Looking over these old engravings, one cannot help being struck, not only with the boldness and decision of the technique, but also with the consummate restraint and knowledge of effect displayed by the worker. Perhaps amongst our modern living men Walter Crane is the only artist who exhibits a similar courage and grasp of the essentials. (See his ‘Queen Summer,’ published by Cassell & Co., for some of the best and most characteristic work he has yet given to the public in book form.)
The next stage in illustrative art which we have to mention is where cross-hatching has been introduced, to give depth and richness to the shadows. The earliest style of work shows only outlines, which are in many cases to be preferred to more elaborate work, particularly when inserted with the text; after this, shadows are suggested by single lines, as in the specimens which I have quoted.
Cross-hatching appears to have been used first in the year 1486, in a frontispiece to the Latin edition of ‘Breydenbach’s Travels,’ which was printed at Mentz by Erhard Reuwich. The name of the artist is not known—a sample of modesty characteristic of the early inventors; for the work upon this plate is as beautiful and elaborate as it is unique at this early date. With the introduction of cross-hatching, used at first directly, horizontally and perpendicularly, we get the feeling of colour and tone in illustrative work which are its most pronounced features at the present day. In this we have advanced, and are still advancing, day by day to a perfection of feebleness, with lack of distinctive character and force. In outline drawing we have not improved since the close of the fifteenth century—to wit, the Poliphili of 1499, where the lines are perfectly modulated to suggest light edges and shadows.
We next come to the beautiful work of Albert Dürer, where he uses the cross-hatching diagonally, as it is executed at the present day, with broken lines and dots, where such were required. In fact, this rare artist seems to have had all the tricks of the trade at his command, and to have paused at no device in order to gain his effect. I shall not describe any of his work here, as it is sufficiently well known, with the influence it brought to bear upon illustrative art generally.
When taking up the practical side of an art, it is only a waste of time to enumerate all the different workers who may have left their own particular, if not always very prominent, marks in the pages of its history. I would rather call attention, in the short space at my disposal, to the men identified with the different great epochs, such as the unknown outline workers, the men who aimed at tone and colour, dating distinctly from the time of Albert Dürer; the distinctive chiaro-oscuro workers, amongst whom I would exemplify Rembrandt; the purely tone artists such as Turner, the grotesque in Hogarth and Cruikshank; and next take our modern men who carry on the art at the present day, and exemplify a few such prominent workers as Small, Parsons, Barnard, and Abbey, although the army of first-class illustrators is so large at the present day that it becomes a difficult and ungracious task for me to mention names at all.