A History of Wood-Engraving

by George Edward Woodberry

Aside from these imitative cuts, the most striking portion of recent engraving, that which has been hailed as opening a new career to the art, is characterized either by a great refinement of line or by a practical abandonment of line. Of the former tendency Mr. Henry Marsh affords the most prominent examples by his engravings in illustration of insect life, or similarly delicate work. The skill of his hand and the charm of the style he has adopted are beyond question; there is as little doubt of the truthfulness and beauty of the effects secured in the rendering of individual objects, the butterfly wing, the pond-lily, or the spray of the winter forest; the only deduction to be made from his praise is, that when he binds these several objects into one picture, as in a landscape, he suffers the too frequent penalty of fine detail, and loses in the delicacy and finish of the parts the beauty that should have characterized the whole. There is always in his cuts grace, poetic feeling, exquisite workmanship, but there is in some of them a lack of body, substance, distance, of skill in placing the objects in a natural relation to one another, that mars the total result. Mr. Marsh is one of the older men, and deserves the credit of first showing what wood-engraving is capable of in refinement of line; but younger men have joined him in developing these capacities of the art, and have made work in this style more common. The best of it is by Mr. F. S. King, being equal in every quality to Mr. Marsh’s most admirable cuts. Such engraving is exceptional, of course; but the evenness and transition of tone, the care for line, the discrimination of both line and color values, shown in these butterflies (Fig. 77), are characteristic of Mr. King’s work in general, although in some of it a lack of definition in outlines is noticeable. The refinement of line in these two engravers is justifiable, because they put meaning into the lines, and express by them something that could not otherwise be interpreted to the eye through this art; and so long as this remains the case they will meet with commendation and encouragement. It is only when such refinement is needlessly resorted to, or is confusing or meaningless, that it is rightly rebuked.

The second and more evil tendency of recent engraving, toward an abandonment of line, is exhibited in many phases, and by nearly all the younger men. In some cases the central portion of the cut seems alone to be cared for, and is much elaborated, while the surrounding parts fade off into the background with the uncertainty of a dissolving view; in other cases there seems to be entire indifference about form or texture: there is no definition of the one nor discrimination in the other, but an effect only is sought for, usually vague or startling, always unsatisfactory, and not infrequently ugly. Such work is the product of ignorance or carelessness or caprice. In it wood-engraving ceases to be an art of expression. These obscure masses, meant for trees, in which one may look with a microscope and see neither leaf, limb, nor bark; these mottled grounds, meant for grass or houses, in which there is neither blade nor fibre; these blocks of formless tints, in which all the veracity of the landscape perishes, do not record natural facts, or convey thought or sentiment; they are simply vacant of meaning. To illustrate or criticise such work would be an ungracious as well as a needless task; but even in the best work of the best engravers, with which alone these pages are concerned, the marks of tendency in this wrong direction are palpably present. Here, for example, is some charming work by Mr. King (Fig. 78), wholly successful in securing the effect sought—beautiful, well worth doing. The spirit of the season, the moist days, the April nature, the leafing and budding in mist and cloudiness, and gleam of light and breath of warm, soft air along full-flowing streams, the swift and buoyant welcome borne on the forward flight of the birds straight toward us, the ever-renewed marvel of the birth of life and the coming on of days of beauty—the feeling of all this is given, and the success is due in large part to the vagueness that dims the whole design; but why should the wreathing flowers, the tender crown of all, lose the curve of their petals and darken the delicate form of each young blossom, all blurred into the background, and half-effaced and marred, and tiring the eye with the effort to define them? If the value of form had been more felt, if the definition of outline had been firmer, if the spray had really blossomed, would not the design have been better? There is less doubt of the error in the next cut. The disappearance of texture and the attenuation of substance into flat shadow is very plain. To a true woodsman, to one who has lived with trees, and knows and loves them, there is little of their nature in these vague, transparent, insubstantial forms, that seem rather skeleton leaves than strong-limbed, firm-rooted trees that have sung in the frosty silence and lived through the “bitter cold” of many a St. Agnes Eve. Who, looking on these pale shadows, would remember that the same poet, whose verse is here put into picture, thought of trees as “senators” of the woods? In the disposition of the light of the atmosphere, in the management of the gray tints, particularly in the lower portion of the cut, the eye takes more pleasure: there is some discrimination between the sheep, the old man, and the fold—as much, perhaps, as the prevailing obscurity admits; but the cut as a whole is much harmed by the lack of relief, which seems to be a recurring fault in fine-lined and crowded work. The cut (Fig. 81) by Mr. Juengling, whose engravings exhibit the tendencies of the new methods in the most pronounced way, shows, like the preceding illustration, an inattention to texture in the foliage, and an entire negligence of cloud-form in the sky, which is a fair example of the abandonment of line, or of meaningless line, as one chooses to call it. An effect is gained, a horizon light and shadowed masses, but the landscape is not faithfully rendered.

Of a different order are the two following cuts, simple, quiet, and refined. The mountain scene (page 183) is admirable for the disposition of its lights and shadows, the gradation and variation of its tints, and the subordination of every element to a truthful total effect. The cut by Mr. Hoskin (Fig. 82) is a good example of his always excellent work, showing his power of economy and his feeling for line and tone, while it evinces self-restraint in methods of work.