[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.
FORD MADOX BROWN
DALZIELS' 'BIBLE
GALLERY,' 1880
ELIJAH AND THE
WIDOW'S SON
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.