The Art of Illustration / 2nd ed.

by Henry Blackburn

The modern publisher, it may be said without offence, understands the manufacture and the commerce of a book better than the art in it. And how should it be otherwise? The best books that were ever produced, from an artistic point of view, were inspired and designed by students of art and letters, men removed from the commercial scramble of life, and to whom an advertisement was a thing unknown! The ordinary art education of a publisher, and the multitude of affairs requiring his attention, unfit him generally, for the task of deciding whether an illustration is good or bad, or how far—when he cheapens the production of his book by using photographic illustrations (“snap-shots” from nature)—he is justified in calling them “art.” The deterioration in the character of book illustration in England is a serious matter, and public attention may well be drawn to it.

Here we look for the active co-operation of the author. The far-reaching spread of education—especially technical art education—is tending to bring together, as they were never brought before in this century, the author and the illustrator. The author of a book will give more attention to the appearance of his pages, to the decorative character of type and ornament, whilst the average artist will be better educated from a literary point of view; and, to use a French word for which there is no equivalent, will be more en rapport with both author and publisher.

For the illustrator by profession there seems no artistic leisure; no time to do anything properly in this connection.

“It is a poor career, Blackburn,” said a well-known newspaper illustrator to me lately (an artist of distinction and success in his profession who has practised it for twenty years), “you seldom give satisfaction—not even to yourself.”

“It is an ideal career,” says another, a younger man, who is content with the more slap-dash methods in vogue to-day—and with the income he receives for them.

Referring again to the question in the Athenæum, “Why is not drawing for the press taught in our Government schools of art?” I think the principal reasons why the art of illustration by the processes is not generally taught in art schools are—

(1) drawing for reproduction requires more personal teaching than is possible in art classes in public schools; (2) the art masters throughout the country, with very few exceptions, do not understand the new processes—which is not to be wondered at.

It is not the fault of the masters in our schools of art that students are taught in most cases as if they were to become painters, when the only possible career for the majority is that of illustration, or design. The masters are, for the most part, well and worthily occupied in giving a good groundwork of knowledge to every student, as to drawing for the press. There is no question that the best preparation for this work is the best general art teaching that can be obtained. The student must have drawn from the antique and from life; he must have learned composition and design; have studied from nature the relative values of light and shade, aërial perspective and the like; in short, have followed the routine study for a painter whose first aim should be to be a master of monochrome.