During the last three-quarters of a century German illustration has been absolutely dominated by Menzel. Not only has he been the leading spirit in his own country, whether he was influenced originally by Meissonier or not, but he has himself influenced the entire world of illustrators, his drawings having been received with rapture and applause by artists wherever they have been shown. And, most interesting of all, he is a man who has been perfectly able, throughout his long life, to adapt himself to the various radical changes and developments which have been brought about in reproduction and printing. Commencing with lithography, he produced the amazing series of drawings of the uniforms of Frederick the Great. Next, taking up drawing on wood, he introduced exquisite facsimile work into his own country, educating his own engravers, Unzelmann, Bentworth and the Vogels, in his edition of the "Works of Frederick the Great." Later on he drew much more largely and boldly for the "Cruche Cassée," which was freely interpreted on wood. And now he has so arranged his beautiful drawings in pencil and chalk that they come perfectly by process. He is a man who recognizes fully that we have not got to the end of art, but that unless we are ever pushing onward, and striving for improvements, we may very easily get to the end of ourselves. He looks backward for nothing but design; he looks forward to the perfection of everything.
BY GOYA. FROM AN ORIGINAL DRAWING (A PORTRAIT OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON) IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
BY FORTUNY. FROM A PEN DRAWING.
BY JOSEPH SATTLER. FROM “THE DANCE OF DEATH” (GREVEL).
Following Menzel, and encouraged by "Fliegende Blätter," which started in the early forties, came Wilhelm Dietz, whose studies of armies on the march, and of peasants at work or at play, are inimitable. He, too, has been followed by Robert Haug and Hermann Luders. Dietz was the mainstay for years of "Fliegende Blätter," the only weekly comic paper of which it can be said, that during the half century of its existence it has been not only at the head of its contemporaries, but has on the artistic side left far behind any pretended rival.
Germany has for the last half century, too, possessed a remarkable school of interpretative wood-engravers: men who have been able to take a large picture, which they have either drawn on the wood themselves or had drawn for them, and produce out of it an excellent rendering, which would print perfectly in black and white, under the rapid requirements of a steam-press. The work of these engravers can be seen any week in the "Illustrirte Zeitung," "Uber Land und Meer," and the other weeklies. Wood-engraving has been treated as a serious profession for years in Germany, as a Professorship of the art was held in the Berlin Academy before the beginning of this century by J. F. G. Unger, who died in 1804. Even in Vienna, a Professorship has been established for many years. The trouble with German wood-engravers, however, has been that most of the work, though signed by the name of one man, is produced really by another. From one of these engraving shops, that of Braun and Schneider, issued a year after its establishment "Fliegende Blätter," in 1844. Save for Menzel, most of the work in the middle of the century was of that heavy, pompous, ponderous sort which we call German, and, though good in its way, is now well forgotten. The best-known of all these shops was that of Richard Brend'amour, who since 1856 has been established in Dusseldorf, though he has branches—an artist with branches!—in Berlin, Leipzig, Stuttgart, Munich, and Brunswick. Still, as he seems to have been able to get an extremely good set of apprentices and workmen, who were the real artists, a great amount of very interesting work has been turned out, and clichés from his excellent blocks have been used all over the world.
One sort of decorative design, developed by a German, or, I presume, a Pole, Paul Konewka, though his work, was, I believe, first published in Copenhagen, is the silhouette; Konewka has had imitators everywhere, but none of them have surpassed him. His edition of "Faust" is one of the best-known examples. Retche's outline drawings for Shakespeare are also good.