THE craving for pictures, that is, for illustrations, is as old as the world. The cave-dweller felt it when he scratched on the walls of his house, or carved the handle of his battle-axe; one there was “who stayed by the tents with the women, and traced strange devices with a burnt stick upon the ground.” Others painted The Egyptians were the most prolific, and their works may be found, monuments more durable than brass, not alone in their places, but scattered to all the corners of the earth. From the Egyptians and the Assyrians we may skip, offending but the archÆologist and the pedant, to the illuminators who threw their light on the Dark Ages. They changed their methods from carving to tracing, and their mediums from stone and papyrus to parchment and vellum. But always these illustrations were single works of art, they were not reproduced, and only duplicated by copying by hand. Beautiful as are the manuscripts, they play but a small and unimportant part in the history of illustration, when compared with the block books that follow them; though The block books, more often loose sheets, were printed from designs, picture and text, cut on the wood, in one piece, sometimes possibly engraved in metal. These blocks, being inked, and having sheets of paper placed on their inked surfaces, and the paper being rubbed, gave off an impression; as many blocks having to be cut as there were pages, and as many impressions having to be taken from each block as there were copies desired. The first of these illustrated blocks is the St. Christopher, 1423, though playing-cards, produced in the same way, were known much earlier. It is only, however, with the invention of printing with movable types, practised by the Chinese centuries before we ever thought of it, that illustration, in its modern sense, From the day of Gutenberg and Schoeffer, illustration has, in the main, never changed; new methods have been employed, new processes for making the blocks have been perfected, but an illustration still continues to be a design on a wood block or metal plate, so cut, engraved, or etched as to produce a printing surface from which impressions may be taken, either in connection with type, when we call it letterpress or relief printing, or separate from the type, when it usually becomes intaglio or plate printing. These methods have undergone, and To-day, the methods of making the design are many, but the methods of reproducing it are virtually endless; still one must try to learn something of the most important, and the more one understands the requirements of drawing for engraving and printing, the better will be the results obtained. In the fifteenth century one had but to design the picture on the side of a plank, write in the text in reverse, cut everything else away, wet the block thoroughly, ink the face of it, lay damp paper over it, and rub or press the back of the sheet of paper till the ink came off on it, producing a print. An illustration—using the term in its artistic sense—is a design intended to give an artist’s idea of an incident, episode, or topographical site, or it may be but a mere diagram referred to by a writer; and an illustrator is one who makes pictures or illustrations which illustrate or An illustration really is a work of art, or rather it should be, which is explanatory; but, as a matter of fact, so too is all graphic art, explanatory of some story, sentiment, emotion, effect, or fact; and it would be very difficult indeed to point out when art is not illustrative. As the word is used to-day, however, an illustration is a design made for the purpose of publication in book or magazine or paper. The fashion of making such designs to accompany lettering or type is, as I have shown, as old as the art of writing. The art of illustration, or rather the existence of illustration as a separate craft, and of illustrators as a distinct body of craftsmen, is virtually the growth of this century, more properly of the last sixty years since the invention of illustrated journalism. A few great artists of the past have made illustrations which will be prized for ever, and to-day these men are spoken of as illustrators; with DÜrer and Holbein it was but one of the many forms of art in which they excelled, but they were not altogether given up to it. To-day, however, illustration is the most living and vital of the Fine Arts, and among its followers are found the most able and eminent of contemporary artists. It cannot, however, be said that this prominence which has been so suddenly thrust upon illustration is altogether due to its increase in artistic excellence; there are a number of other reasons. Illustration has indeed reached technically, More important reasons are the developments in reproduction and printing, started, and to a great extent carried on, merely to lessen the cost of production, but capable of giving better and truer results in the hands of intelligent craftsmen, than anything previously known. Still, cheapness in reproduction by process, cheapness in the cost of printing, has enabled numbers of absolutely ignorant people (ignorant, that is, of art), but possessed of, they think, fine commercial instincts, to start illustrated papers and publish illustrated books. The result has been that an army of out-of-works in other fields of art, of immature or even utterly untrained students, escaping from the hard labour and There are many of these papers, magazines, and books being published to-day—eminent authors even contribute to their pages; but the illustrations they contain are Therefore, as a mass, instead of advancing, illustration is sinking lower and lower, owing to the action of those who pretend to be its patrons; at the present moment we find ourselves in a critical situation, good work crowded out by mediocrity—because mediocrity is cheaper—real artists lost sight of amid the crowd of squirming, struggling, advertising hacks. Any spark of originality is stamped out if possible. The mere attempt to say anything in one’s own fashion is a crime, and on all sides the prayer for the extinction of the artist is heard; after him will go the process man as the commercial wood engraver has Still, to-day, as good work is being done as ever there was; only cheapness has to shriek so loud, and advertise so large, to be seen at all, that people are deafened by the shrieking, and at times the best is but seen through a glass, darkly. Nevertheless, good art will as surely live as bad will perish. Let us then endeavour not only to learn what good work is, but how to do it. In the near future this will be absolutely necessary. When one sees the greatest artists in England drawing for penny papers, one realises that illustration is only apparently in a bad way, that really we are entering upon a second renaissance, As a preliminary, and also a final, word to you, I would say, you must draw, draw, draw first, last, and all the time, and until you can draw, and draw well, you cannot illustrate. The study, therefore, of the equipment of the illustrator should be our aim—what he must do before he can make good illustrations, then, how he is to make them. |