PREFACE.
BY BOUTET DE MONVEL. FROM
“ST. NICOLAS” (DELEGRAVE).
This book is the result of a request, made to me by the editor of the Ex-Libris Series, that I should write for him something about the Illustration of to-day.
The idea, I must acknowledge, and I am glad to do so, is his, not mine. To the editor also I am indebted for much help, especially in the matter of the illustrations which the book contains; in fact, if he has not selected and chosen them all, he has performed the more difficult and thankless task of obtaining them. Only one who has gone through the drudgery of finding drawings or blocks, in magazine, book, museum, artist's studio, or collector's portfolio, and then of getting the permission of editor, publisher, curator, artist, or amateur, to use or reproduce them, knows what this means. I know from past experience, and I was therefore only too glad to shirk the work when I found Mr. Gleeson White willing to undertake it. I doubt, however, if he will ever again attempt such a task. For the appearance of the illustrations in the book he deserves the credit; for much advice and many suggestions of great value, as well as to the articles he has written, and the lectures he has delivered, on this subject, I am greatly indebted.
BY T. W. RUSSELL. PEN DRAWING FROM “THE DAILY CHRONICLE.”
There are many others also whom I must thank. First of all Mr. Austin Dobson, who, when he learned I was making a study of the subject, took the trouble to put me on the track of the French illustrated books of the early part of this century, giving me a most helpful start. Without his assistance, and that of M. Beraldi, I might never have even been able to trace the true birth, development, and growth of modern illustration, which springs from Goya, the Spaniard, as draughtsman,[1] and Bewick, the Englishman, as engraver; spreading, spontaneously but quite independently, to France; thence to Germany, back again to England, and finally to America, whence it has been diffused again all over the world. Though in all its component parts—drawing, engraving, and printing—illustration is more advanced in the United States than anywhere else; still to-day, despite the excellence of much of the work done there, remarkable results are being obtained in other countries. Yet this latter-day excellence is so marked in American work that in many ways it has overshadowed that of England, France, Germany, and Spain, from the artists and engravers of which countries we Americans have derived our inspiration.
Once again I must thank the authorities at South Kensington and the British Museum, Mr. E. F. Strange and the assistants; Mr. A. W. Pollard, who, though the editor of a rival series, helped me as though the book was to appear in his own collection; Professor Colvin and Mr. Lionel Cust, the latter of whom, during his stay in the Print Room of the British Museum, I bothered persistently; his transfer to a more important post is a great loss to students at the Museum; Dr. Hans Singer of Dresden, and many others.
Artists, especially those of the older generation, the men who gave illustration in this country thirty-five years ago a position it does not hold to-day, have been untiring in their interest in the book, and most helpful in every way; it has been a delight and a pleasure to meet Frederick Sandys, Birket Foster, Harrison Weir, Frederick Shields, and W. H. Hooper, just as it is an undying proof of the artistic blindness of a generation which has not the intelligence to use the work of its masters. Mr. Hooper has told me that he does not believe the Bewick blocks could be printed any better than they originally were; this is an interesting problem, but one which can never be solved; from my point of view they were badly printed. He also thinks that Bewick used overlays.
Mr. Hooper is the English master of facsimile wood-engraving; and some day, when this fact is generally discovered (as Mr. William Morris has found out, for Mr. Hooper has engraved the greater part, if not all, of Sir Edward Burne-Jones's and Mr. Morris's designs), there will be a wild and fruitless discussion among bibliographers as to the engravers of the wonderful blocks in Morris's books, and of much of the best work of 1860 to 1870, signed with the name of a firm, or a tiny mark in the most obscure corner.