Modern Illustration :: CHAPTER VII. CONCLUSION.

CHAPTER VII. CONCLUSION.

I have tried to show the methods of modern illustration, and to give a sketch of its present conditions. It would be absurd to prophesy its future, though I believe it will have a very brilliant one. Much of the work that is being turned out to-day is beneath contempt; much of it is done by young men who are absolutely uneducated, and an illustrator requires education as much as an author; much of it is done by people who are too careless, or too stupid, to read or to understand the MSS. which they illustrate. Thus, in looking through late numbers of a magazine, I learn that all the policemen in New York wear patent leather shoes; while from another I find that when people are very poor in France, they rock their babies in log cabin cradles, cook their meals on American stoves and sit upon Chippendale chairs.

BY A. J. GASKIN. FROM “OLD FAIRY TALES” (METHUEN AND CO.).

But it is a pleasure to turn from budding geniuses of this sort and photographic hacks; from the gentlemen who copy the imperfections of the woodcut of the Middle Ages; from the people who enlarge the borders of their magazines with decorations that neither belong to our own time, nor are good examples of any other; from those who have succeeded in making a certain portion of the world believe that clumsy eccentricity is a cloak for all the sins in the artistic calendar, to illustrators who are calmly and quietly pursuing their profession, and producing work which may even drag other portions of the magazine or book, to which they contribute, to an unmerited immortality.

BY LAURENCE HOUSMAN. FROM “A FARM IN FAIRYLAND” (KEGAN PAUL).

I do not pretend to foretell what the ultimate form of the book of the future, or of the magazine either, may be. But I do believe that illustration is as important as any other branch of art, will live as long as there is any love for art, long after the claims of the working classes have been forgotten, and the statues of the statesmen, who are the newspaper heroes of to-day, have crumbled into dust, unless preserved because a sculptor of distinction produced them.

Illustration is an important, vital, living branch of the fine arts, and it will flourish for ever.

BY COTMAN. FROM AN ETCHING IN “ARCHITECTURAL ANTIQUITIES OF NORMANDY.”

FOOTNOTES

[1] The Spanish photographer to whom was given the commission by Messrs. Bell to photograph the Goya drawings in the Museum of the Prado, never carried it out. For nearly a year they have been promised manyana, but the to-morrow has not yet dawned.

[2] The "Pall Mall Magazine" has just commenced to index artists and engravers completely.

[3] This is a combination of illumination and printing, the illustrations being original drawings by DÜrer. The text is printed; but two or three copies exist.

[4] See "Literary Remains of Albert DÜrer," and F. Didot's "Gravure sur Bois."

[5] Some of Ratdolt's are among the exceptions.

[6] The printing is, however, always bad.

[7] So far as I know, the original of that system of abomination.

[8] My own copy, apparently a first edition, is dated 1836.

[9] Charles Whittingham, the founder of the Chiswick Press, who died in 1840, has the credit of being the first printer in England to use overlays, and as an early example might be mentioned, "The Gardens and Menageries of the Zoological Society delineated," published by Tilt in 1830, containing drawings by William Harvey, engraved by Branston and Wright, assisted by other artists.

[10] Rather English and French, Andrew, Best, Leloir.

[11] I am mistaken in this, as many of Pinwell and North's drawings, made on paper in 1865-66 for Dalziel, were photographed on wood.

[12] First edition 1889.

[13] There are two or three seventeenth-century drawings on the wood at South Kensington, and some, I believe, in the British Museum.

[14] On paper.

[15] At least, he was the first man to do important artistic wood-engraving.

[16] In France the credit for the invention is given to Dr. DonnÉ, who, about 1840, discovered that certain acids could be used to bite in the whites or the blacks of a daguerreotype. See also French chapter.

[17] This method, I believe, is no longer used.

[18] Adrian Marie and Emile Bayard died lately.

[19] See note p. 78.

[20] I did not mean I hoped it would die. It has now ceased to appear.

[21] S. Read was the first artist correspondent; he worked during the Crimean War.

[22] I do not mean to say that the American idea of having artists for art editors is unique. Everyone knows the good editorial work that has been done, and is still being done by Mr. Bale, Mr. W. L. Thomas, Mr. Thomson, Mr. Mason Jackson, Mr. L. Raven-Hill, to mention no others.

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