ARTICLE I
THROUGHOUT the history of art, or rather the history of collecting, there has always been, in conjunction with the desire to collect, a hesitancy in collecting just those things which are ever with us and about which we know the most. Though tremendously characteristic of our age, this hesitancy is by no means confined to it. The Japanese print was ever despised in Japan, and still is, except from its pecuniary point of view, by that grossly over-rated, so-called clever people, who only learned to appreciate their own prints when taught to by the despised western barbarian; the etching of Rembrandt, until the dealer discovered its value, could mostly be obtained for a song; the mezzotint, when it was published, filled the place of the photograph, brought only a guinea, or so, though the near-as-possible counterfeit now is announced to be sold as a rarity in limited editions at the price of the original; the etching of Meryon, valued to-day as much for the paper it is printed on as for what is printed on the paper, was sold by the artist for a few francs, in several cases quite its full value—all these things and endless more are the sport of the collector. ¶ And yet it has always seemed to me extraordinary that the collector, who prizes works of the graphic arts mainly for their rarity, has never collected those which really are rare. It is inconceivable, it is astonishing and unbelievable, that the art of the nineteenth century, the art of illustration, has been so neglected that the original drawings, though they have been always with us, have never yet been properly prized, appreciated, catalogued and collected. I know that old drawings are collected, but the collector’s interest in them to a great extent dates only from yesterday, and even now their price does not equal that of prints from them, of which there may be dozens, or, in fact, nobody knows how many examples in existence. But I also know that, within the last hundred years, drawings, illustrations, have been made in England and America that will rank with any, ever made anywhere, in any age, and that these works of art are absolutely ignored. And they are ignored simply because they have not been collected, because in this country the British museum cannot purchase the work of living British artists, and often it is during the lifetime of the artist only that they can be secured, because in France there is no place to exhibit drawings save in a corner of the Luxembourg; the rest the French government possesses are buried in the Cabinet des estampes. Theoretically, the rule of the British museum may be a good one; it may be thought a safeguard against as terrible a hodge-podge as that presented on the walls of the art gallery at South Kensington. To some of us, however, a remedy suggests itself—change or modify the rule, and, under intelligent direction, there is no reason why collections as fine as those in Dresden and Berlin should not be easily obtained even in England. ¶ The consequence of this neglect, both deliberate and enforced on the part of the British government, has been that here dealers and collectors, connoisseurs and amateurs, have avoided original drawings almost altogether. Artists alone have cared for them, have collected them, and still own almost all that are best worth having.[99] But now that the best examples have been collected, or have become impossible to collect, I see signs vaguely of an appreciation. I do not for a moment think this is due to any artistic awakening or any sudden recognition of a genuine form of art—the art, as I have always described it, and as it will be known in the future, of the nineteenth century. The real cause is to be found rather in the desire for some new thing. Personally, I care very little what is bringing the change about; I am merely delighted to know that it is coming,[100] for I have been preaching the beauty of this work for many years, though, I admit, in a wilderness of paint, prints, pots and postage stamps. When it does come, the possessors of these drawings will find that they own, not only things of beauty, but wonderful examples of an individual form of expression which owes its existence altogether to the last century. I do not mean to suggest that illustration is a modern form of art; it is as old as the world. I do not mean to say that, in their way, the works of the artists of the Renaissance are not glorious; I do not mean to say that the works of the eighteenth century are not superb, after their fashion; what I do mean is, that not until the nineteenth century in England, with Blake and with Bewick, did illustration become a separate, independent and individual branch of the fine arts. The reasons are simple—the appearance of artists who loved and respected their profession, and the improvement and development of technical and mechanical processes. ¶ Blake wished to show his art in his own publications. There was nothing new in this; Dürer had done it centuries before. But Blake confined himself virtually to illustration; with Dürer, it was only one of his many means of expression. Bewick may or may not have learned to adapt the technique of steel engraving to wood from Papillon; that is a detail for the historian. What he did do, and what Papillon did not, was to impose the new method successfully on the world. Not only did Bewick produce his series of nature books, the forerunners of the present fad for that sort of thing, but he invented a school and a scientific manner of work which conquered the world. ¶ I have traced already the development of English book-illustration, showing how it spread from England to France and to Germany, and how, as it progressed through these countries, artists appeared to work for it—great artists in illustration but in nothing else, Meissonier and Menzel. I have elsewhere shown how, though these artists were ready to draw upon the wood block, they had to send to England for engravers to engrave their designs; I have shown how the pupils and the methods of Bewick were spread all over Europe: but while this was happening the art was languishing in England. Lithography and cheapness had commenced to stifle it. Education and the personal benefactor, the curses of this country, were sitting on it. The equivalent in that day to the county council, I doubt not, had it by the throat. It is true that William Harvey, Linnell, and a few others carried on, as best they could, the traditions of Bewick. But through the mid-century, Turner and his steel engravers struggled with the lithographers, Harding, Prout and Lewis, only that all alike might be undermined by Knight’s penny something or other, and that horror, as it then was, The Illustrated London News, always catering for the people, and the people damn any form of art.
PLATE I
FROM ‘GIL BLAS’ 1836, DRAWN BY I. GIGOUX, ENGRAVER UNKNOWN
THE ROUND TABLE, FROM ‘GESCHICHTE FRIEDRICHS DES GROSSEN,’ 1840
A. MENZEL, DEL. E. KNUTCHMAR, SC.
PLATE II
ORIGINAL DRAWING BY W. WESTALL
FROM ‘NORTHCOTE’S FABLES,’ 1828, DRAWN BY HARVEY, ENGRAVED BY JACKSON
ORIGINAL DRAWING BY BARTOLOZZI
ORIGINAL DRAWING BY COURBOULD
But, with the appearance in Germany, in 1840, of Menzel’s ‘Geschichte Friedrichs des Grossen,’ and its appropriation in 1845, by the ingenious Mr. Bohn—I wonder what he paid for the blocks—a new era dawned in England. And just one word about this book. It contains 500 illustrations by Adolf Menzel, and, says the advertisement, ‘in the execution of the cuts both French and British artists (engravers) have been engaged.’ But it so happened that they were all discarded by the artist for German engravers whom he himself trained. The 500 illustrations were drawn by Adolf Menzel on the wood, and his trials and tribulations are well known to all who have studied the history of illustration. Five hundred drawings in one book, all done on little wood blocks. Why, even this is enough to ruin anybody in our day, when it is an honour to be devoid of technical ability and physical capacity for work. But then we live in a time when incompetence, laziness and anæmic imbecility are, in this country indispensible credentials to fame. ¶ This book of Menzel’s, which has never been surpassed as an example of reproductive wood engraving, was seen by the Dalziels and shown to, at any rate, Keene, Rossetti, Sir John Gilbert and, most likely, Millais. If some of the lesser but more precious illustrators then at work refused to look at it—well, the loss was their own, and it is probably one of the reasons why so little afterwards was ever heard of them. ¶ Some ten years later, in France, where ever since the thirties the romanticists had been illustrating, notably Curmer’s edition of ‘Paul et Virginie’ (1838), while Jean Gigoux in his ‘Gil Blas’ (1836) had made an everlasting reputation, there appeared Meissonier’s edition of the ‘Contes Rémois’ (1858), by which, and not by his sensational dealings in paint with millionaires, his name will be remembered. And then England woke up again. The first English book which shows any evidence of a revival in art, an attempt to escape from the be-Knighted, be-illustrated traditions, was William Allinham’s ‘Music Master,’ which contains nine illustrations: seven by Arthur Hughes, one by Rossetti—The Maids of Elfen Mere, which appears really to have made a sensation—and one by Millais. It was published in 1855. The English edition of Menzel’s ‘Fredrick’ came out in 1845. ¶ It should not be forgotten that there had been a strong saving remnant all along from the time of Bewick. Northcote’s ‘Fables’ appeared in 1828, ‘embellished’ by 280 drawings, ascribed by Northcote, but really by Harvey, ‘most excellently drawn on the wood and prepared for the engraver by Mr. William Harvey, and improved by his skill’—even Northcote himself admitted this in one edition. The ‘Voyage of Columbus,’ undated and unsigned, illustrated by Stothard, was possibly still earlier. Then there was the ‘Solace of Song’ (1837); there was Lane’s memorable edition of the ‘Arabian Nights,’ illustrated also by Harvey (1839); and there were certain other volumes; but one is not now making a bibliography. However, it was with the ‘Music Master’ (1855) that the great change came. ¶ In 1857 Moxon issued his edition of Tennyson, the only book which is well known. It is extraordionary how little good work there is in it, but this little is of the utmost importance, for it includes the monumental Rossettis and Holman Hunts, and a few beautiful Millais. Even more extraordinary is the proof given not long ago of the public’s indifference to great illustration, for when, recently, just these few fine illustrations, together with the poems to which they refer, were reprinted, accompanied not only by the artists’ original studies for them, but by a most interesting essay by Mr. Holman Hunt, one of the illustrators, this new edition fell perfectly flat. This is not very creditable to the intelligence of the British collector, but it is a fact.[101] ¶ By 1859, the movement, with the starting of Once a Week, got into full swing, and we are in the golden age of illustration, the most striking, the most original phase of British art. From this time onward, for ten years, the publishers of this country issued a series of books and magazines that have never been approached, and when the present tendencies in art are considered, it is fairly safe to add will never again be approached in England. Then, artists sought to put the best of themselves into illustration on the wood block. Then, engravers endeavoured to engrave these illustrations as well as they possibly could, and though all of us have been forced regretfully to admit that the methods were abominable, the drawing being cut all to pieces before it could be printed, and the artist having no redress, the published results were often astonishingly good. Then the printer took a pride in doing his work as well as he knew how. And though it might be, and often was, bad, it was the best of which he was capable, and it was frequently much better than what is done to-day. Then, the publisher regarded himself as a shopkeeper, whose business was merely to put his name on the books and to sell them, and he was content to do this and nothing more. Sometimes he succeeded, sometimes he failed. Now, not only does he sit at the receipt of custom, but he dominates the whole. He tells you what the public wants according to his ideas, and the length of his purse, and his travellers’ opinions. And as in nine cases out of ten, despite these authorities, he is supremely ignorant of the work which he farms out, and as cheapness and vulgarity are his only gods, and as paper has come down and process has come in, it is not surprising that English book-illustration should be just where it is to-day. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule among the publishers. They are few, indeed. But they know their position, and it would be discouraging to the rest to name them. ¶ But, the collector may ask, what in all this defence of book-illustration is there for me? As I have pointed out, the illustrations, at any rate up to 1865, were all drawn on the wood block, and were all cut to pieces in the engraving. There remain, therefore, only a very few and rare originals that for some reason or other were not engraved. There also remain in many cases studies for these illustrations. For example, the British museum has been lately showing an illustration, so-called, by Sir J. E. Millais, for his ‘Parables,’ published first in Good Words, and then in a separate volume by the Dalziels (1864). This is not the illustration really, but a study for it. It may safely be assumed that no original drawings for book-illustration prior to 1865 exist, unless they are simply drawings made on the wood for a book and never engraved, when they are not book-illustrations at all—that is, illustrations which have been used in a book—or unless they are drawings of some sort made for the steel-engraver or the lithographer, which were copied or translated by the engraver. For example, Turner’s illustrations to Rogers’ ‘Poems’ exist as most commonplace water-colours in the cellars of the National gallery. Turner and Goodall between them made a great work of art out of the ‘Datur Hora Quieti,’ but there is no original of this at all save the trifling water-colour suggestion. Some of the artists, however, were in the habit of making studies in pen-and-ink, or wash, or pencil, on paper, of the exact size of the future engraving, and containing all the details of the design, which was afterwards redrawn on the wood block. Mr. Sandys did this in very many cases, and in some he even made large versions of the drawings, especially for the ‘Amor Mundi,’ which is owned by Lord Battersea. In his case, too, one or two of his drawings, I know, never were engraved. One which I owned, and which is now in the Adelaide museum, Australia, The Spirit of the Storm, was unfinished, and a second, done for Good Words or Once a Week, for years kicked round in a drawer in the office of Swain, the engraver, until I found it, when it was engraved and published in The Hobby Horse; the reason for this long neglect being that it had been considered too strong by the prurient-minded publisher of that time.
PLATE III
ORIGINAL DRAWING BY STOTHARD
ORIGINAL UNENGRAVED ILLUSTRATION BY AN UNKNOWN ARTIST
ORIGINAL DRAWING BY GEORGE BARRETT
PLATE IV
ROSSETTI, DEL. DALZIELS, SC. THE MAIDS OF ELFIN MERE, FROM ALLINGHAM’S MUSIC MASTER, 1855
DRAWN BY S. PALMER, ENGRAVED BY W. T. GREEN, FROM ‘SACRED ALLEGORIES,’ 1856
After about 1865, or rather before, for the books were published in that year, some of the drawings for the illustrated editions of Dalziel’s ‘Arabian Nights, 1865,’ and ‘Goldsmith, 1865,’ were regarded by the engravers as so remarkable that they had photographs made from these drawings on the wood, and then, by the newly-discovered art of photographing on to wood, the photographs were transferred on to other wood blocks, and the originals on the wood preserved. Several are to be seen in the art gallery at South Kensington. The British museum possesses a few, and so do the Adelaide and Melbourne museums in Australia. Mr. Harold Hartley, Mr. Fairfax Murray, Mrs. C. E. Davis, Boyd Houghton’s sister, and, I believe, Mr. Heseltine, are among other owners of these rare drawings, either on wood or paper. But the number is really very small. ¶ There is also a series of drawings for Dalziel’s ‘Bible Gallery,’ commissioned by the Dalziels as early as 1863, as far as I can gather from Messrs. Dalziel’s own records, which are not too satisfactory. Most of the drawings in this series, however, were made on paper, though some by Mr. Watts and Sir Edward Poynter were on the wood, and uncut, and may be seen at South Kensington. Messrs. Dalziel, finding what a marvellous collection of illustrations they had obtained, wisely did nothing but commission artists to make more, and the work was not brought out until 1880, when the drawings were all photographed on to the wood before engraving, and thus preserved. Where most of them are to-day I do not know. As separate illustrations and great works of art, I was the first to call attention to them as far back as 1889. Those by Lord Leighton are now regarded as his masterpieces, and there are very fine examples of Ford Madox Brown, and Watts, and Sir Edward Poynter, who has never done better work. From all but the artistic standpoint the book was a failure. ¶ These, then, with rare unengraved examples which are bound to turn up, constitute all the original drawings for book-illustration reproduced by wood engraving which will ever be found, and they are mostly owned by museums. I must point out, however, that forgeries, both in the way of shameless copies of the originals, or prints worked over with pen-and-ink, and wash, and even colour—the artists themselves did this sometimes; Pinwell certainly did—and palpable imitations, have all, within a short time, been submitted to me. But, I should imagine, of all these finished drawings done upon the wood for reproduction before 1865, there are not a hundred, probably not fifty, that will ever come into the sale room. Of course, a great find may some day be made in a publisher’s office, or an artist’s portfolio. But I doubt it.
NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS.—These are mostly included merely to show the sort of drawings the artists made for the engraver and lithographer, who either translated them on to the plate or stone or had an intermediary to do this for them. The first, by Stothard, is in sepia, and a design, I know not for what book, but evidently a headpiece or initial which would have been cleaned up by the engraver. The second, by Bartolozzi, a cul de lampe in washes of indian ink, is very pretty, and the engraver probably would follow it exactly, though he would lose some of the freedom. The others on the same page, by Westall and Courbould, are very typical, and represent the British style of illustration for novels and stories at the beginning of the last century, and very perfectly they represent it, and that is the best I can say for them. The Westall, in wash and pen (indian ink), is slightly touched with colour on the woman’s dress, and may have been engraved on metal and printed in two or more tints. The other is in simple black-and-white. The landscapes are very characteristic; the upper, of the stolid, solid, British water-colourist, who was determined at all costs to be British, and usually forgot he was an artist. And the other, by Barrett, is typical of the later work when Turner had made himself felt with the ‘Liber,’ or did Turner steal from Barrett? Any way, Barrett is seen at his best in this very charming sepia drawing, evidently for an illustration, while the ‘Liber’ drawings at the National gallery show Turner as an illustrator at his worst and his best. The methods of the two artists are absolutely identical; washes, little work with pen, and much scraping and scratching with the knife. As for the engravings, one is from Northcote’s ‘Fables,’ 1828, and shows the perfection of the minute work of Harvey and Jackson. Yet there is the feeling, somehow, of a big landscape in the print, and the engraving is extraordinary, putting to shame much of the modern so-called bold, but really blundering and ignorant, work on wood. The printing also is excellent in Northcote’s volumes. They were printed by J. Johnson, and the excellent blacks the printer of to-day would, even with all his improved appliances, have difficulty in equalling. The printing is much better than that in the French book, ‘Gil Blas,’ by Everat (Paulin, 1836), in which the ink is dull and grey, but in every other way the Gigoux shows the wide difference in aims there was between the leading English and French artists of that day: Harvey, all refinement; Gigoux, all force, directness and go. Both these engravers seem to have rendered the originals well. What the artists thought is another story. The Gigoux also proves that Daniel Vierge worked out rather than invented his style. The next two illustrations are from Curmer’s ‘Paul et Virginie,’ 1838, which is usually regarded, as Curmer wished it, a ‘monument typographic’ to the glory of the artists who illustrated it, is admitted to be the most important French illustrated book of the period, and to it all the better remembered Frenchmen of the time contributed something. Among the artists are Isabey, Paul Huet, Jacque, Johannot, Français, Meissonier, Steinhell; the engravers were Poiret, Lavoignat, Best, Brévière, Frenchmen; Bentworth, the German; but Orin Smith, Branston, Mary Ann Williams and her brothers, English, did the greater part of the work: a magnificent, artistic union, more practical in many ways than visits of kings and the patter of papers. The book was printed, and extraordinarily well printed, by Everat. ¶ The appearance of Turner as an illustrator changed things much. The ‘Solace of Song,’ published by Seeley, 1837, illustrated by Harvey, and engraved by W. T. Green and others, is simply metal engraving on wood, and is astonishing as an example of what can be done. The final outcome is seen in the print from ‘Sacred Allegories,’ by the Rev. W. Adams (Rimingtons, 1856), one chapter of which, ‘The Distant Hills,’ is illustrated by Samuel Palmer and also engraved by Green. This is, of its sort, probably the most perfect example of English book illustration. ¶ But in Germany the greatest progress had been made under Menzel, and his ‘Frederick,’ from which the print, The Round Table, is taken, is simply magnificent. It was engraved by Krutchmar, 1840, and from it sprang modern illustration, as I have said, in England. The first evidence is to be found in Rossetti’s Maids of Elfen Mere in Allingham’s ‘Music Master,’ 1855. In 1858 came the ‘Contes Rémois,’ Levy, illustrated by Meissonier, the perfection of French work, and the beginning and end of his reputation, as well as the most amazing proof of the genius of Lavoignat as a wood-engraver. After this the art of illustration began to flourish in England, and in a year or two the most superb work was being done.
PLATE V
MEISSONNIER, DEL. LAGORNAL, SC. FROM ‘LES CONTES REMOIS,’ 1858
JACQUE, FROM CURMER’S ‘PAUL ET VIRGINIE,’ ENGRAVED BY MARY ANN WILLIAMS, 1838
E. ISABEY, DEL. BAGG, SC. FROM ‘PAUL ET VIRGINIE’