Still with us, we can only mention in a few words the modern prince of wood-engravers, W. J. Linton, who has for
many years resided in America; W. L. Thomas, the originator of The Graphic newspaper, and one of the ablest artists in water-colours in 'The Institute'; Edmund Evans and Horace Harral, who so successfully rendered Birket Foster's drawings some years ago; J. W. Whymper, the brothers Dalziel and James Cooper, the producers of thousands of good engravings, and a comparatively new man, W. Biscombe Gardner, who excels in portraiture.
In Germany, during the last half-century, wood-engraving met with much encouragement, and reverting to the earlier and purer style of the fifteenth century, many artists and engravers produced work of great merit: E. Kretzschmar, of Leipsic, the brothers A. and O. Vogel, F. Unzelmann and H. Müller, rendered the drawings of Adolf Menzel and Ludwig Richter with careful exactitude. In the atelier of Hugo Bürkner, of Dresden, the much-admired 'Death as a Friend,' by Rethel, was engraved by Jungtow, and 'Death as an Enemy' by Steinbrecher: and A. Gaber, recently deceased, faithfully reproduced the drawings of Overbeck, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Oscar Pletsch, and Moritz von Schwind. Of living engravers we may refer our readers to the excellent examples of skill to be seen in the 'Meisterwerke der Holzschneidekunst,' a monthly periodical of great merit; and especially to the works of Pfnorr of Darmstadt; Höfel of Vienna; Flegel and Weber of Leipsic; Mezger and Vieweg of Brunswick; H. Günter, Karl Oertel, Lüttge, and E. Krelb.
In France no great advance has been made, and most of the engravers have been contented to produce work a little above mediocrity. Several French publishers have given commissions to English engravers—Orrin Smith, Henry Linton, and others.
In America great strides have been made, and, in the estimation of many excellent judges, the best works ever done by wood-engravers have been presented to us in the pages of the illustrated magazines. These publications excite
our wonder not only at the great energy which is thrown into them, apparently without regard to cost, but at the immense success which they have justly achieved. Some critics disapprove of the style to which we have just referred, and say it is in too close an imitation of steel engraving, but it seems hard to censure works which have given unbounded satisfaction to so many thousand lovers of art.
Owing to the invention of various mechanical processes, and the perfection to which photography has attained, the art of wood-engraving would seem to be in danger of becoming extinct. This is by no means the real case, for the brilliant band of wood-engravers which has arisen in America, of whom we have just spoken, still continue to give us excellent examples of their skill; and especially we may mention the inimitable copies of paintings by the Old Masters by Timothy Cole, whose rendering of Paul Potter's 'Young Bull' excites our warmest admiration.
In England, under the influence of Mr. William Morris and his followers, a revival of this interesting craft, as practised in the fifteenth century, has been set on foot in some of the Schools of Art—notably at Birmingham, where in 1893 the students issued a Book of Carols illustrated with original designs, some of which were cut by the students themselves. This revival of the earlier and purer methods of engraving, coupled with a careful study of the possibilities of the art, may be taken as a sign that by no means the last chapter on the history of engraving on wood has yet been written.
At present, much of the new process work which we find in such over-abundance in newspapers and magazines is slovenly to the last degree. On the other hand, now and then we see beautiful results—the best in the American magazines; let us hope that the facile cheapness of this new craft—art it cannot be called—will in good hands soon achieve something more worthy of our regard.