Of The Decorative Illustration Of Books Old And New Part 8

(MACMILLAN, 1877.)]

These drawings of Hokusai's (_see_ Nos. 10 and 11, Appendix), the most vigorous and prolific of the more modern and popular school, are striking enough and fine enough, in their own way, and the decorative sense is never absent; controlled, too, by the dark border-line, they do fill the page, which is not the case always with the flowers and birds. However, I believe these holes, blanks, and s.p.a.ces to let are only tolerable in a book because the drawing where it does occur is so skilful (except where the effect is intentionally open and light); and from tolerating we grow to like them, I suppose, and take them for signs of mastery and decorative skill. In their smaller applied ornamental designs, however, the j.a.panese often show themselves fully aware of a systematic plan or geometric base: and there is usually some hidden geometric relation of line in some of their apparently accidental compositions. Their books of crests and pattern plans show indeed a careful study of geometric shapes, and their controlling influence in designing.

[Sidenote: j.a.pANESE PRINTING.]

As regards the history and use of printing, the j.a.panese had it from the Chinese, who invented the art of printing from wooden blocks in the sixth century. "We have no record," says Professor Douglas,[5] "as to the date when metal type was first used in China, but we find Korean books printed as early as 1317 with movable clay or wooden type, and just a century later we have a record of a fount of metal type being cast to print an 'Epitome of the Eighteen Historical Records of China.'" Printing is supposed to have been adopted in j.a.pan "after the first invasion of the Korea by the armies of Hideyos.h.i.+, in the end of the sixteenth century, when large quant.i.ties of movable type books were brought back by one of his generals, which formed the model upon which the j.a.panese worked."[6]

[5] Guide to the Chinese and j.a.panese Ill.u.s.trated Books in the British Museum.

[6] Satow. "History of Printing in j.a.pan."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROBERT BATEMAN.

FROM "ART IN THE HOUSE."

(MACMILLAN, 1876.)]

I have mentioned the American development of wood-engraving. Its application to magazine ill.u.s.tration seems certainly to have developed or to have occurred with the appearance of very clever draughtsmen from the picturesque and literal point of view.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROBERT BATEMAN.

FROM "ART IN THE HOUSE."

(MACMILLAN, 1876.)]

[Sidenote: JOSEPH PENNELL.]

The admirable and delicate architectural and landscape drawings of Mr.

Joseph Pennell, for instance, are well known, and, as purely ill.u.s.trative work, fresh, crisp in drawing, and original in treatment, giving essential points of topography and local characteristics (with a happy if often quaint and unexpected selection of point of view, and pictorial limits), it would be difficult to find their match, but very small consideration or consciousness is shown for the page. If he will pardon my saying so, in some instances the ill.u.s.trations are, or used to be, often daringly driven through the text, scattering it right and left, like the effect of a coach and four upon a flock of sheep. In some of his more recent work, notably in his bolder drawings such as those in the "Daily Chronicle," he appears to have considered the type relation much more, and shows, especially in some of his skies, a feeling for a radiating arrangement of line.

[Sidenote: AMERICAN DRAUGHTSMEN.]

Our American cousins have taught us another mode of treatment in magazine pages. It is what I have elsewhere described as the "card-basket style."

A number of naturalistic sketches are thrown accidentally together, the upper ones hiding the under ones partly, and to give variety the corner is occasionally turned down. There has been a great run on this idea of late years, but I fancy it is a card trick about "played out."

However opinions may vary, I think there cannot be a doubt that in Elihu Vedder we have an instance of an American artist of great imaginative powers, and undoubtedly a designer of originality and force. This is sufficiently proved from his large work--the ill.u.s.trations to the "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam." Although the designs have no Persian character about them which one would have thought the poem and its imagery would naturally have suggested, yet they are a fine series, and show much decorative sense and dramatic power, and are quite modern in feeling. His designs for the cover of "The Century Magazine" show taste and decorative feeling in the combination of figures with lettering.

Mr. Edwin Abbey is another able artist, who has shown considerable care for his ill.u.s.trated page, in some cases supplying his own lettering; though he has been growing more pictorial of late: Mr. Alfred Parsons also, though he too often seems more drawn to the picture than the decoration. Mr. Heywood Sumner shows a charming decorative sense and imaginative feeling, as well as humour. On the purely ornamental side, the accomplished decorations of Mr. Lewis Day exhibit both ornamental range and resource, which, though in general devoted to other objects, are conspicuous enough in certain admirable book and magazine covers he has designed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HEYWOOD SUMNER.

FROM "STORIES FOR CHILDREN," BY FRANCES M. PEARD. (ALLEN, 1896.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES KEENE.

ILl.u.s.tRATION TO "THE GOOD FIGHT." ("ONCE A WEEK," 1859.)

(_By permission of Messrs. Bradbury, Agnew and Co._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HEYWOOD SUMNER.

FROM "STORIES FOR CHILDREN," BY F. M. PEARD. (ALLEN, 1896.)]

[Sidenote: THE "ENGLISH ILl.u.s.tRATED MAGAZINE."]

"The English Ill.u.s.trated Magazine," under Mr. Comyns Carr's editors.h.i.+p, by its use of both old and modern headings, initials and ornaments, did something towards encouraging the taste for decorative design in books.

Among the artists who designed pages therein should be named Henry Ryland and Louis Davis, both showing graceful ornamental feeling, the children of the latter artist being very charming.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOUIS DAVIS.

FROM THE "ENGLISH ILl.u.s.tRATED MAGAZINE" (1892).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HENRY RYLAND.

FROM THE "ENGLISH ILl.u.s.tRATED MAGAZINE" (1894).]

But it would need much more s.p.a.ce to attempt to do justice to the ability of my contemporaries, especially in the purely ill.u.s.trative division, than I am able to give.

[Sidenote: "ONCE A WEEK."]

The able artists of "Punch," however, from John Leech to Linley Sambourne, have done much to keep alive a vigorous style of drawing in line, which, in the case of Mr. Sambourne, is united with great invention, graphic force, and designing power. In speaking of "Punch,"

one ought not to forget either the important part played by "Once a Week"

in introducing many first-rate artists in line. In its early days we had Charles Keene ill.u.s.trating Charles Reade's "Good Fight," with much feeling for the decorative effect of the old German woodcut. Such admirable artists as M. J. Lawless and Frederick Sandys--the latter especially distinguished for his splendid line drawings in "Once a Week"

and "The Cornhill;" one of his finest is here given, "The Old Chartist,"

which accompanied a poem by Mr. George Meredith. Indeed, it is impossible to speak too highly of Mr. Sandys' draughtsmans.h.i.+p and power of expression by means of line; he is one of our modern English masters who has never, I think, had justice done to him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: F. SANDYS.

"THE OLD CHARTIST." ("ONCE A WEEK," 1861.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: M. J. LAWLESS.

"DEAD LOVE." ("ONCE A WEEK," 1862.)]

I can only just briefly allude to certain powerful and original modern designers of Germany, where indeed, the old vigorous traditions of woodcut and ill.u.s.trative drawing seem to have been kept more unbroken than elsewhere.

On the purely character-drawing, pictorial and ill.u.s.trative side, there is of course Menzel, thoroughly modern, realistic, and dramatic. I am thinking more perhaps of such men as Alfred Rethel, whose designs of "Death the Friend" and "Death the Enemy," two large woodcuts, are well known. I remember also a very striking series of designs of his, a kind of modern "Dance of Death," which appeared about 1848, I think. Schwind is another whose designs to folk tales are thoroughly German in spirit and imagination, and style of drawing. Oscar Pletsch, too, is remarkable for his feeling for village life and children, and many of his ill.u.s.trations have been reproduced in this country. More recent evidence, and more directly in the decorative direction, of the vigour and ornamental skill of German designers, is to be found in those picturesque calendars, designed by Otto Hupp, which come from Munich, and show something very like the old feeling of Burgmair, especially in the treatment of the heraldry.

I have ventured to give a page or two here from my own books, "Grimm,"

"The Sirens Three," and others, which serve at least to show two very different kinds of page treatment. In the "Grimm" the picture is inclosed in formal and rectangular lines, with medallions of flowers at the four corners, the t.i.tle and text being written on scrolls above and below. In "The Sirens Three" a much freer and more purely ornamental treatment is adopted, and a bolder and more open line. A third, the frontispiece of "The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde," by Miss de Morgan, is more of a simple pictorial treatment, though strictly decorative in its scheme of line and ma.s.s.

[Sidenote: THE INFLUENCE OF PHOTOGRAPHY.]

The facile methods of photographic-automatic reproduction certainly give an opportunity to the designer to write out his own text in the character that pleases him, and that accords with his design, and so make his page a consistent whole from a decorative point of view, and I venture to think when this is done a unity of effect is gained for the page not possible in any other way.

Indeed, the photograph, with all its allied discoveries and its application to the service of the printing press, may be said to be as important a discovery in its effects on art and books as was the discovery of printing itself. It has already largely transformed the system of the production of ill.u.s.trations and designs for books, magazines, and newspapers, and has certainly been the means of securing to the artist the advantage of possession of his original, while its fidelity, in the best processes, is, of course, very valuable.

Its influence, however, on artistic style and treatment has been, to my mind, of more doubtful advantage. The effect on painting is palpable enough, but so far as painting becomes photographic, the advantage is on the side of the photograph. It has led in ill.u.s.trative work to the method of painting in black and white, which has taken the place very much of the use of line, and through this, and by reason of its having fostered and encouraged a different way of regarding nature--from the point of view of accidental aspect, light and shade, and tone--it has confused and deteriorated, I think, the faculty of inventive design, and the sense of ornament and line; having concentrated artistic interest on the literal realization of certain aspects of superficial facts, and instantaneous impressions instead of ideas, and the abstract treatment of form and line.