Читать книгу Modern Illustration - Joseph Pennell - Страница 6

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Illustration is not only the oldest, but the only form of artistic expression which graphic artists have ever been able to employ. For that matter, every expression of the artist, whether conveyed by means of monochrome or colour, even the work of the plastic artist, is but an illustration.

For an illustration is the recording, by means of some artistic medium, either of something seen by the artist which he wishes to convey to—that is, illustrate for—others; or else the direct interpretation by some artistic means of a written description, or the chronicling of an historical event; or, it is a composition which has been suggested to him by some occurrence in nature; or, again, his impression of some phase of nature or life. Therefore all art is illustration, though it rather seems to follow that all illustration is not art.

In the past, the great illustrators were employed by the great patrons of art in the church and at court. The church, by means of graphic or plastic illustration, warned or encouraged her followers, terrifying them by endless purgatories and infernos, more gruesome and ghastly than the British idea of the Salon picture; turning their thoughts towards heaven mainly by cloying sweetness, which the typical member of the Royal Academy finds much difficulty in approaching. Though such illustration, in a certain sense, was made for the people, it was not given into their possession as modern illustration is to-day; it was meant not for their pleasure, but for their instruction.

The old illustrator in his work was simply nothing if not a moralist, though he himself may have been a most amusing person, while his treatment of even the most sacred subjects was frequently the broadest and most suggestive. Still, he was commissioned solely to "point a moral and adorn a tale." As for the court painters, their work was never seen by the people at all, any more than it is now, often luckily. But what were the portraits of Velasquez, the groups of Rembrandt, the feasts of Veronese, the processions of Carpaccio? The work of all court and portrait painters is but the recording, that is, the illustration, of human vanity; and the work of all subject painters is but the recording, that is, the illustration, of great and important events; while landscape painting, a modern invention, is only more or less glorified topography.

With the writing and illustrating of manuscripts, however, there had been developed a school of minor artists and craftsmen: illuminators and scribes who—mainly taking for their subjects either a portion of some painting by a master, but usually the mere mechanical part of the early painters' backgrounds, the mechanical gold punch design of the primitives, the elaborate, but mannered and conventional, foregrounds of Botticelli, and the entire compositions, more or less altered, of Fra Angelico and Pinturicchio—by "lifting" these things judiciously, evolved the art of illumination. It must be borne in mind that this illumination, in its detail and accessories often very beautiful and conventionally decorative, in its main subject almost always as realistic as possible, was the work, with two or three most notable exceptions, of second- and third-rate clever technicians, but in no sense great creative artists at all. Only a few well-known painters were ever employed to illuminate important manuscripts.

After the introduction of printing, the same state of affairs continued. Although the most beautiful books which came from the early German press appeared during the lifetime of Dürer, his contributions as an illustrator are curiously limited, considering the amount of black-and-white work which he produced. He illustrated not more than three or four books, and of these only the Missal of the Emperor Maximilian was worked out completely.[3] The great Italians never did anything of any importance, if we except Botticelli's designs for Dante which were never completed. Velasquez has left nothing behind him; nor has Rembrandt. A few of Rubens' sketches for title-pages exist in Antwerp, and Dürer's monograms and various decorative designs have proved a veritable mine for the minor artists, or greatest thieves—I mean the decorators—who are with us still. With the exception of Hans Holbein, there never was in the past a great artist who devoted himself to illustration. The glorification of these minor craftsmen into great illustrators is unjust, incorrect, and absurd, when one seriously considers it. Dürer's designs were really published and sold as portfolios of engravings, or separately, although there was a little text with them, but not as illustrated books. So, too, were those of Rubens; while Rembrandt's etchings were altogether published separately. It was the same with the work of the early Italians. Holbein is almost the only exception proving the rule that great artists in the past were not illustrators of books. Still, one can never be absolutely certain on this point, since on some of the finest books, like the "Hypnerotomachia," a great artist was employed whose name has never been recorded.

Although it is impossible now to give with absolute certainty the true reasons why the best-known artists did not illustrate the important publications of their own day, there seem to be three very good ones. First, because it is almost certain that the wood-cutter, when he was known at all, and this implied his being reasonably successful, was the head of a large shop in which the artist and the actual engraver were mere necessary evils; the proprietor, I do not doubt, taking not only all the credit, as we know, but most likely the bulk of the cash as well. Secondly, we have Dürer's own testimony that his wood-cutters were incompetent, and careless, and the much belauded line of Dürer which one is bidden to admire in the wood-block to-day, he himself, it is almost certain, did not cut.[4] But he sketched freely on paper, his design was then copied by another person on the block, and the third man cut it. That Dürer did work on the wood, correcting his designs and criticising his wood-cutters, there can be little doubt, simply from the improvement in this method of reproduction which began with him. But the reason that a great artist like Dürer did not contribute illustrations to books most probably is because he was not decently paid for them, and because his designs were all cut to pieces. Finally, not only was almost all the engraving, except work done under the direct supervision, or influence, of Dürer, absolutely characterless so far as the quality of the line went, but there is not a single early printed book to be found in which the illustrations are decently printed. There is scarcely a solid black in any of them.[5]

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.

WOOD-ENGRAVING BY THOMAS BEWICK. FROM WALTON’S “COMPLETE ANGLER” (BOHN).