WOOD ENGRAVING—RISE AND PROGRESS—BLOCK BOOKS—DURER'S INFLUENCE—HANS HOLBEIN—A RENAISSANCE—COMPARISON AND JUSTIFICATION—THE ILLUSTRATOR

"It is therefore beautiful because it is alive, moving, reproductive. It is therefore useful because it is symmetrical and fair."—Emerson.

Wood Engraving.—The most animating event in the whole history of engraving was the development of engraved wood blocks. Wood engraving did not receive the impetus of a new discovery as did metal engraving at a later period. It was to some extent a purely commercial enterprise, the success of which was assured by an ever increasing interest in pictorial art. Engraved wood blocks were used for purposes of reproduction several centuries before their introduction into Europe. Historians claim that it can be traced back to A.D. 930, when a form of playing card was known to the Chinese, and printed by them from rough wood engravings. The commercial intercourse of the Venetians with Eastern nations would suggest a probability that their navigators brought home some of these playing cards, and described the method of their production to their countrymen.

The further we pursue our investigations, the more remarkable does this tardy recognition of the utility of wood engraving appear to be. It is true that somewhere about the middle of the thirteenth century legal documents were stamped, and merchant marks made with engraved wood blocks, but no extensive use was made of this method of reproduction until a much later period.

The Low Countries claim credit for the first employment of engraved wood blocks for commercial purposes. Many dispute this claim, but the amount of credit at stake is so infinitesimal that it renders the contention of little value. Until the time of that immense progress which wood engraving made in Germany about the middle and towards the end of the fifteenth century, no work of any artistic merit whatever had been produced. The older prints may possess a certain historical or antiquarian value, but otherwise are both crude and uninteresting.

Block Books.—The MediÆval Block Books were the most important of the early pictorial reproductions from engraved wood blocks. They also may be traced to China, where, as early as the ninth century, they were used for decorative as well as illustrative purposes. They retained their primitive form for a long period after their first introduction to Western civilisation, and it is interesting to note that the blocks, and not the prints, were supplied to the monks,—the scholars of the day,—the impressions being made by them as required. Towards the end of the fourteenth century Dutch merchants, like the Venetians, paid frequent visits to Chinese ports, when they too were impressed with the novelty and utility of pictorial reproduction as practised in the East. At any rate, pictorial sheets or cards, very similar in character to the Chinese playing cards, were published in Holland about that period. They bore pictures of the saints with the titles or legends engraved alongside. The production of such prints was evidently a recognised business during the early part of the fifteenth century, for there are numerous entries in the civic records of Nuremberg concerning the wood engraver "Formschneider" and cardmaker "Kartenmacher." It has been ingenuously suggested that, for convenience, collections of these cards were pasted into books; and the books available being chiefly of a religious character, the idea of illustrating religious matter with such pictures was readily suggested.

The next step was the application of block engraving and printing to the production of volumes of a more pretentious character, the most noteworthy of which were The Apocalypsio sue Historia Sancti Johannis, the Biblia Pauperum, and the Historia Virginis ex Cantico Canticorum. In another of these books, the Speculum HumanÆ Salvationis, the titles were not engraved on the plates, but were printed with movable types. This volume was published at Haarlem, and was composed of fifty-eight plates—a very considerable production with the materials then at the disposal of the publishers.

Durer's Influence.—In 1490 Albert Durer, who possessed a spirited imagination and deep enthusiasm for his work, marked out a distinct era of substantial progress, and impressed the art of wood engraving with that expressive power of delineation which his truly remarkable genius ever manifested.

Durer was an artist of somewhat variable characteristics, but the diversity and amplitude of his productions afford conclusive evidences of a remarkable industry and skill.

Like other artists of his time, and even of much later periods, he did not engrave his own drawings. He may, of course, have engraved a few blocks, but most, if not all of the wood engravings signed by Durer, were executed by Jerome Rock.

Perhaps the most peculiar characteristic of Durer's designs was the portrayal of scenes and figures of ancient history and myth in well-defined imitation of his own surroundings and the conditions of life then existing. Apropos of this, it was said that he turned the New Testament into the history of a Flemish village.

Hans Holbein was another of the early artists who prepared their drawings for the express purpose of reproduction by means of wood engraving. That he fully appreciated the resources of his art there can be no doubt, for he imbued his work with an expressive individual force which was distinctly progressive and influential. His best known production consists of forty-one engravings representing "Death—the King of Terrors," in association with nearly every phase of human life. Each one of these designs is a picture parable of remarkable power and suggestiveness. The characteristic drawing and quaint expressiveness of Holbein's illustrations merit unqualified admiration, and his graphic use of pure line for pictorial expression stands almost unrivalled.

Hans Litzelburger engraved Holbein's designs. Towards the end of the fifteenth and during part of the sixteenth centuries wood engraving still received enthusiastic attention, and then, for sheer lack of interest, fell rapidly into decay. Metal engraving was absorbing the attention of the artistic world, and for many years wood engraving was regarded as only fit for the reproduction of pictures which may be charitably described as inartistic, and too often perhaps discreditable.

As far as our own country was concerned, it was not until the advent of Thomas Bewick that this decadence received any effective check.

A Renaissance.—The Renaissance of wood engraving in England may be dated from 1775, when Bewick engraved a picture entitled "The Hound," and received a prize offered by the Royal Society for the best engraving on wood. Thomas Bewick was born in 1753, and fourteen years later he was apprenticed to a metal engraver. It was indeed a fortuitous circumstance which caused him to transfer his energies and his talents to wood engraving, in which he displayed a rare skill and inimitable directness of expression. He was probably the first wood engraver to adopt level tinting in place of complicated and laborious cross hatching which was then practised by his continental contemporaries. He usually preferred to develop his drawing rather than attempt the production of extraneous effects, and the subtle effectiveness of his pictures affords incontrovertible proofs of the advantage of such substitution. Their humour and pathos, vigour and fidelity, remain to this day as memorials of the consummate, artistic skill and perceptive capacity of a truly remarkable man. Bewick was a self-contained genius whose rugged emotions would admit of but one form of pictorial expression, and that peculiarly his own. His work was pregnant with masterly good sense, and ever manifested a charming simplicity of purpose. He had but a modest estimate of his ability as an engraver, and consequently rarely engraved any other than his own drawings.

The exact measure of Bewick's influence on the art of wood engraving for pictorial illustration and reproduction would be difficult to satisfactorily determine. This much is certain, however, that through it wood engraving was verified and popularised, and illustrated literature received a stimulus which subsequent developments combined to maintain and emphasise.

A Comparison.—There is a vast difference between the effects procurable in an impression from a wood engraving and the print from an engraved metal plate. In the former, colour values and perspective can only be expressed by thick and thin lines at varying distances apart, the ink on the prints being of the same density throughout, no matter how thick or thin the lines may be. In metal engraving intermediary values may be obtained by lines of the same thickness, if need be, but of varying depth. The result is a strong, intense effect produced by the greater body of pigment held by such portions of the lines as are cut deeply, and the comparatively grey appearance of the shallower parts. It is largely due to this that prints from engraved metal plates possess a peculiar richness and depth of tone.

The commercial advantages generally claimed for engraved wood blocks are the ease and rapidity with which impressions can be made from them as compared with the metal plates, and also the fact that they can be printed with type, i.e. letterpress, without any unusual preparations. Granting the validity of these claims, it must follow that, owing to the larger number of impressions made from wood engravings, their intrinsic worth will be correspondingly less than the limited number of prints made from engraved metal plates, and their commercial value will be estimated accordingly.

A Justification.—The somewhat sweeping assertion that wood engraving affords a medium of expression only for the blunter minds is not the whole truth. Its strikingly bold conceptions and broad expressive effects certainly appeal to the untrained eye or untutored mind more than the artistic qualities of design and execution displayed in metal engraving; but there is yet in the art of the wood engraver a well-nigh inexhaustible store of artistic as well as pictorial effects. The forcible character and charm of its productions are chiefly due to the disposition and combination of the lines employed, and a variety of texture which is thereby introduced. It affords also an exceptional facility of execution, and an almost limitless power of realisation, which gives to it a deservedly high place among the pictorial and reproductive arts. The whole matter may be summed up in a statement once made by a well-known artist and illustrator: "There is no process in relief which has the same certainty, which gives the same colour and brightness, and by which gradations of touch can be more truly rendered. Few of our great artists, however, can be prevailed upon to draw for wood engraving, and when they do undertake an illustration, say of a great poem, the drawing, which has to be multiplied 100,000 times, has less thought bestowed upon it than the painted portrait of a cotton king." What wonder, then, at the retrogression of this facile and graphic art of pictorial illustration.

The Illustrator.—The employment of wood engravings in conjunction with literature created a new phase of artistic work. The task of the illustrator or designer is peculiar. He sketches out his design on the wood block, and then passes it on to the engraver. His drawing is not intended as a permanent form of pictorial art, but as a suggestive sketch, which, while perfectly intelligible to the engraver, will be free from such intricacies in its composition as might interfere with its effective interpretation. The old wood engravers produced, line for line, an exact facsimile of the artist's design. His work, no doubt, required considerable skill and unremitting patience, but it was almost devoid of independent thought or artistic feeling. The engraver to-day must translate the work of the illustrator so as to render the effect of his design in such a form as will admit of rapid and effective reproduction. The possibilities of the wood engraver's art, therefore, are manifold. The artist's sketch may give a suggestion of light and shade, and possibly some idea of its tone. The execution and elaboration of the drawing is left almost entirely in the hands of the engraver. Whether it will gain or lose by its translation will, to some extent, depend upon his artistic perception as well as his manipulative skill.