In the very earliest days of book illustration, before movable type-letters were invented, the illustration and the letters of the text were all engraved on the wood together, and thus, of necessity (as in the old block books produced in Holland and Belgium in the fifteenth century), there was character and individuality in every page; the picture, rough as it often was, harmonising with the text in an unmistakable manner. From an artistic point of view, there was a better balance of parts and more harmony of effect than in the more elaborate illustrations of the present day. The illustration was an illustration in the true sense of the word. It interpreted something to the reader that words were incapable of doing; and even when movable type was first introduced, the simple character of the engravings harmonised well with the letters. There is a broad line of demarcation, indeed, between these early wood engravings (such, for instance, as the “Ars Moriendi,” purchased for the British Museum in 1872, from the Weigel collection at Leipsic, and recently reproduced by the Holbein Society) and the last development of the art in the American magazines. The movement is important, because the Americans, with an energy and naïveté peculiar to them, have set themselves the task of outstripping all nations in the beauty and quality of magazine illustrations. That they have succeeded in obtaining delicate effects, and what painters call colour, through the medium of wood-engraving, is well known, and it is common to meet people in England asking, “Have you seen the last number of Harper’s or the Century Magazine?” The fashion is to admire them, and English publishers are easily found to devote time and capital to distributing American magazines (which come to England free of duty), to the prejudice of native productions. The reason for the excellence (which is freely admitted) of American wood-engraving and printing is that, in the first place, more capital is employed upon the work. The American wood-engraver is an artist in every sense of the word, and his education is not considered complete without years of foreign study. The American engraver is always en rapport with the artist—an important matter—working often, as I have seen them at Harper’s, the Century Magazine, and Scribner’s in New York, in the same studio, side by side. In England the artist, as a rule, does not have any direct communication with the wood engraver. In America the publisher, having a very large circulation for his works, is able to bring the culture of Europe and the capital of his own country to the aid of the wood-engraver, spending sometimes five or six hundred pounds on the illustrations of a single number of a monthly magazine. The result is an engraver’s success of a very remarkable kind.
No. XXXV.
(Photograph from life, engraved on wood. From the Century Magazine.)
A Portrait engraved on wood at the Office of the
Century Magazine.
Example of portraiture from the Century Magazine. It is interesting to note the achievements of the American engravers at a time when wood engraving in England is under a cloud.
This portrait was photographed from life and afterwards worked up by hand and most skilfully engraved in New York.