Before going into the value of charcoal as a medium in the recording of the various aspects of nature in black-and-white, it will be wise to review the several mediums in general use, namely, etching, pen and ink, lithographic crayon, and charcoal gray in connection with Chinese white; it will be well, also, to note the various mechanical processes in use for the reproductions of these drawings on white paper. Those of you who have seen the early illustration in Harper's Magazine of the late fifties will recall the work of "Porte Crayon" (Colonel Strother), drawn on wood by the artist and engraved by such men as A. V. S. Anthony and John Sartain. You will also recall how some twenty-five years later an effective and Another important feature in the discovery was the possibility of reducing a drawing to any size required, thus fitting it exactly to the necessities of the printed page. Before these discoveries, as you well know, from the time of Albert DÜrer down to Linton and engravers of his school, the original drawing of the painter was redrawn by the use of lead-pencil, Chinese white, and India-ink washes upon the wood itself, giving as close an imitation as possible of the original. Some painters—illustrators, if you please, in those early days—in fact, made their original designs direct upon the wood. The effects of light and dark were then cut out in lines, curved or otherwise, with suitable cross-hatchings, as the necessity of the drawing required, or left comparatively untouched. It is not my purpose to discuss here the different merits of the different schools. There are varieties of opinion regarding the excellence of the line compared with the technic in the modern school of engravers. By the modern school I mean the work of such men as Cole, Yuengling, Wolff, French, Smithwick, and others. I refer to them that I may accent the stronger the medium which is the subject-matter of this talk, namely, charcoal, in the hope that those of you who propose to make reproductive illustrations your life-work may be tempted to make use of charcoal as a medium through which to express your ideas and ideals. But before embarking on this phase of my subject it may be interesting for a moment to go a little deeper into the earlier stages of this marvellous change from boxwood to zinc. I remember distinctly the beginnings of an organization well known in New York, and perhaps to many of you, as the Tile Club, to which With this discovery, however, of making available even the roughest drawing, the simplest blot in color or a scratch in charcoal, and photographing its exact textures upon a wooden block, the camera reducing it in size and thus perfecting it, the artist immediately took the place of the draftsman, and at the same time introduced into the work an artistic quality, a dash, a vim and spirit entirely unknown before. Three things were needed to utilize this marvellously useful discovery: first, a painter of rank; second, an engraver who could express the textures and technics of the several artists—that is, reproduce the exact values of an original in wash, an original in charcoal, or an original in oil; and third, a magazine with sufficient capital, taste, and intelligence to reproduce these results upon a printed page. We had the painters, and the engravers developed rapidly. The third requirement, of taste and intelligence, was found in Mr. A. W. When the Tile Club was formed in New York it consisted of a group of men (I was its scullion for seven years, its entire life, and, being thus an honored servant, was familiar with its many affairs) who represented at the time the leading spirits of the different schools: William M. Chase, Arthur Quartley, Swain Gifford, A. B. Frost, George Maynard, Frank D. Millet, Alden Weir, Edwin A. Abbey, Charles S. Reinhart, Elihu Vedder, William Gedney Bunce, Stanford White, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and one or two others. The club was limited to eighteen members, there being twelve painters and six musicians. If I am not very much mistaken, not a single painter of this group had ever drawn upon a wooden block, and yet each one of them, as the records of our periodicals have shown, was admirably qualified for illustrative work. At I remember distinctly the first meeting of the Tile Club, in which the subject of drawing for Scribner's Monthly was first mooted, and I do not believe I overestimate the importance that the position of the club, taken at that time, has had and still has—not as a club, for it was dissolved some years back—in the influence its personal art has wielded upon the printed pages of the day. The first magazine article was the account of a trip that we made down on Long Island, illustrated by the club, entitled "The Tile Club Abroad," each man choosing his own medium—oil, charcoal, water-color, etc.; the results of which were published in the then Scribner's Magazine, and engraved by a group of men With this difference in textures, the difference between a drawing in charcoal and one made in oil, it became necessary to invent new modes of expression with the burin. A simple line which might express the round of the cheek or the fulness of the arm, and which would answer for the uniform drapery of the old school, would not serve to explain the subtle quality of one of Quartley's moonrises or the vigor and dash of one of Chase's outdoor figures sketched in oil. So it came about that in searching to express these new qualities, never before seen upon a block, the technic of the new school was developed. The next important result was the creating not only of a new school of wood-engraving, but of an entirely distinct department for art workers, the school of the illustrator; and so we have Abbey, Reinhart, Quartley, and, later, Church, Smedley, Dana Gibson, and dozens of others whose names will readily come to your minds and of whose careers I have already spoken. But the burin was too slow, even in the hands of the skilful engraver, for the necessities of the hour. It was also too expensive; a drawing which a magazine would pay the artist $50 for would often cost $200 to engrave in the hands of a master like Yuengling or Cole. Again photography was called into use. The "straight process," so called, of the phototype printer, reproducing a pen-and-ink line drawing on a zinc plate which could be immediately run through a Hoe process, was perfected. You all remember, doubtless, an illustrated daily published Then came a race between all the inventors interested in such discoveries, both here and abroad—a race to perfect a process which would produce from such wash drawings an exact reproduction upon the printed page, giving all the gradations of the original and doing away not only with the draftsman but with the wood-engraver. To Professor Vogel, of Berlin, I believe—although an American, Ives, claims it, and some say justly—is due As the wash drawing had no lines, and as it is absolutely necessary that photo-printing should have lines—that is, clean spaces of black between white—these lines were supplied by laying a sheet of plate glass over the drawing upon which the lines were cut by a diamond and through which the original could be clearly seen. Of course, the light falling upon the edges of these several diamond cuttings made little points of brilliant white between which the several blacks and whites could be seen. This, without going very much further into the mechanical details, is the basis of the half-tone process. While this had its value, it had also its demerits, one of which was the total extermination of the American wood-engraver, except for There are, however, results in the half-tone process which I hold are infinitely superior to the work of any wood-engraver of the old school. While it is true that there is no really positive rich dark for any part of the composition—for, of course, the light specks are everywhere, thus lightening and graying the dark—and while we lose by such defects the richness of wood-engraving, we also get the exact touch of the artist in no more and no less a degree, particularly no less. How often have I seen an exquisite drawing of Abbey's or Du Maurier's almost ruined by the slipping of the burin the one-thousandth part of an inch! How infinitely superior are the originals of John Then again, in landscape effects and in some portraits, the uniformity of tone, the certainty of every touch being reproduced, the exact balancing from dark to light, all result in better work than can be done by the ordinary engraver. And yet, with all the half-tone's advantages, I must admit that Yuengling's head of the "Professor" and many of his wood-cuts in an illustrated edition of "Sir Launfal," published some years ago, and much of the work of such masters as Cole, Wolff, Yuengling, and others, Since these earlier days a new departure has been made, until now reproductive processes have been brought to such perfection that there is hardly any texture or color scheme that can not be matched. Note, if you will, Howard Pyle in color—rich in yellows and reds, with black and white spaces as an enrichment. Note also A. I. Keller's transparent work in charcoal gray. Note particularly the reproductions in the magazines of F. Walter Taylor's drawings in charcoal, in which the very texture of the coal is preserved. And, if you will permit me, note the half tones of my own charcoal drawings now on exhibition in the adjoining gallery. So perfect is the reproduction that one is careful not to smudge his fingers in turning the This being the case (and the printers must be thanked as well for their share in the results), I earnestly hope that some of my brother illustrators—the more the merrier—will seriously consider the value of charcoal as a medium for illustrative work. There is no subject, I assure you, that the sun shines on or its light filters into, or any phase of nature, be it rain or storm, fog, snow, or mist, including marines, figures, sunrises and sunsets, blazing heat and cool, transparent shadows, that cannot be visualized by it. I hold, too, that by its use qualities can be obtained impossible to be found in either etchings, lithographic crayon, wash, or pen and ink—especially the velvet of its black. Charcoal is the unhampered, the free, the personal individual medium. No water, no oil, no palette, no squeezing of tubes or wiping Now you can "let go," and in the fullest sense, or you will never arrive. My own experience has taught me that if an outdoor charcoal sketch, covering and containing all a man can see—and he should neither record nor explain anything more—is not completely finished For a drawing in charcoal is really a record of a man's temperament. It represents pre-eminently the personality of the individual—his buoyancy, his perfect health, the quickness of his gestures. All these are shown in the way he strikes his canvas—compelling it to talk back to him. So also does it record the man's timidity, his want of confidence in himself, his fear of spoiling what he has already done, forgetting that a nickel will buy him another sheet of paper. Courage, too, is a component part—not to be afraid to strike hard and fast, belaboring the canvas as a pugilist belabors an opponent, beating nature into shape. As for the potterer and the niggler, the men and women whose stroke goes no farther back than their knuckles, I may frankly say that charcoal is not for them. The blow is a sledge Remember, too, that the fight is all over in two hours—three at the outside—the battle really won or lost in the first ten minutes, if you only knew it: when you get in your first strokes, really defining your composition and planting your big high light and your big dark. It is all right after that. You can taper off on the little lights and darks, saving your wind, so to speak, sparring for your next supplementary light and dark. Remember, too, that when the fight is over you must not spoil what you have done by repetition or finish. Let it alone. You may not have covered everything you wanted to express, but if you have smashed in the salient features, the details will look out at you when you least expect it. There are a thousand cross lights and untold mysteries in Rembrandt's Remember, also, that just as the blunt end of a bit of charcoal is many, many times larger than the point of an etching-needle, so are its resources for fine lines and minute dots and scratches just that much reduced. It is the flat of the piece of coal that is valuable, not its point. As to what can be done with this piece of coal, I can but repeat, everything. That there are some subjects better than others, I will admit. For me, London, its streets and buildings, come first, especially if it be raining; and Other churches have I studied in my wanderings; This rich black which, like a tropical fungus, grows and spreads through St. Bartholomew's interior, hiding under its soft, caressing touch the rough angles and insistent edges of the Norman, is what the bloom is to the grape, what the dark purpling is to the plum, mellowing from sight the brilliancy of the under skin. And there are wide coverings of it, too, in this wonderful church, as if some master decorator had wielded a great coal and at one sweep of his hand had rubbed its glorious black into Certain it is that no other medium than the one used could give any idea of its charm. Neither oil, water-color, nor pastel will transmit it—no, nor the dry-point or bitten plate. The soot of centuries, the fogs of countless Novembers, the smoke of a thousand firesides were the pigments which the Master Painter set upon his palette in the task of giving us one exquisitely beautiful interior wholly in black-and-white. So it was in the Temple when I was searching for Mr. Thackeray's haunts. What of alterations, scrapings, patchings up, and fillings in have taken place in these various courts and their surroundings, I did not trouble myself to find out. Nothing looks new in London after the fogs and soot of one winter have wreaked their vengeance upon it. Whether the faÇade is of brick, stone, or stucco depends As for me, I was glad that these old haunts of Mr. Thackeray and his characters are even blacker to-day than they might have been in his time. For the soot and grime become them, and London as well, for that matter. A great impressionist, this smoke-smudger and wiper-out of detail, this believer in masses and simple surfaces, this destroyer of gingerbread ornaments, petty mouldings, and cheap flutings! And now for a few practical data as to my own way of handling the coal, which may be of value as coming from one who has profited these many years by its infinite possibilities. The paper is the same I use in my water-colors, a delicate, gray, double-thick charcoal paper, laid in parallel ribs, if I may so express it, and having sufficient body and tooth to catch and hold the faintest touch or the strongest stroke of the coal. The gray of this paper serves as the middle tone of the drawing, the different gradations of black in the coal giving the darks and the careful use of white chalks the high lights. These gradations are obtained by the use of a few simple processes, by which various textures can be given, starting, for instance, from or near the foreground, where the grit of the charcoal is used to bring the nearer details into clear relief, the several larger gradations and textures giving aerial perspectives being produced by a broad sweep of the hand, forcing the grit of the coal into the crevices of the paper, the result being what I may term the first plane or nearest atmospheric value; the Beyond this, farther down the street, is found, it may be, another house or other object. Now try your thumb, rubbing your hand-smoothed charcoal into a finer and closer mesh: and for the still more atmospheric distances down this same street, use next a rag, then a buckskin stomp, and last of all a stiff paper stomp, each in turn producing a more atmospheric gray as the distances fade—the last, the paper stomp, being as soft as a wash of India ink. (See diagram.) All these you may say are tricks. They are—my own tricks, or rather use of the means which lay at my hand, which long experience has taught me to employ, and which any one of you will no doubt better in your own handling of the coal. These planes being secured, any light higher than the prevailing rubbed-in tone can be The chalk now comes into play for skies, broad sunlight effects, or crisp, sparkling lights. The whole work is then "fixed," as I have already explained, by the use of gum shellac and a common perfume atomizer. And with this condensed statement I must bring this my last talk to a close, remembering as I do that I have been addressing a body of students who are already familiar with one or more mediums, and who, with these few spoken memoranda and a finished drawing before them, will solve at a glance mysteries baffling to the layman. |