In writing upon drawing on the Continent, I have heretofore found it only necessary to classify illustrators under three nationalities. In discussing illustration it seems to me that this question of nationality can be even further simplified. Italy and Spain have not produced a single original illustrated book of real importance. Although several of the foremost illustrators of the day were born in one or the other of these countries and partially educated there, they have left their native land as quickly as possible, for France or for Germany. BY MARTIN RICO. FROM A PEN DRAWING. FROM AN ORIGINAL PEN DRAWING BY H. TEGNER. In Italy the important publishing house of the Fratelli TrevÈs, in Milan, has made many attempts to bring out fine books, the works of de Amicis being among their best-known productions, but this importance comes from their literary rather than artistic side; and I am not aware that the Fratelli TrevÈs have ever done anything to surpass Dutch books are not remarkable. Here and there a good drawing may be found in a magazine called "Elsevir." Though in Holland there is an PEN DRAWING. BY HANS TEGNER. FROM “HOLBERG’S COMEDIES” (BOJESENS). BY ADOLPH MENZEL. PROCESS BLOCK FROM ORIGINAL DRAWING IN THE POSSESSION OF THE AUTHOR. BY GOYA. FROM “CAPRICES.” There is, however, one little country that deserves more than a word of mention, and this is Denmark. For it can boast an illustrator of individuality and character, Hans Tegner. His drawings for the jubilee edition of "Holberg's Comedies," published in Copenhagen in 1884 to 1888, must be ranked as masterpieces of graphic art. Though evidently based on the style of Menzel and Meissonier, they are quite individual; especially in the rendering of interiors crowded with people he has surpassed any living illustrator. This book is also interesting from the fact that while it was being produced the change was made from facsimile wood-engraving to process, and though the engraving of Hendricksen and Bork is excellent, the process blocks in some ways are even more interesting. The decorations to these volumes, head and tail-pieces, are as atrociously bad as Tegner's illustrations in the text are good. There are also a number of lesser artists, Danes and Norwegians, who have done good work, but to name them would merely be to make a catalogue, as their work is never seen here. During the last three-quarters of a century German illustration has been absolutely dominated BY GOYA. FROM AN ORIGINAL DRAWING (A PORTRAIT OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON) IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. BY FORTUNY. FROM A PEN DRAWING. BY JOSEPH SATTLER. FROM “THE DANCE OF DEATH” (GREVEL). Following Menzel, and encouraged by "Fliegende BlÄtter," which started in the early forties, came Wilhelm Dietz, whose studies of armies on the march, and of peasants at work or at play, are inimitable. He, too, has been followed by Robert Haug and Hermann Luders. Dietz was the mainstay for years of "Fliegende BlÄtter," the only weekly comic paper of which it can be said, that during the half century of its existence it has been not only at the head of its contemporaries, but has on the artistic side left far behind any pretended rival. Germany has for the last half century, too, possessed a remarkable school of interpretative wood-engravers: men who have been able to take a large picture, which they have either drawn on the wood themselves or had drawn for them, and produce out of it an excellent rendering, which would print perfectly in black and white, under the rapid requirements of a steam-press. The work of these engravers can be seen any week in the "Illustrirte Zeitung," "Uber Land und Meer," and the other weeklies. Wood-engraving has been treated as a serious profession for years in Germany, as a Professorship of the art was held in the Berlin Academy before the beginning of this century by J. F. G. Unger, who died in 1804. Even in Vienna, a Professorship has been established for many years. The trouble with German wood-engravers, however, has been that most of the work, though signed by the name of one man, is One sort of decorative design, developed by a German, or, I presume, a Pole, Paul Konewka, though his work, was, I believe, first published in Copenhagen, is the silhouette; Konewka has had imitators everywhere, but none of them have surpassed him. His edition of "Faust" is one of the best-known examples. Retche's outline drawings for Shakespeare are also good. BY DE NITTIS. PEN DRAWING FROM “PARIS ILLUSTRÉ.” BY W. BUSCH. FROM “BALDUIN BAHLAMM” (MUNICH, BASSERMANN). FROM ETCHING BY GOYA. FROM “CAPRICES.” Following the classical tradition of Overbeck and Kaulbach, but changing it rather into mysticism and decadence through the influence of BÖcklin, and probably the pre-Raphaelites in England, has been developed a school of mystical decorators who are unequalled, unappreciated and curiously unknown outside of their own country. The chief of these men is Max Klinger. Like Busch and OberlÄnder, Meggendorfer, and Hengler, are names so well known that their mere mention raises a laugh, and that, if anything, is DEATH THE FRIEND. LINE DRAWING BY RETHEL. REDUCED FROM A WOOD-ENGRAVING BY H. BURKNER. BY H. SCHLITTGEN. FROM “EIN ERSTER UND EIN LETZTER BALL” (STUTTGART, KRABBE). BY MAROLD. FROM “ZWISCHEN ZWEI REGEN” (STUTTGART, KRABBE). BY FRANZ STÜCK. FROM BIERBAUM’S “FRANZ STÜCK,” MUNICH (ALBERT AND CO.). BY GARCIA Y RAMOS. GIPSY DANCE. Process block, from pen and wash drawing. Note.—A recent visit to Spain shows me to be quite mistaken in this matter. A very fine book has lately been published in Barcelona by a Seville artist, F. Garcia y Ramos, "La Tierra di Maria Santissima," and though SeÑor Garcia y Ramos is greatly indebted to Fortuny, Rico and Vierge, he has made a very notable series of designs; he has also contributed several drawings to a comparatively new Spanish paper,—"Blanco y Negro"—which has printed very good work by a group of young men in Madrid, the most distinguished of whom is SeÑor Huertas. Another artist on the staff is Jiminez Lucena; he is realistically decorative. The most popular man in Spain, after the artists of "La Lidia" (the organ of the Bull Ring), is Angel Pons, who, however, is but an echo of Caran d'Ache. "La Lidia" is illustrated entirely by lithography and in colour; the designs, often full of go and life, are the work of D. Perea. I find, too, that the French work of 1830 was seen and known in Spain, that some books were produced in the style of "Paul and Virginia," with drawings by Spaniards, though I imagine they were all engraved either in Paris, or by French engravers who went to Spain. The work, however, is but a reminiscence of the French, and simply curious as showing the power of the Romanticists, but more especially of Meissonier as an illustrator. The most interesting of these books is "Spanish Scenes," illustrated by Lameyer, engraved by G. Fernandez, rather in the manner of Gavarni. But there is one Spaniard who as an illustrator is unknown, at least to artists—for he only produced one set of designs for publication—but who is universally known in almost every other branch of art, F. Goya. The only widely published and generally It is rather to the exquisite designs in red chalk for the "Scenes of Invasion," that one sees him at his best. Here he is the direct descendant of Callot, only there is a power in his work that Callot never possessed. It is, I am now certain, from these designs that Vierge obtained many of his ideas—although they are worked out in an entirely different fashion. The drawings for the "Caprices" are in pen and wash, and are as much finer than the aquatints made from them, as the aquatints are superior to the caricatures of any of his contemporaries. As Goya passed, an exile, the latter part of his life in France, his work must have been known to the men of 1830. He died in 1828, just as the few lithographs he has left show that he was aware of the work of Delacroix in that newly invented art. Still, Goya cannot be called an illustrator, for none of his work was published as illustration; yet, at the same time, it is so well adapted to that end that it is perfectly incomprehensible that these drawings have not only never been published, but I am informed they have never even been photographed. The two that are in this book are from the "Caprices," those of the "Invasion" are too delicate to stand the necessary reduction. The portrait of Wellington in red chalk is in the British Museum. BY W. L. WYLLIE, A.R.A. PEN DRAWING FROM “THE MAGAZINE OF ART.” BY J. W. NORTH. FROM A DRAWING ON THE WOOD IN THE POSSESSION OF THE AUTHOR. |