BY STOTHARD. FROM ROGERS’ “POEMS” (CADELL).
Engraved on wood by Clennell.
But the most important outcome of Bewick's work was the appearance of an excellent school of wood-engravers in England: Clennell, Branston, Harvey and Nesbit, the Thompsons, the Williamses, and Orrinsmith. These engravers tried, in the beginning, to produce exactly the same sort of work that is being done by the so-called school of American wood-engravers to-day. One has only to look at Stothard's illustrations to Rogers' "Poems," engraved by Clennell, to see an example of facsimile engraving after pen drawing. But, as a general thing, these men all endeavoured to imitate the qualities of steel engraving or etching. First, because steel or metal engraving was the prevailing form of illustration, enjoying, for a while, tremendous popularity in the long series of "Keepsakes," "Forget-Me-Nots," and "Albums;" and, secondly, because they were forced mainly to copy old metal engravings, since scarcely any artist, always excepting Stothard and a few others, knew how to draw on the wood. So great was the rage for popularizing engravings on metal, that John Thompson projected an edition of Hogarth on wood, about two inches by three, showing that, instead of being able to produce new work done specially for the wood, engravers were continually thrown back upon the copying of steel or copper-plates, or the work of their predecessors. Another notable instance, though published much later, is that of the first illustrated catalogue of the National Gallery by the Linnells.[7]
BY STOTHARD. FROM ROGERS’ “POEMS” (CADELL).
Engraved on wood by Clennell.
In France, however, there were plenty of artists, willing to draw on the wood, who could not get their designs engraved, at the very time that in England there were plenty of engravers who could find no artists to draw for them.
FROM TITIAN, “ARIADNE AND BACCHUS.”
Wood-engraving by the Linnells.
In 1816 Charles Thompson went to Paris, partly for pleasure and partly in search of work. He was at once successful. He arrived at the right moment: already a Society for the Encouragement of National Industry in France had offered a prize of two thousand francs for wood-engravings done in that country, so impressed had Frenchmen been with the excellence of the work produced in England.
BY HARVEY. FROM “MILTON’S POETICAL WORKS” (BOHN).
Engraved on wood by Thompson.