When one considers these facts, which have been carefully ignored by a small set of artists, and, of course, are absolutely unknown to the ordinary critic and authority on the early printed book, two things become evident. First, that the great artists of the past did not illustrate; and, second, that the reason they did not was because they could be neither decently engraved nor printed.
ST. CHRISTOPHER, 1423.
BY SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES, BART. REDUCED FROM A LARGE PROCESS BLOCK IN “THE DAILY CHRONICLE.”
With the introduction of steel and copper-plate engraving and etching, the paintings and sculptures of great artists were not infrequently used as the subjects of book illustrations, but they were seldom made expressly for the books they illustrate. And as the steel or copper engraving must be printed separately, and as the best proofs of these engravings were almost always sold as separate works of art, it hardly seems to me that engravings on metal or on stone, like lithographs, properly come under the head of illustration for printed books.
The use of what we call now clichés and stock blocks was almost universal, even from the very invention of printing, when the illustrations to the block-books were cut up for this purpose; and not only this: the same map was made to do duty for as many countries as were required, and one and the same portrait or town served for as many characters and places as happened to figure in the book. While, under the heading of appropriateness of decoration and fitness, it may be remarked that most of the old printers only had one set of initials, and if they did possess two sets of borders, they usually chopped them up, and, by judicious mixing, obtained a variety apparently pleasing to their patrons.
It is not until the eighteenth century that one finds artists of note illustrating books, always with the exception of Holbein. Even then the illustrations were usually steel or copper-plate engravings made very freely from other men's drawings, although the artists were beginning to be commissioned to produce designs themselves. One might devote much space to the work of Piranesi, Canaletto, Watteau, Greuze, Hogarth, Chodowiecki, and the illustrators of La Fontaine. But this does not come really within my subject, since the making of modern illustration, that is, the employment of great artists to produce great works of art to appear with letterpress in printed books, dates entirely from this century, and is due altogether to the genius of four men: Meissonier in France, Menzel in Germany, Goya in Spain, and Bewick in England. It is to these four that modern illustration is solely and entirely due; though a word—and a strong one—of praise should be given to the patrons and publishers who employed and encouraged them.
BY SIR DAVID WILKIE. FROM AN ORIGINAL DRAWING IN THE POSSESSION OF THE AUTHOR.