BY HARRISON WEIR. FROM POETRY FOR SCHOOLS (BELL).
BY HARRISON WEIR. FROM POETRY FOR SCHOOLS (BELL).
Engraved on wood by A. Slader.
There is one American book, however, which deserves special mention. This is Harris's "Insects Injurious to Vegetation," the drawings for which were the work of Sourel and Burckhardt. It is one of the most artistic books of the sort ever published in America or elsewhere. Then, too, amid a flood of other things, appeared, in 1872, "Picturesque America," and later "Picturesque Europe," which then reached really the high-water mark of American publishing enterprise in the United States, just as surely as Doré at the same time in France and England was the most exploited of all illustrators. The greater number of drawings for these books were made by Harry Fenn and J. D. Woodward. The profession of illustration at this period must have been almost equal to that of gold-mining. Everything the artist chose to produce was accepted. It would be more accurate to say everything he half produced, for the school of Turner being then superseded by that of Doré, wood-engravers, like Pannemacker, for instance, had been specially trained by the artist to carry out the ideas which he merely suggested on the block.
BY HARRISON WEIR. FROM A WASH DRAWING ON THE WOOD.
But a change was coming; the incessant output of illustration killed not only the artists themselves, but the process. In its stead arose a better, truer method, a more artistic method, which we are even now, only developing. This later American illustration may be said to have had its beginning in the year 1876.
BY A. COOPER. FROM WALTON’S “ANGLER” (BOHN).
Engraved on wood by M. Jackson.