Now American engravers excel all others in knowledge of the resources of their art, and in control of its materials, as well as in the interest of their work. They have not, it is true, produced, as yet, anything to rank in artistic value with the designs of the older masters; but, in their hands, the art has gained a width and utility of influence among our people hitherto unequalled in any nation at any period. From the beginning of its history wood-engraving has been distinctively a democratic art; at present the ease and cheapness of its processes and the variety of its applications make it one of the most accessible sources of inexpensive information and pleasure; for this reason it has acquired in our country, where a reading middle class forms the larger portion of the nation, a popular influence of such far-reaching and penetrative power as to make it a living art in a sense which none other of the fine arts can claim. It now enters into the intellectual life and enjoyment of our people to a degree and with a constancy impossible to other arts. In this respect, too, it is only at the beginning of its career; for, as popular education spreads, the place that the art holds in the national life will continually become more important. These social conditions, the technical skill of the engravers, and the appearance among the people of a critical spirit concerning their work--not perhaps to be called intelligent as yet, but forming, nascent, feeling its way into conscious and active life--make up a group of most favorable circumstances for a real artistic development. Whether such a development will take place depends in large measure on the clearness with which engravers understand the laws of their art, as presented by their materials, and on the degree in which such knowledge controls them. The experiments of recent years are to be judged finally by the results; but, in spite of the novel effects obtained, and of the new character that has been given to the art, there is at present no such unanimity, either among the engravers or the public, as to be decisive of the worth of the new work as a whole. While the issue is still doubtful, and the stake is the future of the only art by which those who care for the growth of civilization can develop in the people a sense of art, bring them to an appreciation of its value, open their understandings to its teachings, and fill their lives with its delights, something may be gained by recurring to fundamental principles, as illustrated by the practice of the older masters, not with an end to limit the future by the past, but to foresee it. Such a brief review and summary of past thought respecting the aims and methods of wood-engraving, with such corrections as modern improvements in processes justify, will afford the surest ground for criticism of the work still to be considered.

All the graphic arts have to do with some one or more of the three modes under which nature is revealed to the artist--the mode of pure form, the mode of pure color, the mode of form and color, as they are affected by the different lights and shadows in which they exist. In nature these three modes do not exist separately, and usually no one of them is so prominent as to efface the others; in the several arts, however, the principal attention is given, now to one, now to another, of them, according to the capacities of the art and the powers of the artists. Thus sculpture deals only with form, and even in painting, which includes all within its province, different masters make a choice, and aim principally at reproducing color, or chiaroscuro, or form, as their talents direct them, for a genius seldom arises with the power to combine all these with the truth and harmony of nature. Wood-engraving, there is no need to say, cannot reproduce the real hues of objects, nor the play of light upon hue and form, nor the more marvellously transforming touch of shadow; it can represent the form of a peach, but it cannot paint its delicate tints, nor adequately and accurately show how the beauty of its bloom in sun differs from the beauty of its bloom in shade. More broadly, a landscape shot with the evanescent shadows that hover in rapidly moving mists, or the intermingling light and gloom of a wind-swept moonlit sky half overcast with clouds, wood-engraving has no power to mirror in true likeness. The most it can do in this direction is to indicate, it cannot express; it can exhibit strong contrasts and delicate gradations of light and shadow, and it can suggest varying intensity of hues, by the greater or less depth of its blacks and grays; but real color and perfect chiaroscuro it relinquishes to painting.

Form, therefore, is left as the main object of the wood-engraver’s craft, and the representation of form is effected by delineation, drawing, line-work. This is why the great draughtsmen, such as Dürer and Holbein, succeeded in designing for wood-engraving. They knew how to express form by lines, and they did not attempt to do more even when suggesting color-values by the convention of black and gray. Line-work is thus the main business of the engraver, because form must be expressed by lines. Line-work, however, is of different kinds, and all kinds are not equally proper for the art. Hitherto the fineness of line by which copperplate-engraving easily obtains delicacy of contour and soft transitions of tone, has been rarely and with difficulty attained by the best-skilled hand and eye among wood-engravers, and when attained has, usually, not been successfully printed. There remains, however, no longer any reason to exclude fine lines from wood-engraving, when once it has become plain that such work is possible without a wasteful expenditure of labor, that its results are valuable, and that it can be properly printed. But if it shall prove that the character of the line proper to copperplate is also proper to wood, it may be looked on as certain that the line-arrangement proper to the former material can never be rationally used for the latter. The crossing of lines to which the engraver on copperplate resorts is especially laborious to the engraver in wood, and after all his toil does not give any desirable effect which would not have resulted from other methods of work. It has been seen that Dürer employed this cross-hatching in imitation of copperplate-engraving; but he did so because he was ignorant of the way to arrange color so that this difficult task of engraving cross-hatchings would be unnecessary. Holbein, who was equally ignorant of the possibilities of white line, rejected cross-hatching. Bewick also rejected it, and proved it was unnecessary even where much color was to be given. In the later work of the sixteenth century, and in modern English work, wood-engraving imitated its rival art both in the character and the arrangement of its lines; it failed in both instances mainly because such imitation involved a waste of labor, and did not result in works so valuable artistically as were obtained by copperplate-engraving with far greater ease. At present the objection to the use of cross-hatching in wood-engraving is as serious as ever, but the employment of fine lines for some purposes, as in the rendering of delicate textures and tones, has been justified, mainly in consequence of innovations in the modes of printing. The charm of this new and surprising beauty in fine-line woodcuts, however, has not at all deprived the old broad and bold line of its force and vigor, nor made less valuable the strong contrasts in which the art won its earlier success. On the contrary, it is in the old province and by the old methods that wood-engraving has worked out its most distinctive and peculiar effects of real value.

In what has been thus far said of the line-work proper to wood-engraving, black line-work only has been referred to. Wood-engraving is also an art of design in white line, and here a different set of considerations applies. There is not the same difficulty in cutting fine and delicate white lines, as is the case with black lines, nor the same unlikelihood of their effect being felt in the printed design. There is, too, no objection whatever to crossing white lines, as a mode of work, for it is as easy a process for the wood-engraver as crossing black lines is for the copperplate-engraver, and the result thus obtained is sometimes of great value, particularly in the moulding of the face. The art of design in white line, however, is but little developed; but, not to depreciate the older method of black line, which is extremely valuable, nevertheless it is clear that white line-work is the peculiar province of the wood-engraver, and that in developing its capacities the future of the art mainly lies, so far as it rests with him. The merit of all line-work, whether black or white, fine or broad, bold or subtle, depends upon the certainty with which the lines serve their purposes. If, as with Holbein, every line has its work to do, and does that work perfectly; if it fulfils its function of defining an outline, or marking the moulding of a muscle, or deepening the intensity of a shadow, or performing some similar service, then the designer has followed the method of high art, and has produced something of value. The work of all who practise the art--the draughtsmen who draw in black line, and the engravers who draw in white line--has worth just in proportion as they acquire the power to put intention into their lines and to express something by every stroke; and, other things being equal, he who conveys most meaning in the fewest lines, like Holbein and Bewick, is the greatest master. By means of such lines so arranged wood-engraving does represent form with great power, and also texture, which is only a finer form; it indicates positive hues, and, within limits, suggests the play of light and shadow on form and hue. It thus aims chiefly, in its bolder and more facile work, at force, spirit, and contrast, and, in its more rare and difficult efforts, at delicacy, finish, and nice gradation of harmonious tones.