“A SUNNY LAND.” (FROM THE PAINTING BY GEORGE WETHERBEE.)
(New Gallery, 1891.)
DECORATIVE DESIGN BY RANDOLPH CALDECOTT.
(The above design, from the Memoir of R. Caldecott, is lent by Messrs. Sampson Low & Co.)
One of the many uses which artists may make of the half-tone process is suggested by the reproduction of one of Mr. Caldecott’s decorative designs, drawn freely with a brush full of white, on brown paper on a large scale (sometimes two or even three feet long), and reduced as above; the reduction refining and improving the design.
This is a most legitimate and practical use of “process” for illustrating books, architectural and others, which in artistic hands might well be further developed.
Of the illustrators who use this process in a more free-and-easy way we will now take an example, cut out of the pages of Sketch (see overleaf, p. 155).
Here truths of light and shade are disregarded, the figure stands out in unnatural darkness against white paper, and flat mechanical shadows are cast upon nothing. Only sheer ability on the part of a few modern illustrators has saved these coarse ungainly sketches from universal condemnation. But the splashes, and spots, and stains, which are taking the place of more serious work in illustration, have become a vogue in 1894. The sketch is made in two or three hours, instead of a week; the process is also much cheaper to the publisher than wood engraving, and the public seems satisfied with a sketch where formerly a finished illustration was required, if the subject be treated dramatically and in a lively manner. If the sketch comes out an unsightly smear on the page, it at least answers the purpose of topical illustration, and apparently suits the times. It is little short of a revolution in illustration, of which we do not yet see the end.[16]