❧ WRITTEN BY JOSEPH PENNELL ❧
ARTICLE I
THROUGHOUT the history of art, or rather the history of collecting, there has always been, in conjunction with the desire to collect, a hesitancy in collecting just those things which are ever with us and about which we know the most. Though tremendously characteristic of our age, this hesitancy is by no means confined to it. The Japanese print was ever despised in Japan, and still is, except from its pecuniary point of view, by that grossly over-rated, so-called clever people, who only learned to appreciate their own prints when taught to by the despised western barbarian; the etching of Rembrandt, until the dealer discovered its value, could mostly be obtained for a song; the mezzotint, when it was published, filled the place of the photograph, brought only a guinea, or so, though the near-as-possible counterfeit now is announced to be sold as a rarity in limited editions at the price of the original; the etching of Meryon, valued to-day as much for the paper it is printed on as for what is printed on the paper, was sold by the artist for a few francs, in several cases quite its full value—all these things and endless more are the sport of the collector. ¶ And yet it has always seemed to me extraordinary that the collector, who prizes works of the graphic arts mainly for their rarity, has never collected those which really are rare. It is inconceivable, it is astonishing and unbelievable, that the art of the nineteenth century, the art of illustration, has been so neglected that the original drawings, though they have been always with us, have never yet been properly prized, appreciated, catalogued and collected. I know that old drawings are collected, but the collector’s interest in them to a great extent dates only from yesterday, and even now their price does not equal that of prints from them, of which there may be dozens, or, in fact, nobody knows how many examples in existence. But I also know that, within the last hundred years, drawings, illustrations, have been made in England and America that will rank with any, ever made anywhere, in any age, and that these works of art are absolutely ignored. And they are ignored simply because they have not been collected, because in this country the British museum cannot purchase the work of living British artists, and often it is during the lifetime of the artist only that they can be secured, because in France there is no place to exhibit drawings save in a corner of the Luxembourg; the rest the French government possesses are buried in the Cabinet des estampes. Theoretically, the rule of the British museum may be a good one; it may be thought a safeguard against as terrible a hodge-podge as that presented on the walls of the art gallery at South Kensington. To some of us, however, a remedy suggests itself—change or modify the rule, and, under intelligent direction, there is no reason why collections as fine as those in Dresden and Berlin should not be easily obtained even in England. ¶ The consequence of this neglect, both deliberate and enforced on the part of the British government, has been that here dealers and collectors, connoisseurs and amateurs, have avoided original drawings almost altogether. Artists alone have cared for them, have collected them, and still own almost all that are best worth having.[99] But now that the best examples have been collected, or have become impossible to collect, I see signs vaguely of an appreciation. I do not for a moment think this is due to any artistic awakening or any sudden recognition of a genuine form of art—the art, as I have always described it, and as it will be known in the future, of the nineteenth century. The real cause is to be found rather in the desire for some new thing. Personally, I care very little what is bringing the change about; I am merely delighted to know that it is coming,[100] for I have been preaching the beauty of this work for many years, though, I admit, in a wilderness of paint, prints, pots and postage stamps. When it does come, the possessors of these drawings will find that they own, not only things of beauty, but wonderful examples of an individual form of expression which owes its existence altogether to the last century. I do not mean to suggest that illustration is a modern form of art; it is as old as the world. I do not mean to say that, in their way, the works of the artists of the Renaissance are not glorious; I do not mean to say that the works of the eighteenth century are not superb, after their fashion; what I do mean is, that not until the nineteenth century in England, with Blake and with Bewick, did illustration become a separate, independent and individual branch of the fine arts. The reasons are simple—the appearance of artists who loved and respected their profession, and the improvement and development of technical and mechanical processes. ¶ Blake wished to show his art in his own publications. There was nothing new in this; Dürer had done it centuries before. But Blake confined himself virtually to illustration; with Dürer, it was only one of his many means of expression. Bewick may or may not have learned to adapt the technique of steel engraving to wood from Papillon; that is a detail for the historian. What he did do, and what Papillon did not, was to impose the new method successfully on the world. Not only did Bewick produce his series of nature books, the forerunners of the present fad for that sort of thing, but he invented a school and a scientific manner of work which conquered the world. ¶ I have traced already the development of English book-illustration, showing how it spread from England to France and to Germany, and how, as it progressed through these countries, artists appeared to work for it—great artists in illustration but in nothing else, Meissonier and Menzel. I have elsewhere shown how, though these artists were ready to draw upon the wood block, they had to send to England for engravers to engrave their designs; I have shown how the pupils and the methods of Bewick were spread all over Europe: but while this was happening the art was languishing in England. Lithography and cheapness had commenced to stifle it. Education and the personal benefactor, the curses of this country, were sitting on it. The equivalent in that day to the county council, I doubt not, had it by the throat. It is true that William Harvey, Linnell, and a few others carried on, as best they could, the traditions of Bewick. But through the mid-century, Turner and his steel engravers struggled with the lithographers, Harding, Prout and Lewis, only that all alike might be undermined by Knight’s penny something or other, and that horror, as it then was, The Illustrated London News, always catering for the people, and the people damn any form of art.
PLATE I
FROM ‘GIL BLAS’ 1836, DRAWN BY I. GIGOUX, ENGRAVER UNKNOWN
THE ROUND TABLE, FROM ‘GESCHICHTE FRIEDRICHS DES GROSSEN,’ 1840
A. MENZEL, DEL. E. KNUTCHMAR, SC.
PLATE II