BY RANDOLPH CALDECOTT. FROM “OLD CHRISTMAS” (MACMILLAN, 1875).
CHAPTER II.
THE METHODS OF TO-DAY; THEIR ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT.
Modern illustration belongs essentially to our own times, to our own generation. To the last quarter of the eighteenth century several writers on the subject have traced its beginning. But in a measure only is this theory justified by fact. All dates are difficult and elusive. It is not easy to point to the exact year when the old came to an end and the new began. Even in cases when a certain date, 1830 for example, seems to mark a positive barrier, it does so only because, with constant use, it has become the symbol of a certain change.
But the cause of this modern development is not hard to discover. It was the application of photography to the illustration of books and papers which established the art on a new basis. As the invention of printing gave the first great impetus to illustration, so surely has it received its second and more important from the invention of photography. The gulf between primitive illuminated manuscripts and Holbein's "Dance of Death" is not wider than that which separates the antiquated "Keepsakes" and "Forget-Me-Nots" from the "Century Magazine" and the "Graphic." The conditions have entirely altered.
Greater ease of reproduction, greater speed, greater economy of labour have been secured, as well as greater freedom for the artist, and greater justice in the reproduction of his design. As a consequence, illustration has increased in popularity, the comparative cheapness of production placing it within reach of the people who have ever taken pleasure in the art, since the days when all writing was but picture-making; it has gained artistically, since the fidelity of the facsimile now obtained has induced many an artist of genius, or distinction, to devote himself wholly to black and white. If, on the one hand, this popularity threatens its degradation (foolish editors and grasping publishers flooding the world with cheap and nasty illustrated books and periodicals), on the other, the artistic gain promises to be its salvation, for not in the days of Dürer himself was so large a proportion of genuinely good work published.
BY CHARLES KEENE. FROM A PEN DRAWING IN THE POSSESSION OF THE AUTHOR.