PHIL MAY. FROM "PUNCH."
As a work giving some of the more serious and carefully studied designs in line and black and white of modern artists, engraved on wood, might be mentioned the Bible projected by the brothers Dalziel, a portion only of which was completed, consisting of a series of fine drawings by Holman Hunt, Madox Brown, E. J. Poynter, Frederic Leighton, and others. They are more perhaps in the nature of isolated pictures than book illustrations, but they are full of good and careful work.
The earlier etchings of Mr. Whistler are full of delicate drawing of the picturesque detail of old waterside houses, as in the famous "Wapping," which even survived translation into a process block in the "Daily Chronicle."
We have now a vast public apparently interested in, and accustomed to, graphic representation in black and white, through the continual multiplication of cheap illustrated newspapers, magazines, and books, and the continual invention and adaptation to the press of cheap photographic and automatic means of reproduction, which have almost entirely displaced the woodcut as a popular medium for the interpretation of graphic art.
In these cheap forms of pictorial art the photograph continues to gain ascendency not only as a medium for reproduction, but as a substitute for original artistic invention and design. Now while in the former province it is of enormous practical value, in the latter, I think, it bids fair to be extremely seductive and injurious to the growth of healthy artistic taste and capacity.
Modern painting and draughtsmanship have for a long time shown the influence of the photograph (which for certain illusory qualities of lighting and relief cannot be approached), and so, no doubt, artists themselves have prepared the way for its popularity, and perhaps even usurpation of the dominion of popular art.
So far, however, as photographic effect is preferred, and the mechanical tone-block is preferred to the pen-drawing and woodcut, it means the loss of character, of the personal element, of distinctive artistic style. It means, in short, the substitution of scientific invention and mechanical method for artistic imagination, observation, and variety—surely this would be a most unfortunate exchange.
CHAPTER IX.—OF THE INDIVIDUAL INFLUENCE IN DESIGN
WE commonly speak of ancient art, but of modern artists. Straws indicate which way the wind blows, and superficial habits may indicate changes of thought and feeling which lie far deeper. Interest has now become centred in the development of individual varieties rather than typical forms, whereas, as we have seen, it is the latter character that distinguishes the art of the ancients. In the great monumental works of the Asiatic nations of antiquity names of individual artists are lost, and in the art of Egypt and Assyria and Persia they are of little consequence, since certain prevailing types and methods were adhered to; and most of their work, as in their mural sculptures, while distinct in racial character, might almost have been executed by the same hand—Egyptian, Assyrian, or Persian, as the case may be. Tennyson's lines regarding nature might be here applied to art;