Where Art Begins

se and development; I leave that side of the subject to such masters as William Andrew Chatto, Austin Dobson, and David Croal Thomso

. I wish to describe the qualities of the different illustrators as they have impressed an

s feelings-i.e. his vanity, and natural desire to cover up his weaknesses and pose only on his few strong parts,-for, of course, every man who has had experience must know in his inmost consciousness his strength

t no one could pierce my armour and place me hors de combat; but when a knight goes to the tournament with armour a little worse des

mour propre for the sake of my readers and give them the benefit of m

have already said, I intend to make strictly practical rather than historical; therefore, I shall only touch upon illustrative w

congruity of super-refined and delicate lines; let the text be bold and assertive enough to suit the quality of the illustrations from the title-page to the end, so that the reader's eye may get accustomed at once to take a distant view of the whole, and not have to push

HRIST

just balance. The drawing is in outline, massive and decided all through, without a single unnecessary line; the descriptive lettering is black-letter with broad band round it. In its present position, in the centre of the modern text, it suggests two ideas-either that it is too coarse for its present surroundings, or else that the text is too fine; therefore, to be seen to proper advantage it ought to be enclosed in a black-letter text. Contrast this as to general harmony with the two reduced copies of outline work on page 72 in the same work

OF THE V

nd knowledge of effect displayed by the worker. Perhaps amongst our modern living men Walter Crane is the only artist who exhibits a similar courage and grasp of t

to the shadows. The earliest style of work shows only outlines, which are in many cases to be preferred to more elaborate work, pa

s as beautiful and elaborate as it is unique at this early date. With the introduction of cross-hatching, used at first directly, horizontally and perpendicularly, we get the feeling of colour and tone in illustrative work which are its most pronounced features at the present day. In this we have advan

üRER'S A

, where such were required. In fact, this rare artist seems to have had all the tricks of the trade at his command, and to have paused at no device in order to g

he different great epochs, such as the unknown outline workers, the men who aimed at tone and colour, dating distinctly from the time of Albert Dürer; the distinctive chiaro-oscuro workers, amongst whom I would exemplify Rembrandt; the purely tone artists such as Turner, the grotesque in Hogarth and Cruikshan

d lines; the date when bold effects with Indian ink and Chinese white were introduced, and engravers were permitted to use their own lines, and so became liberated from the trammels, and could first lay c

, and did not trouble himself to think much, so long as he got his lines out clean. In the second stage, when he had wash drawings on the block, there was seldom any appeal from the artist; he had, it is true, the option of ligh

HER JEGHER,

inal sketch, and has it all along beside him to work from as a copy as well as to confute him if he is a bungler, which is a right and proper state of things; for now the indifferent artist ca

t as the most perfect master of chiaro-oscuro that the world has produced. At the present day we cannot hope to s

y, as the numerous book-plates throughout Europe can show. The school of Dürer gave the illustrator

reat realist, for all his studies were drawn uncompromisingly from the object itself. Before his advent the illustrators, like the novelists, were content to interest t

iration in illustrative art, we must return to our own shores once again for its revival, to Hogarth, Bewick, and Turner, with Constable (as a painter), for the apostles of that realism, suggestiveness

ick the realistic draughtsmen; Hogarth the satirists of the pencil. We may be a heavy nation and apt to take a joke sadly, yet

mention, in landscape art, Turner as the first; in caricature, Cruikshank; and in general force of black and w

without getting one touch of the genius which made him great-those bald sunlight effects which somehow remind us after a grotesque and wearisome fashion of the master whom they have vainly attempted to follow. How often have we taken up a volume of steel engraving

d-white work; but that he should close his eyes to the glaring faults of Turner, or rather, that he should call these faults virtues, is simply reducing the weight of his critical influence until it is not

no matter how eloquently he may discourse, would be able to convince a gardener that these are the correct sort of trees for these landscapes, or that the pictures would not have been improved by properly-drawn trees in place o

to a landsman's eye. Stanfield was a much more correct painter of ships, in spite of all that Mr. Ruskin may have written to the contrary, as any sailor could tell him; and, therefore, I contend that the drawing

ach, and may be pecked at by a very immature and even budding professor of that exact science

ply atrocious, and would not have been tolerated from an inferior artist. In his illustrative work he is seen at h

y of detail and complete unity of the many parts in one harmonious whole: the colour with which his black-and-whites are invested is so thorough that any artist

eagues above any other landscapist, before or after him, and might well excuse any other faults in detail;

en lacked before. Turner is the father of the suggestive and impressionist schools, and perhaps one of the ablest of his modern disciples is Alfred Parsons, an artist who has had the genius to pick out the best of his master without taking any of his faults; he has imbibed the poetry and discarded the extravagance, and never in his most dreamy effect does he lose

nature which is one of the most prominent characteristics of the nineteenth century, an exactitude for which we as artists are indebted to the revelations of photography perhaps more than to any advance in our own pers

g when flying, the true shape of each wave in a storm, also the swing of drapery in a high wind, and how men and women really appear when

a piece of work marked by all the characteristics of the modern Flemish or French schools, or I may point to the work of a figure-painter, and quote him as a conscious or unconscious follower of Turner or Constable. It

modern books exhibit. They are drawn as a rule with fidelity to nature, and engraved with sympathetic tenderness, perhaps in some cases too tenderly and over-finished for the p

his colossal figures, startling effects, rich shadows, and tender backgroun

m in a French fashion, as most of our modern English work is fashioned. Davidson Knowles displays this also in h

hen carefully mounted and clearly printed. The steel is always hard and metallic, whereas the wood gives all the tone and colour of the drawing; and now that we have the numerous process inventions to reproduce pen-and-ink drawings, and so give all the characteristics of the artist, it becomes only a waste of time and money to employ an engraver of any talent to produce any other kind of work except ton

works he has left behind him, and of which some of the finest specimens may be possessed for a few shillings by anyone so desirous, in the re-issue of his '

ith 'Punch's' proprietors to have all their pen-work engraved on wood, and thus keep to the old traditions; artistically speaking, I think they are wrong, and suffer accordingly, now that zincography is able to give the artist's work line for line, with less of his delicate work lost and none of his characteristics destro

kly paper, reproduced in modernised costume and surroundings. Parisian nattiness and smartness blend with the broad buffoonery with which Cruikshank delighted his audience of the past generation. We are not so simple in our tastes (more is the pity); therefore, instead of the horseplay of the clown and harlequin, we have Tootsie Sloper and her

esque fidelity of the latter. For the past twenty years I have watched the natural progress of the old humbug, Ally, and at the present day can read about his ev

the subtlety of his lines, and the expression which he was able to give with the least labour, that he stands unapproachable. At the present day those who admire the dexterity with which Mr. Harry Furniss can cram in

his coming, draughtsmen had worked on a white ground with a thin first wash, afterwards hatching up the details with a four or six H pencil; but Doré, in his frantic hurry to produce his exuberant fancies, discarded all t

igh-light on a jet-black block: here the figure of Death with his scythe sits astride a reinles

an hour, if not less. The figures are rushing along pell-mell amongst dark rolling clouds, and the artist has been in a similar hurry. It is extravagant

f his characters as he could cram,-and then set to fill out the shadows with as much detail as he could cram into them; for a sample of this, see his 'The Prince in the Banqueting Hall' (I quot

uld have done. He flung out his imaginings with a lavish hand, after the manner in which Rubens painted many of his pictures, and he could not wait to finish off; yet, take him all

wn from his picture, we can only stand and admire. This is a perfect poem, and lifts his pencil from the ruck of his other wreckage as much as the few exquisite

ne getting too finicky in his work a brief study of Doré will do the same good that a short course of scene-painting will do the landscape-painter; it will set him free, and give him a

notes or sketches, but trusted to his wonderful memory entirely. I have been told that he went through Spain when preparing for his 'Don Quixote' at express speed; that he painted his 'Chri

h. My pupil was working in oil at the time, and, in about five minutes after Doré had taken the brushes in his hand, he returned them (with the oil and turpentine running down the handles, and the canvas in a hopeless mess) with an

enough in that circumscribed space to demolish an empire, almost as many lions as the 'Daily Graphic' corresponde

shing touches with a fine brush, on to the block, choosing a light or dark tone for the groundwork, as the subject required; and the less we did in the way of finish, or rather pencil strokes, the better the engraver liked our work and the better he worked him

ting by photography on to the wood, and this invention of his

cut through his crust of Chinese white without danger of taking off large scales. He had also to be careful not to wet the block too much, as that would spo

py lights without troubling the engraver to cut through any crust, for the film on the block is infinitesimal in thickness. He works away at that film without any unnecessary vexation, with the double advantage of having the artist's sketch before him to study from as he goes along; the result of all this being that the public have the opportunity of comparing the artist's original work wit

be illustrated, and I wish now to answer tha

he ought to lay on to his new property, it would not be unnatural if even the honestest of

h artist, with a rigid sense of propriety, I must sink my own

ece and vignette, it ought to be illustrated thoroughly throughout. It ought

least; if possible, also a vignette for the title-page. When I publis

teful reader, when he takes up a book, likes to be introduced to it with a well-drawn, fin

or sentiment, something that he is in the habit of seeing on every hand, if he is artistic or romantic he will be indebted to that frontispiece; for, ta

ic artist, the interest of the reader is touched

g of the style of the best editions of Sir Walter Scott, or of the old world of art, such as Walter Crane can give us, or a delicious Birket Foster, a Turner, or a Bewick; something which will tempt us, providing the binding is good enough, to paste our book-plate inside the cover and

grateful for any distraction. If the book is worth reading he wants to get right on with it without any interruption; if, however, it fails to interest him, he will lay it down after a few

uthor may be en rapport, the illustrations may be few or many as the text requires. This may be left to the author and the

d down wherever the text appears, in pen-and-ink or etching, for I hold that only outline drawing can harmonise with type as highly ornamental as possible. No tone-drawing shou

and fly-leaves as to the other portions, whi

a lady at a ball, while the book with frontispiece and vignette will be fondled over as

OF BLACK