The first attempt to photograph a drawing on the block for the purpose of engraving, is said to have been made in England, in 1851 or 1852, by Mr. Langton, an engraver in Manchester, assisted by a photographer whose name unfortunately has not been preserved. It may be granted that this was the first attempt. But artistically it was of small importance, as nothing, so far as I know, directly came of it. That the process was well enough known in 1865 is proved by the following extracts from the "Art Student" of that year: "The picture is obtained in the usual way, and the film of collodion afterwards removed by using a pledget of cotton moistened in ether. A block so prepared works as well under the graver as an ordinary drawing." But I do not believe that even this process of photographing on the block was very practically used.[11] To take one case in point, the "Amor Mundi" by Sandys, published in the "Shilling Magazine" for April, 1865, which I reproduced by photogravure in "Pen Drawing and Pen Draughtsmen:"[12] the plate was made from a negative taken from this design after it had been drawn on the block. Mr. Swain has told me that he photographed the drawing, because he was so delighted with the original (which he was about to cut to pieces) that he wanted to preserve an exact copy. Now, had the art of photographing drawings on wood been generally known, Mr. Swain would have photographed the drawing on to another block, reversing the negative, and kept the original. Instead, he simply photographed the original before it was engraved. The same thing is said to have been done with some of Rossetti's illustrations for Tennyson; while Messrs. Dalziel kept back their "Bible Gallery" for many years, until drawings could be decently photographed on the wood. But the practical application of photography to the transferring of drawings to wood blocks, although probably known about as long ago as 1850, in a few offices is scarcely practised to-day. I think, however, one may safely say that about the year 1876 this practice became fairly general; one may therefore, for the sake of convenience, take the year 1876 as the date of the beginning of modern illustration.

As this change is probably the most important in the whole history of the art, I think it may be well to explain shortly how drawings were produced before the introduction of photography, and how they are made now.

BY CHARLES KEENE. FROM A PEN DRAWING IN THE POSSESSION OF THE AUTHOR.

Before the time of Dürer and Holbein, the artist was of small importance; indeed, so too was the engraver, though we hear much about him. The artist made his drawing either on a piece of paper or on the block. Judging from some of the work in the Plantin Museum (the sole place where we can obtain any actual data[13]), the design was made in rather a free manner; the argument against this conclusion, of course, is that comparatively few originals exist. There is, however, in the British Museum a drawing of an Apollo by Dürer[14] on which are the marks of a hard lead pencil, or metal point leaving a mark, used to trace it, while the word "Apollo" in the mirror is written backwards. On the other hand, in the old Herbals are cuts of the artist making his drawing from nature, the draughtsman putting it on the block, and the wood-cutter cutting it. When we come to engraving on metal, we find that, though the wood-cutter need not have been an artist, he only having to follow lines given him, or to make certain mechanical ones to suit himself, the metal engraver was obliged to be an artist, because he had to be able to copy the picture or design entrusted to him. But mechanical aids were found for him too, with the result that the later engravings on metals, as well as the old woodcuts, became the productions of shops, in which certain parts were done by certain men, and the real artist, whether he were draughtsman or engraver, had a small share in the actual reproduction. The next stage was the entire disappearance of the wood-cutter, when finally all books were illustrated by means of steel and copper. With Bewick who, with a graver, engraved his own designs on the end of the block, instead of cutting them with a knife on the side of a plank, as everyone had previously done,[15] there was introduced a new phase—the possibility of drawing with a pen, or pencil, or brush, or wash, upon the whitened surface of box-wood, a good medium, a design which should be absolutely facsimiled by the engraver. The engravers of Bewick's time and until about 1835 or 1840, being true artists and craftsmen, knew that their business was to engrave the artist's design as accurately and carefully as they could, since what the latter wanted was the absolute facsimile of his work and none of their suggestions. But by the fifties, the artist either had become wholly indifferent to the way in which his work was engraved, or else he was absolutely under the thumb of the engravers. His entire style, all his individuality, was sacrificed for the benefit of the engraving shop, from which blocks after him were turned out. The head of the firm whose signature they bore may never have done a stroke of work on them. Even a man strong as Charles Keene was completely broken up by this system, though he may not have realized it. Artists were told that they must draw in such a way that the engravers could engrave them with the least time, trouble, and expense. Two attempts were made to escape from the wood-engraver who was again endeavouring to reduce everything to a facsimile of steel: by the use of steel plates themselves, as in the case of the later editions of Rogers' "Italy;" and also, by the practice of aquatint and lithography, in France by such men as Gavarni and Daumier, and in England by Prout, Roberts, Harding, Nash, and Cotman. But lithography in this country, as a method of illustrating books and papers, never can be said to have become very popular, though in France for years its employment was general.

BY M. E. EDWARDS. FROM GATTY’S “PARABLES” (BELL, 1867).

The art of wood-engraving was dying in the clutch of the engraver, when an artless process came to its aid. For, at this crisis it was discovered that a drawing made in any medium, upon any material, of any size (so long as proportion was regarded), might be photographed upon the sensitized wood-block in reverse. The importance of the discovery will be appreciated when it is remembered that, before this, the poor artist, if he were drawing the portrait of a place directly on the block, was compelled to draw it the exact size it was to be engraved, to reverse it himself, and to have his actual drawing destroyed by engraving through it. Once photography was used, the drawing could be made of any size, it was mechanically reversed, the original was preserved, and the artist was free. Gone, however, according to the engraver, was the engraver's art. It is true that the wood-chopper disappeared: the man who could not draw a line himself, and yet would pretend that his mechanical lines, made with a graver or ruling machine, were more valuable than the artist's, and who had no hesitancy in changing the entire composition of a subject if he did not like it. But his disappearance was a great gain. In his place there arose the latest school of wood-engravers. Many of the new were perhaps no better than the old men, for not knowing how to draw, not being artists, they directed their energies often to the meaningless elaboration of unimportant detail. But at least this work could always be corrected, now that the original drawing was preserved and could be compared with the print from the engraved block.

In England, from 1860 to 1870 some very remarkable drawings were made and engraved upon the block. During the years just before the introduction of photography, Walker, Pinwell, Keene, Sandys, Shields, and Du Maurier were illustrating. To a certain extent, they seem to have insisted upon their work being followed. Between 1870 and 1880, when the actual change was made from drawing on wood to drawing on paper, even a larger number of men were at work. The "Graphic" and the "Century" were founded, and enormous were the improvements in France and Germany. But between 1880 and 1890 came the greatest development of all. For these years saw the perfecting and successful practice of mechanical reproduction: that is, the photographing of drawings in line upon a metal plate or gelatine film, the biting of them in relief on this plate, or the mechanical growth of a plate on the gelatine, resulting in the production of a metal block which could be printed along with type. This method of replacing the wood-engraver by a chemical agent has, however, been the aim of every photographer since the time of Niepce, who made the first experiments, while the process was patented by Gillot on the 21st of March, 1850.[16] These ten years are also noted for the invention of what is now generally known as the half-tone process: that is the reproduction by mechanical means of drawings in wash, or in colour, worked out in Europe by the Meisenbach process, in America by the Ives method. In many ways wood-engraving as a trade or business has been, it may be only temporarily, seriously damaged. However, in the very short period since mechanical reproduction has been introduced, those wood-engravers who really are artists have been doing better work, because they can now engrave, in their own fashion, the blocks they want to. The art of wood-engraving has progressed if the trade has languished.

BY G. DU MAURIER.
FROM A WOOD-ENGRAVING.
“THE ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED
MAGAZINE.”