Chapter 1

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Details about the “Inscriptions” in the “Prints by Jackson” section of catalog are given at the beginning of that section.]

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM

BULLETIN 222 WASHINGTON, D.C. 1962

United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1962

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Washington 25, D.C.

_John Baptist Jackson:_

18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut

_Jacob Kainen_

Curator of Graphic Arts Museum of History and Technology

_Publications of the United States National Museum_

The scholarly publications of the United States National Museum include two series, _Proceedings of the United States National Museum_ and _United States National Museum Bulletin_.

In these series are published original articles and monographs dealing with the collections and work of the Museum and setting forth newly acquired facts in the fields of Anthropology, Biology, History, Geology, and Technology. Copies of each publication are distributed to libraries and scientific organizations and to specialists and others interested in the different subjects.

The _Proceedings_, begun in 1878, are intended for the publication in separate form, of shorter papers. These are gathered in volumes, octavo in size, with the publication date of each paper recorded in the table of contents of the volume.

In the _Bulletin_ series, the first of which was issued in 1875, appear longer, separate publications consisting of monographs (occasionally in several parts) and volumes in which are collected works on related subjects. _Bulletins_ are either octavo or quarto in size, depending on the needs of the presentation. Since 1902 papers relating to the botanical collections of the Museum have been published in the _Bulletin_ series under the heading _Contributions from the United States National Herbarium_.

This work forms number 222 of the _Bulletin_ series.

REMINGTON KELLOGG

_Director, United States National Museum_

CONTENTS

_Page_

_Preface_ IX Jackson and his Tradition 3 _The Woodcut Tradition_ 4 _Status of the Woodcut_ 7 _The Chiaroscuro Tradition_ 9 Jackson and his Work 13 _England: Obscure Beginnings_ 14 _Paris: Perfection of a Craft_ 17 _Venice: The Heroic Effort_ 25 _England Again: The Wallpaper Venture_ 40 _Critical Opinion_ 51 _Postscript_ 54 Catalog 69 _Prints by Jackson_ 71 _Jackson’s Workshop_ 90 _Unverified Subjects_ 95 The Chiaroscuros and Color Woodcuts 97 _Bibliography_ 171 _Index to Plates_ 177 _Index_ 181

_PREFACE_

John Baptist Jackson has received little recognition as an artist. This is not surprising if we remember that originality in a woodcutter was not considered a virtue until quite recently. We can now see that he was more important than earlier critics had realized. He was the most adventurous and ambitious of earlier woodcutters and a trailblazer in turning his art resolutely in the direction of polychrome.

To 19th century writers on art, from whom we have inherited the bulk of standard catalogs, lexicons, and histories-- along with their judgments-- Jackson’s work seemed less a break with tradition than a corruption of it. His chiaroscuro woodcuts (prints from a succession of woodblocks composing a single subject in monochrome light and shade) were invariably compared with those of the 16th century Italians and were usually found wanting. The exasperated tone of many critics may have been the result of an uneasy feeling that he was being judged by the wrong standards. The purpose of this monograph, aside from providing the first full-length study of Jackson and his prints, is to examine these standards. The traditions of the woodcut and the color print will therefore receive more attention than might be expected, but I feel that such treatment is essential if we are to appreciate Jackson’s contribution, in which technical innovation is a major element.

Short accounts of Jackson have appeared in almost all standard dictionaries of painters and engravers and in numerous historical surveys, but these have been based upon meager evidence. A fraction of his work was usually known and details of his life were, and still are, sparse. Later writers interpreting the comments of their predecessors have repeated as fact much that was conjecture. The picture of Jackson that has come down to us, therefore, is unclear and fragmentary.

If he does not emerge from this study completely accounted for from birth to death, it has not been because of lack of effort. Biographical data for his early and late life-- about fifty years in all-- are almost entirely missing despite years of diligent search. As a man he remains a shadowy figure. I have traced Jackson’s life as far as the available evidence will permit, quoting from the writings of the artist and his contemporaries at some length to convey an essential flavor, but I have refrained from filling in gaps by straining at conjecture.

While details of his life are vague, sufficient information is at hand to reconstruct his personality clearly enough. After all, Jackson wrote a book and was quoted at length in another. A contemporary fellow-practitioner wrote about him with considerable feeling. These and other sources give a good indication of the artist’s character.

The man we have to deal with had something excessive about him; he was headstrong, tactless, impractical, enormously energetic, a prodigious worker, a conceiver of grandiose projects, and a relentless hunter of patrons. He was at home with his social superiors and had some pretentions to literary culture, he had a coarse gift for the vivid phrase in writing, and his tastes in art ran to the classic and heroic.

This study includes an illustrated catalog of Jackson’s chiaroscuros and color prints. Previous catalogs, notably those of Nagler, Le Blanc, and Heller, have listed no more than twenty-five works. The present catalog more than triples this number.

To acknowledge fully the assistance given by museum curators, librarians, archivists, and scholars on both sides of the Atlantic would necessitate a very long list of names. However, I wish especially to thank Mr. Peter A. Wick of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, who has been generous enough to allow me to read his well-documented paper on Jackson’s Ricci prints; Mr. A. Hyatt Mayor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Mr. Carl Zigrosser of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Miss Anna C. Hoyt and Mrs. Anne B. Freedberg of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Dr. Jakob Rosenberg and Miss Ruth S. Magurn of the Fogg Art Museum; Mr. Karl Kup of the New York Public Library; Miss Elizabeth Mongan of the Rosenwald Collection, National Gallery of Art; Miss Una E. Johnson of the Brooklyn Museum; Mr. Gustave von Groschwitz of the Cincinnati Art Museum; and Dr. Philip W. Bishop of the U.S. National Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

I am particularly grateful to curators of European collections, who have been uniformly generous in their assistance. Special thanks are due Mr. J. A. Gere of the British Museum and Mr. James Laver of the Victoria and Albert Museum, who have gone to considerable trouble to acquaint me with their great collections. Others whose help must be particularly noted are Mr. Peter Murray, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London; Mme. R. Maquoy-Hendrickx of the Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Brussels; Dr. Vladimír Novotný of the Národní Galerie, Prague; Dr. Wegner of the Graphische Sammlung, Munich; Dr. Wolf Stubbe of the Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Dr. G. Busch of the Kunsthalle, Bremen; Dr. Hans Möhle of the Staatliche Museen, Berlin; Dr. Menz of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden; Miss B. L. D. Ihle of the Boymans Museum, Rotterdam; and M. Jean Adhémar of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.

The excellent collections of chiaroscuro prints in the Museums of the Smithsonian Institution have formed a valuable basis for this monograph. These prints include the set of Jackson’s Venetian chiaroscuros, originally owned by Jackson’s patron, Joseph Smith, British Consul in Venice, now in the Rosenwald Collection, National Gallery of Art, and the representative sampling of Jackson’s work in the Division of Graphic Arts, U.S. National Museum.

I am indebted to the following museums which have kindly given permission to reproduce Jackson prints in their collections. These are listed by catalog number.

Smithsonian Institution 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 (also in color), 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 39, 50, 51, 52, 53 (also in color), 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 63

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (W. G. Russell Allen Estate) 1 (also in color), 11, 14, 23, 33, 34, 38, 40 (also in color)

Fogg Art Museum 13 (also in color)

Worcester Art Museum 32

Metropolitan Museum of Art 5 (Rogers Fund) (also in color), 17, 31 (gift of Winslow Ames), 73 (Whittelsey Fund)

Philadelphia Museum of Art (John Frederick Lewis Collection) 2, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 74

British Museum 2 (in color), 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 37, 41, 42, 43 (also in color), 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49 (also in color), 59, 69, 70, 71, 72, 75, 76 (photographs by John R. Freeman & Co.)

Victoria and Albert Museum (Crown copyright) 3, 35, 36, 40

Finally, I want to thank the Editorial Office of the Smithsonian Institution for planning and designing this book; the Government Printing Office for their special care in its production; and Mr. Harold E. Hugo for his expert supervision of the color plates.

A grant from the American Philosophical Society (Johnson Fund), made it possible to conduct research on Jackson in Europe. Acknowledgment is herewith gratefully given.

JACOB KAINEN

_Smithsonian Institution_

_September 1, 1961_

_John Baptist Jackson_

18th-Century Master

of the Color Woodcut

Jackson and His Tradition

_The Woodcut Tradition_

Although the woodcut is the oldest traditional print medium it was the last to win respectability as an art form. It had to wait until the 1880’s and 1890’s, when Vallotton, Gauguin, Munch, and others made their first unheralded efforts, and when Japanese prints came into vogue, for the initial stirrings of a less biased attitude toward this medium, so long considered little more than a craft. With the woodcut almost beneath notice it is understandable that Jackson’s work should have failed to impress art historians unduly until recent times. Although he bore the brunt as an isolated prophet and special pleader between 1725 and 1754, his significance began to be appreciated only after the turn of the 20th century, first perhaps by Martin Hardie in 1906, and next and more clearly by Pierre Gusman in 1916 and Max J. Friedländer in 1917, when modern artists were committing heresies, among them the elevation of the woodcut to prominence as a first-hand art form. In this iconoclastic atmosphere Jackson’s almost forgotten chiaroscuros no longer appeared as failures of technique, for they had been so regarded by most earlier writers, but as deliberately novel efforts in an original style. The innovating character of his woodcuts in full color was also given respectful mention for the first time. But these were brief assessments in general surveys.

If the woodcut was cheaply held, it was at least acceptable for certain limited purposes. But printing pictures in color, in any medium, was considered a weakening of the fiber-- an excursion into prettification or floridity. It was not esteemed in higher art circles, except for a short burst at the end of the 18th century in France and England. This was an important development, admittedly, and the prints were coveted until quite recently. They are still highly desirable. But while Bartolozzi stipple engravings or Janinet aquatints in color might have commanded higher prices than Callots or Goyas, or even than many Dürers and Rembrandts, no one was fooled. The extreme desirability of the color prints was mostly a matter of interior decoration: nothing could give a finer 18th century aura. It was not so much color printing that mattered; it was _late 18th century_ color printing that was wanted, often by amateurs who collected nothing else. Color prints before and after this period did not appeal to discriminating collectors except as rarities, as exotic offshoots. Even chiaroscuros, with their few sober tones, fell into this periphery. Jackson, as a result, was naturally excluded from the main field of attention.

The worship of black-and-white as the highest expression of the graphic arts[1] automatically placed printmakers in color in one of two categories: producers of abortive experiments, or purveyors of popular pictures to a frivolous or sentimental public. This estimate was unfortunately true enough in most cases, true enough at least to cause the practice to be regarded with suspicion. As an indication of how things have changed in recent years we can say that color is no longer the exception. It threatens, in fact, to become the rule, and black-and-white now fights a retreating battle. A comparison of any large exhibition today with one of even 20 years ago will make this plain.

[Footnote 1: The purist’s attitude was pungently expressed by Whistler. Pennell records this remark: “Black ink on white paper was good enough for Rembrandt; it ought to be good enough for you.” (Joseph Pennell, _The Graphic Arts_, Chicago, 1921, p. 178.)]

At first glance Jackson seems to be simply a belated 18th-century worker in the chiaroscuro process. If to later generations his prints had a rather odd look, this was to be expected. Native qualities, even a certain crudeness, were expected from the English who lacked advantages of training and tradition. And Jackson was not only the first English artist who worked in woodcut chiaroscuro, he was virtually the first woodblock artist in England to rise beyond anonymity[2] (Elisha Kirkall, as we shall see, cannot positively be identified as a wood engraver) and he was the only one of note until Thomas Bewick arose to prominence about 1780. He was, then, England’s first outstanding woodcutter. We will find other instances of his significance from the English standpoint, but his being English, of course, would have a small part in explaining the importance of his prints.

[Footnote 2: The only earlier name is that of George Edwards. Oxford University has most of the blocks for a decorated alphabet he engraved on end-grain wood for Dr. Fell in 1674. Further data on Edwards can be found in Harry Carter’s _Wolvercote Mill_, Oxford, 1957, pp. 14, 15, 20, and in Moxon’s _Mechanick Exercises, or the Doctrine of Handy Works Applied to the Art of Printing_. (Reprint of 1st ed., 1683, edited and annotated by Herbert Davis and Harry Carter, Oxford, 1958, p. 26n.)]

Jackson made, in fact, the biggest break in the traditions of the woodcut since the 16th century. He broadened the scope of the chiaroscuro print and launched the color woodcut as a distinct art form that rivaled the polychrome effects of painting while retaining a character of its own. These were not modest little pieces of purely technical interest. The set of 24 sheets reproducing 17 paintings by Venetian masters made up the most heroic single project in chiaroscuro, and the 6 large landscapes, completed in 1744, after gouache paintings by Marco Ricci, were the most impressive color woodcuts in the Western world between the 16th century and the last decade of the 19th.

But Jackson’s grand ambition to advance the woodcut beyond all other graphic media had little public or private support and finally led him to ruin. His efforts were made with insufficient means and with few patrons. As a consequence, he rarely printed editions after the blocks were cut and proofed. The Venetian set is well known because it was printed in a substantial edition. A few additional subjects were also sponsored by patrons, but most of Jackson’s other chiaroscuros were never published-- they were limited to a few proofs. Editions were postponed, no doubt, in the hope that a patron would come along to pay expenses in return for a formal dedication in Latin, but this did not often happen. Most subjects exist in a few copies only; of some, single impressions alone remain. Others have entirely disappeared.

With a large part of Jackson’s work unknown, his reputation settled into an uneasy obscurity which, it must be granted, has not prevented his work from being collected. The chiaroscuros, especially the Venetian prints, can be found in many leading collections in Europe and the United States, but the full-color sheets after Ricci are excessively rare, particularly in complete sets.

Jackson has long been considered an interesting figure. _His Essay on the Invention of Engraving and Printing in Chiaro Oscuro_...,[3] with its bold claims to innovation and merit, his adventurous career as an English woodcutter in Europe, his adaptation of the color woodcut to wallpaper printing and his pioneering efforts in this field, and Papillon’s immoderate attack on him in the important _Traité historique et pratique de la gravure en bois_[4] will be discussed later. For the moment we can say that the Essay was the first book by an Englishman with color plates since the _Book of St. Albans_ of 1486, with its heraldic shields in three or four colors, and the first book with block-print plates in naturalistic colors.[5]

[Footnote 3: Jackson, London, 1754. Hereafter cited as Essay. Other references bearing directly on Jackson will receive only partial citation in the text. They are given in full in the bibliography, page 171.]

[Footnote 4: Papillon, Paris, 1766. Hereafter cited as the _Traité_.]

[Footnote 5: Occasional book illustrations in two or three colors, confined chiefly to initial letters and ornamental borders, appeared as early as the 15th century. Ratdolt in 1485 printed astronomical diagrams in red, orange, and black, and used similar colors in a Crucifixion in the _Passau missal_ of 1494. The _Liber selectarum cantionum_ of Senfel, 1520, however, has a frontispiece printed in a broad range of colors from more than four woodblocks. The design is attributed to Hans Weiditz.]

Although critics have been interested in Jackson as an historical figure, they have been uncertain about the merit of his work. Opinions vary surprisingly. Most judgments were based on the Venetian chiaroscuros and depended upon the quality of impressions, many of which are poor. Criticisms when they have been adverse have been surprisingly harsh. It is unusual, to say the least, for writers to take time explaining how bad an artist is. To do this implies, in any case, that he warrants serious attention; space in histories is not usually wasted on nonentities. We can see now that Jackson was misunderstood because the uses of the woodcut were rigidly circumscribed by tradition.

_Status of the Woodcut_

After the 15th century the woodcut lost its primitive power and became a self-effacing medium for creating facsimile impressions of drawings and for illustrating and decorating books, periodicals, and cheap popular broadsides. At its lowest ebb, in the late 17th century, and in the 18th, it was used to make patterns for workers in embroidery and needlework and to supply outlines for wallpaper designs to be filled in later by “paper-stainers.”

The prime deficiency of the woodcut as an art form lay in the division of labor which the process permitted. Draughtsmen usually drew on the blocks; the main function of the cutter was to follow the lines precisely and carefully. Small room existed for individual style or original interpretation; there was little in the technique to distinguish one cutter from another. In spite of these limitations, gifted cutters could rise beyond the dead level of ordinary practice. As fine draughtsmen with a feeling for their materials they did not trace with the knife, they drew and carved with it. Their feeling for line and shape was sensitive, crisp, and supple. But although they created the masterpieces of the medium they suffered from the traditional contempt for their craft. Creative ability in a woodcutter was rarely recognized, and the art fell into gradual decline. By the time the 18th century opened it had been almost entirely abandoned as a means of creating and interpreting works of art, and had been relegated to a minor place among the print processes.

The attitude of the print connoisseur was clearly stated as early as 1762 by Horace Walpole:[6]

I have said, and for two reasons, shall say little of wooden cuts; that art never was executed in any perfection in England: engraving on metal was a final improvement of the art, and supplied the defects of cuttings in wood. The ancient wooden cuts were certainly carried to a great heighth, but that was the merit of the masters, not of the method.

[Footnote 6: Walpole, 1765 (1st ed. 1762), p. 3.]

William Gilpin in 1768 went even further. Describing the various contemporary print processes he omitted the woodcut entirely as not worthy of consideration. He acknowledged that “wooden cuts” were once executed by early artists but made no additional reference to the medium.[7]

[Footnote 7: William Gilpin, _An Essay on Prints_, London, 1781 (1st ed. 1768), p. 47. “There are three kinds of prints, engravings, etchings, and mezzotintos.”]

As late as 1844 Maberly[8] cautioned print amateurs to steer clear of block prints:

Prints, from wooden blocks, are much less esteemed, or, at least, are, generally speaking, of greatly less cost than engravings on copper; and there are connoisseurs who may, perhaps, consider them as rather derogatory to a fine collection.

[Footnote 8: Maberly, 1844, p. 130.]

Specialized histories of wood engraving, written mainly by 19th-century practitioners and bibliophiles, have tended to emphasize literal rendition rather than artistic vision. The writers favored wood engraving executed with the burin on the end grain of hard dense wood, such as box or maple, because it could produce finer details than the old woodcut, which made use of knife and horizontally grained wood. They judged by narrow craft standards concerned with exact imitation of surface textures. Linton, for example, is almost contemptuous in his references to the chiaroscuro woodcut:[9]