CHAPTER VI.
BOOK ILLUSTRATORS.
THE earliest book illustrations in England were illuminations and repetitions of them on wood. Frontispieces followed, in which a portrait was surrounded by an allegory. Of this branch of art WILLIAM FAITHORNE (1616—1691) and DAVID LOGGAN (about 1630—1693) were practitioners. Topographical views, subjects from natural history, and botany followed. Hogarth's designs for "Hudibras" were among the earlier illustrations of a story. FRANCIS HAYMAN (1708—1776), his friend, illustrated Congreve's plays, Milton, Hanmer's Shakespeare, and other works. He was followed by SAMUEL WALE (died 1786), and JOSEPH HIGHMORE (1692—1780), who illustrated "Pamela." Towards the close of the eighteenth century, book illustrations had become a recognised class of art-works. Bell's "British Poets," commenced in 1778, the British Theatre, and Shakespeare, opened a wide field for artists of this order. Cipriani, Angelica Kauffman, William Hamilton, and Francis Wheatley, all members of the Royal Academy, were employed to illustrate Bell's publications. Famous among book illustrators was—
WILLIAM BLAKE (1757—1827).—Though born in no higher grade than that of trade, and in no more romantic spot than Broad Street, Golden Square, William Blake, a hosier's son, was a poet, a painter, an engraver, and even a printer. His genius was of an original, eccentric kind, and there were many who believed him crazed. During his long life he was "a dreamer of dreams" and a poetic visionary. Now he was meeting "the grey, luminous, majestic, colossal shadows" of Moses and Dante; now believing that Lot occupied the vacant chair in his painting-room. Anon he fancied that his dead brother had revealed to him a new process of drawing on copper, which he practised with great success. Neglected and misunderstood, Blake was always busy, always poor, and always happy. He lived beyond the cares of every-day life, in a dream-world of his own, occasionally "seeing fairies' funerals, or drawing the demon of a flea." In spite of poverty and neglect, the poet-painter was contented. Rescued from the hosier's business, for which he was intended, Blake at the age of fourteen was apprenticed to the younger Basire, an engraver. Throughout his life he worked not for money but for art, declaring that his business was "not to gather gold, but to make glorious shapes, expressing godlike sentiments." Hard work with the graver gave him bread, and when the day's toil was over he could illustrate teeming fancies in pictures and in verses. He worked at first chiefly at book illustrations. Marrying in his twenty-fifth year, his wife, named Katherine Boucher, proved a faithful and useful helpmeet, one who considered her husband's excursions to be dictated by superior knowledge. Blake's courtship was brief and characteristic. As he was telling his future wife of his troubles, caused by the levity of another damsel, she said, "I pity you." "Do you pity me?" answered the painter; "then I love you for it!" And they were married. It is not wonderful that Blake's contemporaries thought him mad, as he often did strange things. In 1791 Blake designed and engraved six plates to illustrate "Tales for Children" by Mary Wollstonecraft, and later, his "Book of Job," Dante's "Inferno," Young's "Night's Thoughts," Blair's "Grave," and other series. Many of his designs show majestic and beautiful thoughts, a bizarre, but frequently soaring and stupendous invention, great beauty of colour, energy, sweetness, and even beauty of form; they were rarely otherwise than poetic. Some are natural and simple, with occasional flashes, such as belonged to all Blake's productions. The process of drawing on, or rather excavating copper, which he declared had been revealed to him by his brother's ghost, furnished a raised surface, from which Blake was able to print both the design and the verses he composed. By this process he produced his own "Songs of Innocence and of Experience," sixty-eight lyrics, of which it has been said that "they might have been written by an inspired child, and are unapproached save by Wordsworth for exquisite tenderness or for fervour." Then followed "America, a Prophecy," and "Europe, a Prophecy," irregularly versified, imaginative, and almost unintelligible productions. He was illustrating Dante when he died, and, happy to the last, passed away singing extemporaneous songs.
THOMAS STOTHARD (1755—1834) began life as a designer for brocaded silks, but, on finding the true bent of his genius, he made designs for the "Town and Country Magazine," and the "Novelist's Magazine," "Ossian," and Bell's "Poets." His works deal with the gentler and sweeter side of human nature, and we can trace the quiet, simple character of the man in them. His eleven illustrations of "Peregrine Pickle" appeared in 1781, and are excellent examples of his truthfulness and grace. He was essentially a quietist, and scenes of passion and tumult were foreign to his genius. Trunnion and Pipes became living men under his pencil, and "Clarissa" and others of Richardson's romances gained from him an immortality which they would never have acquired by their own merits. In 1788 Stothard produced illustrations of the "Pilgrim's Progress," which, though possessing sweetness and beauty, deal with subjects beyond his grasp. His designs for "Robinson Crusoe" are among his best works. Stothard was made an A.R.A. in 1791, and a full member of the Royal Academy in 1794. His best known painting is Intemperance, on the staircase of Burghley House, in Northamptonshire. There are eight works by him in the National Gallery, including the original sketch of Intemperance. One of his most popular, though not the best of his pictures, is the Procession of the Canterbury Pilgrims. A collection of Stothard's designs is in the British Museum.
JOHN HAMILTON MORTIMER (1741—1779), a native of Eastbourne, came to London, and made a promising beginning in the world of art. He gained the Society of Arts's premium of a hundred guineas with St. Paul converting the Britons, and painted other large historic pictures. Mortimer, however, fell into extravagant habits, and neglected art. His oil paintings are "heavy and disagreeable in colour;" his drawings are better. He drew designs for Bell's "Poets," "Shakespeare," and other works, choosing scenes in which bandits and monsters play conspicuous parts.
THOMAS KIRK (died 1797), a pupil of Cosway, was an artist of much promise. His best works were designs for Cooke's "Poets."