CHAPTER XI: CERTAIN INFLUENCES UPON THE ARTISTS OF THE SIXTIES

Although it would be retraversing beaten paths to trace the illustrator of the sixties back to Bewick, or to still earlier progenitors in Dürer or the Florentines, there can be little doubt that the pre-Raphaelites gave the first direct impulse to the newer school. That their work, scanty as it is, so far as book-illustration is concerned, set going the impulse which in Kelmscott Press Editions, the Birmingham School, the Vale Press, Beardsley, Bradley, and a host of others on both sides of the Atlantic, is 'the movement' of the moment is too obvious to need stating. But for 'the sixties' proper, the paramount influence was Millais--the Millais after the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood had disbanded. Despite a very ingenious attempt to trace the influence of Menzel upon the earlier men, many still doubt whether the true pre-Raphaelites were not quite ignorant of the great German. Later men--Fred Walker especially, and Charles Keene many years after--knew their Menzel, and appreciated him as a few artists do to-day, and the man in the street may at no distant future. But some of the survivors of the pre-Raphaelites, both formal and associated, deny all knowledge of Menzel at this date; others, however, have told Mr. Joseph Pennell that they did know his work, and that it had a distinct influence. Some who did not know him then regret keenly that they were unaware of his very existence until they had abandoned illustration for painting. All agree, of course, in recognising the enormous personality of one who might be called, without exaggeration, the greatest illustrator of the century; so that, having stated the evidence as it stands, no more need be added, except a suggestion that the theory of Menzel's influence, even upon those who declare they knew not the man, may be sound. An edition of _Frederick the Great_, by Kügler, with five hundred illustrations by Menzel, was published in England (according to the British Museum Catalogue, the book itself is undated) in 1844.[7] It is quite possible that any one of the men of the time might have seen it by chance, and turned over its pages ignorant of its artist's name. A few minutes is enough to influence a young artist, and the one who in all honesty declares he never heard of Menzel may have been thus unconsciously influenced. But, if a foreign source must be found, so far as the pre-Raphaelites are concerned, Rethel seems a far more possible agent. His famous prints, _Death the Friend_ and _Death the Avenger_, had they met his eye, would doubtless have influenced Mr. Sandys, and many others who worked on similar lines.

Whether Lasinio's 'execrable engravings,' as Ruskin calls them, or others, will be found to have exerted any influence, I have no evidence to bring forward. In fact the theory is advanced only as a working hypothesis, not as an argument capable of proof. It is possible that France at that time was an important factor as regards technique, as it has been since, and is still. But, without leaving our own shores, the logical sequence of development from Bewick, through Harvey, Mulready and others, does not leave very many terrible gaps. It is true that this development is always erratic--now towards the good, now to meretricious qualities.

The more one studies the matter, the more one fancies that certain drawings not intended for engraving by Mulready, and others by Maclise, must have had a large share in the movement which culminated about 1865 and died out entirely about 1870. But whatever the influence which set it going, the ultimate result was British; and, for good or evil, one cannot avoid a feeling of pride that in the sixties there was art in England, not where it was officially expected perhaps, but in popular journals.

It is quite possible that the revival of etching as a fine art, which took place early in the second half of this century, had no little direct influence on the illustration of the period. Many artists, who are foremost as draughtsmen upon wood, experimented with the etcher's needle. _The Germ_, 1850, was illustrated by etchings; but, with every desire to develop this suggestion, it would be folly to regard the much discussed periodical as the true ancestor of _Once a Week_ and the rest; even the etching which Millais prepared for it, but never issued, would not suffice to establish such claim. Two societies, the Etching Club and the Junior Etching Club, are responsible for the illustration of several volumes, wherein the etched line is used in a way almost identical with the same artists' manner when drawing for the engraver. Indeed, the majority of these etchings would suffer little if reproduced by direct process to-day, as the finesse of _rebroussage_ and the more subtle qualities of biting and printing are not present conspicuously in the majority of the plates.

The _Poems by Tom Hood_, illustrated by the Junior Etching Club, include two delightful Millais', _The Bridge of Sighs and Ruth_, a _Lee Shore_ by Charles Keene, and two illustrations to the _Ode to the Moon_, and _The Elm-tree_ by Henry Moore.

_Passages from Modern English Poets_, illustrated by the Junior Etching Club, was issued (undated), by Day and Son, in 1862, in a large octavo. In 1876 another edition in larger quarto, with the etchings transferred to stone, and printed as lithographs, was published by William Tegg. In this notable volume Millais is represented by _Summer Indolence_ (p. 10), a most graceful study of a girl lying on her back in a meadow with a small child, who is wearing a daisy chain, seated at her side. Mr. J. McNeill Whistler contributes two delightful landscapes, _The Angler_ (p. 7) and _A River Scene_ (p. 45). In these the master-hand is recognisable at a glance, although the authorship of many of the rest can only be discovered by the index. They would alone suffice to make the book a treasure to light upon. To praise them would be absurd, for one can conceive no more unnecessary verbiage than a eulogy of Mr. Whistler's etchings--one might as well praise the beauty of June sunshine. There are many other good things in the book--a Tenniel, _War and Glory_ (p. 3), four capital studies by Henry Moore (pp. 1, 16, 27, 28), which come as a revelation to those who only know him as a sea-painter. Four others by M. J. Lawless, an artist who has been neglected too long, _The Drummer_ (p. 2), _Sisters of Mercy_ (p. 12), _The Bivouac_ (p. 30), and _The Little Shipwrights_ (p. 36), are all interesting, if not quite so fascinating, as his drawings upon wood. H. S. Marks has a _genre_ subject, _A Study in the Egyptian Antiquity Department of the British Museum_. This portentous title describes an etching of a country lad in smock-frock, who, with dazed surprise, is staring into vacancy amid the gigantic scarabs, the great goddess Pasht, and other familiar objects of the corridor leading to the Refreshment-room in the great Bloomsbury building, which people of Grub Street hurry through daily, with downcast eyes, to enjoy the frugal dainties that a beneficent institution permits them to take by way of sustenance during the intervals of study in the Reading-room. Another plate, _Scene of the Plague in London_, 1665, by Charles Keene, would hardly tempt one to linger before it, but for its signature. It is a powerful bit of work, but does not show the hand of the great _Punch_ artist at its best. The rest of the contributions to this volume are by C. Rossiter, F. Smallfield, Viscount Bury, Lord G. Fitzgerald, J. W. Oakes, A. J. Lewis, F. Powell, J. Sleigh, H. C. Whaite, Walter Severn, and W. Gale. Two by J. Clark deserve mention. To find the painter of cottage-life, with all his Dutch realistic detail, in company with Mr. Whistler, is a curious instance of extremes meeting.

Without wishing to press the argument unduly, it is evident that etching which afterwards developed so bravely, and left so many fine examples, exerted also a secondary influence on the illustration of the sixties. Hence the somewhat extended reference to the few books which employed it largely for illustrations.

Those who would have you believe that the great English masters of illustration failed to obtain contemporary appreciation should note the three editions of this work as one fact, among a score of others, which fails to support their theory. Whether from a desire to extol the past or not, it is certain that those publishers who have been established more than a quarter of a century claim to have sold far larger editions of their high-priced illustrated volumes then than any moderately truthful publisher or editor would dare to claim for similar ventures to-day. Of course there were fewer books of the sort issued, and the rivalry of illustrated journalism was infinitely less; still the people of the fifties, sixties, and seventies paid their tribute in gold freely and lavishly, and if they offered the last insult of the populace--popularity--to these undoubted works of art, it prevents one placing artists of the period among the noble army of martyrs. Their payment was quite equal to that which is the average to-day, as a file-copy of one of the important magazines shows. They were reproduced as well as the means available permitted; the printing and the general 'get-up' of the books, allowing for the different ideals which obtained then, was not inferior to the average to-day, and, as a rule, the authorship of the drawings was duly acknowledged in the table of contents, and the artists 'starred' in contemporary advertisements. It is painful to own that even the new appreciation is not absolutely without precedent. One notable instance of depreciation cannot be forgotten. Mr. Ruskin, who never expressed admiration of the illustrations of the sixties, in _Ariadne Florentina_, chose the current number of the _Cornhill Magazine_ for the text of a diatribe in which the following passages occur:--

'The cheap popular art cannot draw for you beauty, sense, or honesty; but every species of distorted folly and vice--the idiot, the blackguard, the coxcomb, the paltry fool, the degraded woman--are pictured for your honourable pleasure in every page, with clumsy caricature, struggling to render its dulness tolerable by insisting on defect--if, perchance, a penny or two may be coined out of the cockneys' itch for loathsomeness.... These ... are favourably representative of the entire art industry of the modern press--industry enslaved to the ghastly service of catching the last gleams in the glued eyes of the daily more bestial English mob--railroad born and bred, which drags itself about the black world it has withered under its breath. In the miserable competitive labour of finding new stimulus for the appetite--daily more gross, of this tyrannous mob, we may count as lost beyond any hope, the artists who are dull, docile, or distressed enough to submit to its demands. And for total result of our English engraving industry for the last hundred and fifty years, I find that practically at this moment [1876] I cannot get a _single_ piece of true, sweet, and comprehensible art to place for instruction in any children's school.'

But ignoring Mr. Ruskin--if it be possible to ignore the absolute leader of taste in the sixties--we find little but praise. Yet the popularity of 1860-1870 naturally incurred the inevitable law of reaction, and was at its lowest ebb in the eighties; but now late in the nineties our revived applause is but an echo of that which was awarded to the work when it appealed not only by all its art, but with novelty and an air of being 'up to date' that cannot, in the course of things, be ever again its portion. We are not so much better than our fathers, after all, in recognising the good things of the sixties, or in trying to do our best in our way. Which is just what they tried to do in theirs.