Chapter 2

... The poorest workman may suffice for an excellent chiaroscuro. I do not depreciate the artistic value as chiaroscuros of the various prints here noted nor underestimate the difficulty of production; but my business has been solely with the not difficult knifecutting and graver cutting of the same.

[Footnote 9: Linton, 1889, p. 215. A woodcut in the German manner was far more difficult to manage than Linton imagined. Bewick tried to imitate the cross-hatched lines of a Dürer woodcut without success. He finally concluded (1925, pp. 205-207) that the old woodcutters had used two blocks, each with lines going in opposing directions, and had printed one over the other!]

_The Chiaroscuro Tradition_

The chiaroscuro woodcut was originally designed to serve a special purpose, to reproduce drawings of the Renaissance period. These were often made with pen and ink on paper prepared with a tint or with brush and wash tones on white or tinted paper. Highlights were made and modeled with brush and white pigment; the result had something of a bas-relief character. Neither line engraving nor etching was suited to reproducing these spirited drawings, but the chiaroscuro woodcut could render their effects admirably. Its nature, therefore, was conceived as fresh and spontaneous, as printed drawing, in fact.

Chiaroscuros were usually of two types, the German and the Italian. The Germans specialized in reproducing line drawings made on toned paper with white highlights. The woodcuts, however, could stand by themselves as black-and-white prints; the tones required separate printing. The typical German chiaroscuro was therefore from two blocks. The earliest dated print in this style is Lucas Cranach’s _Venus_, with “1506” appearing on the black block. But the brown tint might have been added a few years later. Jost de Negker, working after drawings by Hans Burgkmair, cut blocks which are dated, on the black block at least, as early as 1508, and work by Hans Baldung and Hans Wechtlin appeared shortly after.

The Italian style originated with Ugo da Carpi, who in 1516 petitioned the Senate in Venice to grant him exclusive rights to the chiaroscuro process, which he claimed to have invented. For many years, until Bartsch adduced proof in favor of the Germans, da Carpi was conceded to be the founder of this process. His first work dates from 1518 but obviously he produced prints earlier-- how much earlier is uncertain. Working mainly after the loose, fresh wash drawings of Raphael and Parmigianino he developed a method of reducing their tonal constituents to two or three simple areas plus a partial outline, each of which was cut on a separate block. The blocks were then inked with transparent tones and printed one over the other to achieve gradations. White highlights were imitated, as in the German manner, by cutting out lines on a tone block to let the white paper assert itself. The result was a broadly treated facsimile of the original drawing. Some liberties were occasionally taken in interpretation, and sometimes fanciful changes were made in color combinations.

This technique was followed in Italy during the remainder of the 1500’s, the most prominent early workers being Antonio da Trento (Fantuzzi), Domenico Beccafumi, and Giuseppe Niccolò Vicentino. Late in the century Andrea Andreani acquired a large number of blocks by previous Italian chiaroscurists and reissued them, adding his own monogram. By multiplying these subjects he reduced their rarity and emphasized their distinct character, their difference from other types of prints. The Italian term “chiaroscuro,” meaning light and dark, has persisted as a generic name for this class of work.

The Italian and German techniques were often pursued in variant styles. The Germans sometimes used three blocks, with outlines not only in black but in a tone and white as well. Burgkmair’s _Death as a Strangler_ (B. 40)[10] and Wechtlin’s _Alcon Freeing his Son from the Serpent_ (B. 9) are of this type.

[Footnote 10: Adam Bartsch, _Le Peintre graveur_, Vienna, 1803-1821.]

The Italians, in turn, often used two blocks in the German fashion, reproducing a complete crosshatched pen drawing with one tint block. Even da Carpi used this procedure more than occasionally, as in _St. John Preaching in the Desert_ after Raphael (B. XII), and in _The Harvest_ after Giulio Romano (B. XII). Most other Italian chiaroscurists made frequent use of this method which had the virtue of simplicity. Outstanding exponents included Niccolò Boldrini, who worked chiefly after drawings by Titian, and in the early 17th century the brothers Bartolomeo and G. B. Coriolano. Andreani’s prints were usually in a more independent style which employed a clear outline in gray or soft brown with three tints blocks. While technical procedures were identical in Italian and German chiaroscuros after pen drawings, the Italian work tended to be looser than the German, which was more careful and methodical.

The Italian style, then, strictly interpreted, was simply the da Carpi style. Less rigorously considered, it included the free Italian variants of the German process.

Hendrick Goltzius of Haarlem, whose first chiaroscuros date from 1588, combined both Italian and German influences with marvelously crisp drawing and cutting and sharper color combinations than were common. Paulus Moreelse, a Dutch artist in the first half of the 17th century, employed a dark block in clear outline but modeled his forms internally in the da Carpi manner. The technical procedure was therefore close to Andreani’s.

A number of other well-known artists including Simon Vouet and Christoffel Jegher, and quite a few anonymous ones, also turned out occasional pieces in the first half of the 17th century, generally in the manner of da Carpi or Goltzius. Perhaps the most prolific was Ludolph Businck, who created prints in France especially after drawings by George Lallemand.

After this period little was done in the medium until 1721, when Count Antonio Maria Zanetti in Venice made his first chiaroscuro woodcut. He worked consistently for almost thirty years and sent proofs to his friends in Europe, mostly important connoisseurs, through whom the prints became widely known. For the most part they were in the da Carpi style, to which he added a light charm. Between 1722 and 1724 Elisha Kirkall in London published twelve chiaroscuros after Italian masters. The prints were done in a combination of media-- etching and mezzotint with relief blocks in either wood or metal-- and were outside the woodcut tradition, but they attracted attention to the old process. In about 1726 Nicolas and Vincent Le Sueur in Paris produced some chiaroscuros, and a year later Jackson made his first example. The Le Sueurs followed da Carpi’s method while Jackson used a loosely drawn outline and three tint blocks in a slight variation of the Andreani style.

One characteristic was shared in common by all early chiaroscurists; their work always reproduced drawings, usually in exact size. Jackson added a new dimension to the medium in 1735 by beginning to work after oil paintings.[11] His attempt to convey their scale, solidity, and tonal range, while retaining the woodcut’s breadth of execution, was perhaps carrying the chiaroscuro into complexities for which it was not suited. The method called for extraordinary talents in planning, drawing, cutting, and printing, and it resulted in impressions that could not escape a certain heaviness of effect when compared with traditional work. Jackson’s prints in this style are both daring and original, but no later woodcutter had either the desire or the temerity to follow his example. The method remained a dead end in chiaroscuro.

[Footnote 11: Andrea Andreani in 1599 published ten plates after cartoons of Mantegna’s nine paintings, _The Triumph of Julius Caesar_ (B. 11), printed from four blocks in variations of gray. But Mantegna’s cartoons were basically drawings in monochrome, and Andreani’s fine chiaroscuros did not differ appreciably from the usual examples.]

Jackson and His Work

_England: Obscure Beginnings_

Little is known of Jackson’s early years. It is assumed that he was born in England about 1700, although many accounts, probably based upon Nagler, have him born in 1701. Papillon[12] conjectures that he studied painting and engraving on wood with “an English painter” named “Ekwits,” but is not sure he remembers the name correctly. He believes this artist engraved most of the head pieces and ornaments in Mattaire’s _Latin Classics_, published by J. and R. Tonson and J. Watts in London, 1713, and remarks on similarities with Jackson’s style. Chatto[13] believes these cuts were executed by Elisha Kirkall, interpreting the initials _EK_ appearing on one of the prints to refer to this engraver rather than to “Ekwits.” He goes on to assume that Kirkall also engraved the blocks for Croxall’s edition of _Aesop’s Fables_, 1722, by the same publisher, and adds that Jackson was probably his apprentice and might have had some share in their execution. Most accounts of Jackson, taking Chatto’s word, note him as a pupil of Kirkall.

[Footnote 12: Papillon, 1766, vol. 1, p. 323. Most probably Papillon confused “Ekwits” with Elisha Kirkall.]

[Footnote 13: Chatto and Jackson, 1861 (1st ed. 1839), p. 448.]

Linton[14] believes that only Kirkall or Jackson could have made the cuts, “unless some _Sculptor ignotus_ is to be credited with that most notable book of graver-work in relief preceding the work of Bewick.”

[Footnote 14: Linton, 1889, p. 130.]

But it is doubtful that Jackson was a pupil of Kirkall. For this assumption we have the evidence of a curious and important little book, _An Enquiry into the Origins of Printing in Europe_,[15] which because of a misleading title and an anonymous author has been overlooked as a reference source. It is a transcription of Jackson’s manuscript journal and was prepared for publication to coincide with the launching of the wallpaper venture, Kirkall is mentioned as follows (pp. 25-26):

... I shall give a brief account of the State of Cutting on Wood in England for the type Press before he [Jackson] went to France in 1725. In the beginning of this Century a remarkable Blow was given to all Cutters on Wood, by an invention of engraving on the same sort of Metal which types are cast with. The celebrated Mr. _Kirkhal_, an able Engraver on Copper, is said to be the first who performed a Relievo Work to answer the use of Cutting on Wood. This could be dispatched much sooner, and consequently answered the purpose of Book-sellers and Printers, who purchased these sort of Works at a much chaper [sic] Rate than could be expected from an Engraver on Wood....

[Footnote 15: London, 1752. Hereafter cited as the _Enquiry_. The first half deals with Jackson’s opinions on the origins of printing from movable type and the progress of cutting on wood, the second half with Jackson’s career and his venture into wallpaper manufacturing. The real content of the book was so little known that Bigmore and Wyman’s comprehensive, annotated _Bibliography of Printing, London, 1880-86_, vol. 1, p. 201, described it as dealing with “certain improvements in printing-types made by Jackson, the typefounder.”]

It does not seem reasonable that Jackson would learn the art of woodcutting from Kirkall and then refer to him as a famous engraver on copper and type metal. It is just as difficult to believe that Kirkall taught Jackson to work on metal, not wood.

The “EK” who engraved the blocks for Mattaire’s _Latin Classics_ might very well have been Kirkall, whose style also might have had something in common with Jackson’s early work. But this would not necessarily indicate a definite influence. English pictorial relief prints for book illustration in the first decades of the 18th century had one characteristic in common; they were almost all done with the engraver’s burin on type metal or end-grain boxwood. They therefore showed elements of a “white-line” style as opposed to the black-line or knife-cut method commonly used in other countries. While it is likely that Jackson was an exception to the general rule in England (we have his word for it in the _Enquiry_, as we shall see), he was also deeply influenced by the prevailing English style of burin work on wood or type metal. If Papillon saw a similarity between Jackson’s cuts and those in the _Latin Classics_, it might have been because he was unfamiliar with other examples of English work and did not recognize a national style.

The initials “J. B. I.” appear on a small cut in the 1717 edition of Dryden’s plays, also published by Tonson. If this is an early piece by Jackson it would indicate that he might have been born earlier than 1701, although it is conceivable that he could have made it when he was sixteen.

This is the extent of the evidence, or rather lack of evidence, of Jackson’s early years in England. Nothing is certain except that woodblock work was at a particularly low ebb. Standards in typography and printing were rude (Caslon was just beginning his career), far inferior to those on the Continent. Cuts were used rather sparingly by printers, and almost always for initial letters (these included little pictures), for tailpieces, and for decorative borders. As a measure of economy the same cut was often repeated throughout a book. Also, initial letters were sometimes contrived to permit the type for different capitals to be inserted in the center area, so that in some instances no more than two cuts were needed to begin alternate chapters in a volume. Rarely were woodblocks employed to illustrate the text. Pictures were almost always supplied by the copper-plate engraver, even when the prints were small and surrounded with typographical matter. This was an expensive and troublesome procedure, but it was the only one possible where an able group of cutters or engravers on wood did not exist and where printers found it difficult to achieve good impressions on the uneven laid paper of the time.

The main employment for knife cutters on wood was in making the popular prints, or illustrated broadsides, which had been sold in city and village throughout the country since the early 1600’s. Plank and knife could be used for these prints because of the generally large size of the pictures and the lack of sophistication of the audience. They are described by Bewick from his memories as a boy in the 1760’s:[16]

I cannot, however, help lamenting that, in all the vicissitudes which the art of wood engraving has undergone, some species of it are lost and done away: I mean the large blocks with the prints from them, so common to be seen, when I was a boy, in every cottage and farm house throughout the country. These blocks, I suppose, from their size, must have been cut on the plank way on beech, or some other kind of close-grained wood; and from the immense number of impressions from them, so cheaply and extensively spread over the whole country, must have given employment to a great number of artists, in this inferior department of woodcutting.... These prints, which were sold at a very low price, were commonly illustrative of some memorable exploits, or were, perhaps, the portraits of eminent men.... Besides these, there were a great variety of other designs, often with songs added to them of a moral, a patriotic, or a rural tendency, which served to enliven the circle in which they were admired. To enumerate the great variety of these _pictures_ would be a task.

[Footnote 16: Bewick, 1925 (1st ed. London, 1862), pp. 211-212.]

Bewick adds that some of these popular woodcuts, although not the great majority, were very good. Since this was the main field for woodcutters, it is an interesting conjecture that Jackson might have been trained for this craft. As he matured, we can assume that he felt the urge to excel as a woodcutter and left the country to develop his potentialities.

It must be remembered that in painting and engraving England was far behind the continental countries, which could boast of centuries of celebrated masters. The medieval period persisted in England until the time of Henry VIII. Traditional religious subjects, so indispensable to European art, were thereafter generally proscribed. There was no fondness as yet for themes of classical mythology, and the new and developing national tradition in painting had to form itself on the only remaining field of pictorial expression, portraiture. Standards of style were set by foreign artists who were lured to England to record its prominent personages in a fitting manner. Beside such masters as Holbein, Zuccaro, Moro, Geeraerts, Van Dyck, Mytens, Lely, Kneller, Zoffany, and Van Loo, among others, native painters seemed crude and provincial. The list of foreign artists other than portraitists who visited England before 1750 for varying periods is also impressive.

If good native painters were rare in the first decades of the 18th century, good engravers or woodcutters were even rarer. Hogarth, whose earliest prints were produced in the 1720’s, received his training from a silversmith.

Jackson’s next move was toward the Continent.

_Paris: Perfection of a Craft_

Jackson arrived in Paris in 1725, his age 24 if we accept 1701 as his birth date. Here flourished a brilliant community of artists, craftsmen, dealers, and connoisseurs; woodcutting, etching, and line engraving were highly developed and the printing offices made extensive use of woodcuts for decoration and illustration. The woodcut tradition mimicked line engraving and was confined chiefly to tiny blocks wrought with the utmost delicacy. The main influence came from the 17th century-- in particular from the etchings and line engravings of Sébastien Le Clerc and from the etchings of Jacques Callot, whose simple system of swelling parallel lines, with occasional cross-hatchings, was adopted by both line engravers and woodcutters.

Le Clerc, whose style was influenced by Callot, had produced a vast number of illustrations involving subjects of almost every type; his designs, therefore, were ready-made for publishers who wanted good but low-priced illustrations. Woodcutters copied his engravings shamelessly, line for line. The overblown high Baroque style in ornament, swag, and cartouche was also drawn upon as a source for decorative cuts. In an attempt to imitate the full tonal scale of engraving, the woodcutters used heavier lines in the foreground to detach the main figures from the background, which was made up of more delicate lines. Background lines were often narrowed further by scraping down their edges, an operation that caused them to merge imperceptibly into the white paper. In this way, although the natural vigor of the woodcut suffered, an effect of space and distance was achieved. Because of the small scale this technique was difficult, especially when cross-hatching was added, and special knives as well as a phenomenal deftness were needed to work out these bits of jewelry on the plank grain of pear, cherry, box, and serviceberry wood.

Jackson’s initial impression of the state of woodcutting in France is described in the _Enquiry_ (p. 27):

From this Account it is evident that there was little Encouragement to be hoped for in England to a Person whose Genius led him to prosecute his Studies in the ancient Manner; which obliged Mr. _Jackson_ to go over to the Continent, and see what was used in the _Parisian_ Printing-houses. At his arrival there he found the _French_ Engravers on Wood working in the old Manner; no Metal Engravers, or any of the same Performance on the end of the Wood, was ever used or countenanced by the Printers or Booksellers in that City. He tells us that he thought himself a tolerable good Hand when he came to _Paris_, but far inferior to the Performances of Monsieurs _Vincent le Seur_ and _Jean M. Pappillon_....

Jackson admits benefiting from the friendship and advice of these woodcutters, then goes on to describe their work with a ruthless frankness. Le Sueur, he says, was a brilliant copyist of the line engravings of Sébastien Le Clerc but, because he was a line-for-line copyist, lacked skill in drawing. Papillon’s father, also a woodcutter who copied Le Clerc, avoided cross-hatching, which Jackson considered an essential ingredient of the true style of black-and-white woodcutting; Papillon himself, while described as a draughtsman of the utmost accuracy, was criticized for making his work so minute that it was impossible to print clearly. Jackson says in the _Enquiry_ (pp. 29-30):

If his Father neglected Cross Hatching, the Son affected to outstrip the _le Seurs_ in this difficult Performance, and even the ancient _Venetians_, believing to have fixed a _Non plus ultra_ in our Times to any future Attempts with Engraving on Wood.

... I saw the Almanack[17] in a horrid Condition before I left _Paris_, the Signs of the Zodiack wore like a Blotch, notwithstanding the utmost Care and Diligence the Printer used to take up very little Ink to keep them clean. I have chosen to make mention of these two _Frenchmen_ as the only Persons in my time keeping up to the Stile of the ancient Engraving on Wood; and as they favoured me with their Friendship and Advice during my abode in _Paris_, I thought in Justice to their good Nature it was proper to give some Account of their Merit!

[Footnote 17: The _Petit almanach de Paris_, founded by J. M. Papillon in 1727 and illustrated with his woodcuts.]

Acknowledgment of friendship and merit in this vein, while entirely true (Papillon was minute to the point of exhibitionism, and his cuts were often not adapted to clear printing), demonstrates the lack of tact that made powerful enemies for Jackson wherever he traveled. Papillon no doubt read the _Enquiry_, in which he was discussed at length, and the well-known _Essay_, with its aggressive tone and irresponsible claims. When Papillon’s _Traité_ came out in 1766 he took the opportunity to put the English artist in his place. Certainly his account was colored by Jackson’s writings; there is no other explanation for this display of personal bitterness in a work published 36 years after the Englishman left Paris (pp. 327-328):