No. XXXII.
(A Photograph from life, engraved on wood.)
This influence and this movement is so strong—and vital to the artist—that it cannot be emphasised too much. The photographer is ever in our midst, correcting our drawing with facts and details which no human eye can see, and no one mind can take in at once.
On the obligations of artists to photographers a book might be written. The benefits are not, as a rule, unacknowledged; nor are the bad influences of photography always noticed. That is to say, that before the days of photography, the artist made himself acquainted with many things necessary to his art, for which he now depends upon the photographic lens; in short, he uses his powers of observation less than he did a few years ago. That the photographer leads him astray sometimes is another thing to remember.
The future of the illustrator being uppermost in our thoughts, let us consider further the influences with which he is surrounded. As to photography, Mr. William Small, the well-known illustrator (who always draws for wood engraving), says:—“it will never take good work out of a good artist’s hands.” He speaks as an artist who has taken to illustration seriously and most successfully, having devoted the best years of his life to its development. The moral of it is, that in whatever material or style newspaper illustrations are done, to hold their own they must be of the best. Let them be as slight as you please, if they be original and good. In line work (the best and surest for the processes) photography can only be the servant of the artist, not the competitor—and in this direction there is much employment to be looked for. At present the influence is very much the other way; we are casting off—ungratefully it would seem—the experience of the lifetime of the wood engraver, and are setting in its place an art half developed, half studied, full of crudities and discords. The illustrations which succeed in books and newspapers, succeed for the most part from sheer ability on the part of the artist; they are full of ability, but, as a rule, are bad examples for students to copy. “Time is money” with these brilliant executants; they have no time to study the value of a line, nor the requirements of the processes, and so a number of drawings are handed to the photo-engravers—which are often quite unfitted for mechanical reproduction—to be produced literally in a few hours. It is an age of vivacity, daring originality, and reckless achievement in illustration. “Take it up, look at it, and throw it down,” is the order of the day. There is no reason but an economic one why the work done “to look at” should not be as good as the artist can afford to make it. The manufacturer of paperhangings or printed cottons will produce only a limited quantity of one design, no matter how beautiful, and then go on to another. So much the better for the designer, who would not keep employment if he did not do his best, no matter whether his work was to last for a day or for a year. The life of a single number of an illustrated newspaper is a week, and of an illustrated book about a year.
The young illustrators on the Daily Graphic—notably Mr. Reginald Cleaver—obtain the maximum of effect with the minimum of lines. Thus Caldecott worked, spending hours sometimes studying the art of leaving out. Charles Keene’s example may well be followed, making drawing after drawing, no matter how trivial the subject, until he was satisfied that it was right. “Either right or wrong,” he used to say; “’right enough’ will not do for me.”
