BY SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES. FROM THE ORIGINAL DRAWING FOR GATTY’S “PARABLES” (BELL, 1867).
To contrast the mechanical reproductions of black and white wash, or colour drawings with wood-engravings after them is, however, another matter. Many drawings, owing to the medium in which they are done, will not as yet reproduce well mechanically. Indeed, to have one's drawings rendered satisfactorily, by the half-tone process, requires such an enormous experience and knowledge of the improvements continuously being made in the many different methods used by the different process men, that the artist, if he kept posted in all the developments and modifications, would have very little time left to produce works of art of his own. On the other hand, the artist may admire the work of a sympathetic wood-engraver whom he is delighted to trust with his drawings: it is always a pleasure to see the translation of a good drawing by a good wood-engraver. From the point of view of engraving, nothing is more hopelessly monotonous than process; for the aim of the process-man, as of some of the best wood-engravers, is to render the drawing in wash, or in colour, so well, that there should be no suggestion of the methods by which the results are obtained: to give the drawing itself, and this is exactly, in the majority of cases, what the artist wants. Naturally, he prefers an absolute reproduction of his drawing, to somebody else's interpretation of it. He is not eager to have another person interpret his ideas for the public; he would rather the public should see what he has done himself with his own hands. This reasonable desire process now begins to realize. By the half-tone process, a photograph is made of a drawing with either a microscopically ruled glass plate or screen in front of it, which breaks up the flat tones into infinitesimal dots, or squares, or lozenges; or else, there is impressed into the inked photo, in some one of a dozen ways, a dotted plate which will give the same effect.[17] These dots, squares, or lozenges lend a grain to the flat washes, translating them into rectilinear relief, yielding a printing surface,—accomplishing, in a word, the same end as the wood-engraver's translation of flat washes into lines and dots. The great objection hitherto to half-tone process has been, especially in large reproductions, that the squares or lozenges produce a mechanical look which is entirely absent from a good wood-engraving, the very essence of engraving being variety and, therefore, interest in the lines drawn with the graver. The crucial point, however, is this: even the greatest wood-engraver, in reproducing a drawing made in tone, is forced to translate this tone by lines or dots; in fact, instead of the wash, to give lines which do not exist in the original drawing. Though he may be so clever as to succeed in reproducing the actual values of the original, which he rarely does, he has still entirely altered the original appearance of the work. The object of the half-tone process is to give, not only these actual values, so often missed by the engraver, but also the brush-marks and the washy or painty look of the original, a result much further beyond the powers of any wood-engraver, than beyond the possibilities of process at the present day. It is said that process reproduction is but a mechanical makeshift, and this is a term of reproach against it. But it must be evident that wood-engraving, especially for the reproduction of wash, and, in a less degree, of line drawings, is a far more mechanical makeshift. There is no possible way in wood of representing the wash, while in reproducing line on the block, at least two cuts are required with the graver to get what the mechanical process gives at once. Moreover, as soon as the line drawing becomes at all complicated, it is impossible for the engraver to follow it on the wood block.
BY WALTER CRANE. PROCESS BLOCK FROM A WOOD-ENGRAVING BY EDMUND EVANS, IN COLOURS IN “BEAUTY AND THE BEAST” (ROUTLEDGE).
Therefore, it seems to me that the strictures which have been applied to process are far more applicable to wood-engraving. Now that wood-engraving has become a medium for the reproduction of any and every sort of design, it has stepped quite outside its proper province. Almost anything can be done with a block of wood and a graver, but it must be evident to people of average intelligence that a very great gulf separates those things which possibly can be done, from those which rationally should be attempted. Still, to-day any subject that can be engraved on wood may be printed; and if one likes to try experiments, why should he be stopped? The wood-engraver of to-day has been compelled to suppress and efface himself. When he proposes to reproduce another man's designs, if he is really a great wood-engraver, he recognizes that his sole function is to render the original, faithfully giving as much of the artist's handiwork as possible, and as little of his own. That this must be to many a most galling and annoying position is evident. But to rebel against it is absurd, and for the engraver to tamper with an artist's original design is as unwarrantable as for an editor to change an author's manuscript after the final proof has left the writer's hands.
There have been two, or perhaps three, great periods of producing works of art on the block. First, that of the old woodcuts, which were undoubtedly great, though what the draughtsmen thought of them we shall never really know. Secondly, the period of Bewick, who engraved his own designs, and therefore was his own master, doing what he wanted. And thirdly, to-day, the greatest revival of all. Mr. Timothy Cole, in his interpretations of the old masters (though some of the painters whom he has reproduced might object to certain things in his reproductions, they could but admit that never before have such beautiful pictures been made out of their own), has suggested one field for the artist who is a wood-engraver; the creation of masterpieces in his own medium of the painted masterpieces of other, or of his own time. Again, we have a man like Mr. Elbridge Kingsley working directly from nature, and producing the most amazing and interesting results; or M. Lepère, who is engraving his own designs exactly as Bewick did, or else giving us those marvellous originals in colour, only equalled by the Japanese who, for ages, have been masters among wood-cutters; or Mr. Kreull, who is doing marvellous portraits on the block.
BY KATE GREENAWAY. KEY BLOCK WOOD-ENGRAVED BY EDMUND EVANS FOR COLOUR PRINTING. FROM “MOTHER GOOSE” (ROUTLEDGE).
With so broad a scope at its service in the hands of artists, wood-engraving is not in the slightest danger. With the added possibilities of making new experiments, such as printing from lowered blocks, reviving chiaroscuro, and an infinitude of other processes open to the artistic wood-engraver, there is no probability of its becoming a lost art. I have nothing but the highest praise for the work of men like Cole, Kingsley, Gamm, French Jüngling, Baude, Kreull, Florian, Hendriksen, Bork, Hooper, and Biscombe Gardner. This modern facsimile wood-engraving is magnificent in its way, and is quite as legitimate and decorative as any of the old work, only process is bound to supersede the greater part of it. Wood-engraving has survived the mediæval mechanical limitations which were imposed upon it by the primitiveness of the printing-press, but which have been made into its chief merits. It has survived the ghastly period immediately succeeding Bewick, when the sole end of the engravers on wood was to imitate the engraver on steel or on copper. It has survived the stage of the shop run by a clever business-man who merged the individuality of all his artists and engravers into that of his own firm. It has survived the backing of Mr. Linton, which at one time threatened to kill it entirely. And the strain put upon it by magazine-editors and book-publishers has been relieved by the intervention of mechanical process.
I believe that it will continue and flourish as an original art, side by side with process, until it runs against another of the snags or quicksands which every half century seem to imperil it. Still, at the present moment, its artistic outlook is very bright,—so also is that of process.