Althoughwood engraving had fallen into almost utter neglect by the end of the seventeenth century, and continued in a languishing state for many years afterward, yet the art was never lost, as some persons have stated; for both in England and in France a regular succession of wood engravers can be traced from 1700 to the time of Thomas Bewick. The cuts which appear in books printed in Germany, Holland, and Italy during the same period, though of very inferior execution, sufficiently prove that the art continued to be practised in those countries.The first English book of this period which requires notice is an edition of Howel’s Medulla Historiæ Anglicanæ, octavo, printed at London in 1712.VII.1There are upwards of sixty wood-cuts in this work,447and the manner in which they are executed sufficiently indicates that the engraver must have either been self-taught or the pupil of a master who did not understand the art. The blocks have, for the most part, been engraved in the manner of copper-plates; most of the lines, which a regular wood engraver would have left in relief, are cut inintaglio, and hence in the impression they appear white where they ought to be black. The bookseller, in an address to the reader, thus proceeds to show the advantages of those cuts, and to answer any objection that might be urged against them on account of their being engraved on wood. “The cuts added in this edition are intended more for use than show. The utility consists in these two particulars. 1. To make the better impression on the memory. 2. To show more readily when the notable passages in our history were transacted; which, without the knowledge of the names of the persons, are not to be found out, by even the best indexes. As for example: In what reign was it that a rebellious rout, headed by a vile fellow, made great ravage, and appearing in the King’s presence with insolence, their captain was stabbed upon the spot by the Lord-Mayor? Here, without knowing the names of some of the parties, which a world of people are ignorant of, the story is not to be found by an index; but by the help of the cut, which catches the eye, is soon discovered. We all have heard of the piety of one of our queens who sucked the poison out of her husband’s wound, but very few remember which of them it was, which the cut presently shows. The same is to be said of all the rest, since we have chosen only such things as areNOTABILIAin the history to describe in our sculptures.—And if it be objected that the graving is in wood, and not in copper, which would be more beautiful; we answer, that such would be much more expensive too. And we were willing to save the buyer’s purse; especially since even the best engraving would not better serve the purposes above-said.”Though no mark is to be found on any of those cuts, I am inclined to think that they were executed by Edward Kirkall, whose name appears as the engraver of the copper-plate frontispiece to the book. The accounts which we have of Kirkall are extremely unsatisfactory. Strutt says that he was born at Sheffield in 1695; and that, visiting London in search of improvement, he was for some time employed in graving arms, stamps, and ornaments for books. It is, however, likely that he was born previous to 1695; for the frontispiece to Howel’s448Medulla is dated 1712, when, if Strutt be correct, Kirkall would be only seventeen. That he engraved on wood, as well as on copper, is unquestionable; and I am inclined to think that he either occasionally engraved small ornaments and head-pieces on type-metal for the use of printers, or that casts in this kind of metal were taken from some of his small cuts.VII.2The head-pieces and ornaments in Maittaire’s Latin Classics, duodecimo, published by Tonson and Watts, 1713, were probably engraved on wood by Kirkall, as his initials, E. K., are to be found on one of the tail-pieces. Papillon speaks rather favourably of those small cuts, though he objects to the uniformity of the tint and the want of precision in the more delicate parts of the figures, such as the faces and hands. He notices the tail-piece with the mark E. K. as one of the best executed; and he suspects that these letters were intended for the name of an English painter—calledEkwits, to the best of his recollection,—who “taught the arts of painting and of engraving on wood to J. B. Jackson, so well known to the printers of Paris about 1730 from his having supplied them with so large a stock of indifferent cuts.”VII.3The cuts in Croxall’s edition of Æsop’s Fables, first published by J. and R. Tonson and J. Watts, in 1722, were, in all probability, executed by the same person who engraved the head-pieces and other ornaments in Maittaire’s Latin Classics, printed for the same publishers about nine years before; and there is reason to believe that this person, as has been previously observed, was E. Kirkall. Bewick, in the introduction prefixed to his “Fables of Æsop and others,” first printed in 1818, says that the cuts in Croxall’s edition were “on metal, in the manner of wood.” He, however, gives no reason for this opinion, and I very much question its correctness. After a careful inspection I have not been able to discover any peculiar mark which should induce me to suppose that they had been engraved on metal; and without some such mark indicating that the engraved surface had been fastened to the block to raise it to the height of the type, I consider it impossible for any person to decide merely from the appearance of the impressions that those cuts were printed from a metallic surface. The difference, in point of impression, between a wood-cut and an engraving on type-metal in the same manner, or a cast in type-metal from a wood-cut, is not to be distinguished. A wood engraver of the present day, when casts449from wood-cuts are so frequently used instead of the original engraved block, decides that a certain impression has been from a cast, not in consequence of any peculiarity in its appearance denoting that it is printed from a metallic surface, but from certain marks—little flaws in the lines and minute “picks”—which he knows are characteristic of a “cast.” When a cast, however, has been well taken, and afterwards carefully cleared out with the graver, it is frequently impossible to decide that the impression has been taken from it, unless the examiner have also before him an impression from the original block with which it may be compared; and even then, a person not very well acquainted with the practice of wood engraving and the method of taking casts from engraved wood-blocks, will be extremely liable to decide erroneously.Though it is by no means improbable that a person like Kirkall, who had been accustomed to engrave on copper, might attempt to engrave on type-metal in the same manner as on wood, and that he might thus execute a few small head-pieces and flowered ornaments, yet I consider it very unlikely that he shouldcontinue to prefer metalfor the purpose of relief engraving after he had made a few experiments. The advantages of wood over type-metal are indeed so great, both as regards clearness of line and facility of execution, that it seems incredible that any person who had tried both materials should hesitate to give the preference to wood. If, however, the cuts in Croxall’s Æsop were really engraved on metal in the manner of wood, they are, as a series, the most extraordinary specimens of relief engraving for the purpose of printing, that have ever been executed. When Bewick stated that those cuts were engraved on metal, I am inclined to think that he founded his opinion rather on popular report than on close and impartial examination of the cuts themselves; and it is further to be observed that Thomas Bewick, with all his merits as a wood engraver, was not without his weaknesses as a man; he was not unwilling that people should believe that the art of wood engraving was lost in this country, and that the honour of its re-discovery, as well as of its subsequent advancement, was due to him. Though he was no doubt sincere in the opinion which he gave, yet those who know him are well aware that he would not have felt any pleasure in calling the attention of his readers to a series of wood-cuts executed in England upwards of thirty years before he was born, and which are not much inferior—except as regards the animals—to the cuts of fables engraved by himself and his brother previous to 1780.VII.4The cuts in Croxall’s Æsop not only450display great improvement in the engraver, supposing him to be the same person that executed the head-pieces and ornaments in Maittaire’s Latin Classics printed in 1713, but are very much superior to any cuts contained in works of the same kind printed in France between 1700 and 1760.VII.5see text and captionFROM A COPPER-PLATE BY S. LE CLERC.see text and captionFROM A WOOD-CUT IN CROXALL’S ÆSOP.Many of the subjects in Croxall are merely reversed copies of engravings on copper by S. Le Clerc, illustrative of a French edition451of Æsop’s Fables published about 1694. The first of the preceding cuts is a fac-simile of one of Le Clerc’s engravings; and the second is a copy of the same subject as it appears in Croxall. The fable to which they both relate is the Fox and the Goat.see textThe above cut is by no means one of the best in Croxall: it has not been selected as a specimen of the manner in which those cuts are executed, but as an instance of the closeness with which the English wood-cuts have been copied from the French copper-plates. In several of the cuts in Bewick’s Fables of Æsop and others, the arrangement and composition appear to have been suggested by those in Croxall; but in every instance of this kind the modern artist has made the subject his own by the superior manner in which it is treated: he restores to the animals their proper forms, represents themactingtheir parts as described in the fable, and frequently introduces an incident or sketch of landscape which gives to the whole subject a natural character. The following copy of the Fox and Goat, in the Fables of Æsop and others, 1818-1823, will serve to show how little the modern artist has borrowed in such instances from the cuts in Croxall, and how much has been supplied by himself.Between 1722 and 1724, Kirkall published by subscription twelve chiaro-scuros engraved by himself, chiefly after designs by old Italian masters. In those chiaro-scuros the outlines and the darker parts of the figures are printed from copper-plates, and the sepia-coloured tints afterwards impressed from wood-blocks; though they possess considerable merit, they are deficient in spirit, and will not bear a comparison with the chiaro-scuros executed by Ugo da Carpi and other early452Italian wood engravers. Most of them are too smooth, and want the bold outline and vigorous character which distinguish the old chiaro-scuros: what Kirkall gained in delicacy and precision by the introduction of mezzotint, he lost through the inefficient engraving of the wood-blocks. One of the largest of those chiaro-scuros is a copy of one of Ugo da Carpi’s—Æneas carrying his father on his shoulders—after a design by Raffaele. In Walpole’s Catalogue of Engravers, a notice of Kirkall’s “new method of printing, composed of etching, mezzotinto, and wooden stamps,” concludes with the following passage: “He performed several prints in this manner, and did great justice to the drawing and expression of the masters he imitated. This invention, for one may call it so, had much success, much applause, no imitators.—I suppose it is too laborious and too tedious. In an opulent country where there is great facility of getting money, it is seldom got by merit. Our artists are in too much hurry to gain it, or deserve it.”About 1724 Kirkall published seventeen views of shipping, from designs by W. Vandevelde, which he also called “prints in chiaro-scuro.” They have, however, no just pretensions to the name as it is usually understood when applied to prints, for they are merely tinted engravings worked off in a greenish-blue ink. These so-called chiaro-scuros are decided failures.Kirkall engraved, on copper, the plates in Rowe’s translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia, folio, published by Tonson, 1718; the plates for an edition of Inigo Jones’s Stonehenge, 1725; and a frontispiece to the works of Mrs. Eliza Haywood, which is thus alluded to in the Dunciad:“See in the circle next Eliza placed,Two babes of love close clinging to her waist;Fair as before her works she stands confest,In flowers and pearls by bounteous Kirkall drest.”A considerable number of rude and tasteless ornaments and head-pieces, with the mark F. H., engraved on wood, are to be found in English books printed between 1720 and 1740. Several of them have been cast in type-metal,VII.6as is evident from the marks of the pins, in the impressions, by which they have been fastened to the blocks; the same head-piece or ornament is also frequently found in books printed in the same year by different printers. Some of the best headings and tail-pieces of this period occur in a volume of “Miscellaneous Poems, original and translated, by several hands. Published453by Mr. Concanen,” London, printed for J. Peele, octavo, 1724. The subjects are, Apollo with a lyre; Minerva with a spear and shield; two men sifting corn; Hercules destroying the hydra; and a man with a large lantern. They are much superior to any cuts of the same kind with the mark F. H.; and from the manner in which they are executed, I am inclined to think that they are the work of the person who engraved the cuts in Croxall’s Æsop. The following is a fac-simile of one of the best of the cuts that I have ever seen with the mark F. H. It occurs as a tail-piece at the end of the preface to “Strephon’s Revenge: A Satire on the Oxford Toasts,” octavo, London, 1724.VII.7see textJohn Baptist Jackson, an English wood engraver, was, according to Papillon, a pupil of the person who engraved the small head-pieces and ornaments in Maittaire’s Latin Classics, published by Tonson and Watts in 1713; and as the cuts in Croxall’s Æsop were probably engraved by the same person, as has been previously observed, it is not unlikely that Jackson, as his apprentice, might have some share in their execution. Though these cuts were much superior to any that had appeared in England for about a hundred years previously, wood engraving seems to have received but little encouragement. Probably from want of employment in his own country, Jackson proceeded to Paris, where he remained several years, chiefly employed in engraving head-pieces and ornaments for the booksellers. Papillon, who seems to have borne no good-will towards Jackson, thus speaks of him in the first volume of his “Traité de la Gravure en Bois.”454“J. Jackson, an Englishman, who resided several years in Paris, might have perfected himself in wood engraving, which he had learnt of an English painter, as I have previously mentioned, if he had been willing to follow the advice which it was in my power to give him. Having called on me, as soon as he arrived in Paris, to ask for work, I for several months gave him a few things to execute in order to afford him the means of subsistence. He, however, repaid me with ingratitude; he made a duplicate of a flowered ornament of my drawing, which he offered, before delivering to me the block, to the person for whom it was to be engraved. From the reproaches that I received, on the matter being discovered, I naturally declined to employ him any longer. He then went the round of the printing-offices in Paris, and was obliged to engrave his cuts without order, and to offer them for almost nothing; and many of the printers, profiting by his distress, supplied themselves amply with his cuts. He had acquired a certain insipid taste which was not above the little mosaics on snuff-boxes; and with ornaments of this kind, after the manner of several other inferior engravers, he surcharged his works. His mosaics, however delicately engraved, are always deficient in effect, and display the engraver’s patience rather than his talent; for the other parts of the cut, consisting of delicate lines without tints or a gradation of light and shade, want that force which is necessary to render the whole striking. Such wood engravings, however deficient in this respect, are yet admired by printers of vulgar taste, who foolishly pretend that they most resemble copper-plates, and that they print better than cuts of a picturesque character, and containing a variety of tints.“Jackson, being obliged, through destitution, to leave Paris, where he could get nothing more to do, travelled in France; and afterwards, being disgusted with his profession, he accompanied a painter to Rome, from whence he went to Venice, where, as I am informed, he married, and subsequently returned to England, his native country.”VII.8Though Papillon speaks disparagingly of Jackson, the latter was at least as good an engraver as himself. Jackson appears to have visited Paris not later than 1726, for Papillon mentions a vignette and a large letter engraved by him in that year for a Latin and French dictionary, printed in 1727 by the brothers Barbou; and it is likely that he remained there till about 1731. In an Italian translation of the Lives of the Twelve Cæsars, printed there in quarto 1738, there is a large ornamental title-page of his engraving; and in the same year he engraved a chiaro-scuro of Christ taken down from the cross, from a455painting by Rembrandt,VII.9in the possession of Joseph Smith, Esq. the British consul at Venice, a well-known collector of pictures and other works of art. Between 1738 and 1742, when residing at Venice, he also engraved twenty-seven large chiaro-scuros,—chiefly after pictures by Titian, G. Bassano, Tintoret, and P. Veronese,—which were published in a large folio volume in the latter year. They are very unequal in point of merit; some of them appearing harsh and crude, and others flat and spiritless, when compared with similar productions of the old Italian wood engravers. One of the best is the Martyrdom of St. Peter Dominicanus, after Titian, with the date 1739; the manner in which the foliage of the trees is represented is particularly good. On his return to England he seems to have totally abandoned the practice of wood engraving in the ordinary manner for the purpose of illustrating or ornamenting books; for I have not been able to discover any English wood-cut of the period that either contains his mark, or seems, from its comparative excellence, to have been of his engraving. Finding no demand in this country for wood-cuts, he appears to have tried to render his knowledge of engraving in chiaro-scuro available for the purpose of printing paper-hangings. In an “Essay on the Invention of Engraving and Printing in Chiaro Oscuro,”VII.10published in his name in 1754, we learn that he was then engaged in a manufacture of this kind at Battersea. The account given in this essay of the origin and progress of chiaro-scuro engraving is frequently incorrect; and from several of the statements which it contains, it would seem that the writer was very imperfectly acquainted with the works of his predecessors and contemporaries in the same department of wood engraving. From the following passage, which is to be found in the fifth page, it is evident that the writer was either ignorant of what had been done in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and even in his own age, or that he was wishful to enhance the merit of Mr. Jackson’s process by concealing what had recently been done in the same manner by others. “After having said all this, it may seem highly improper to give to Mr. Jackson the merit of inventing this art; but let me be permitted to say, that an art recovered is less little than an art invented. The works of the former artists remain indeed; but the manner in which they were done is entirely lost: the inventing then the manner is really due to this latter undertaker, since no writings, or other remains, are to be found by456which the method of former artists can be discovered, or in what manner they executed their works; nor, in truth, has the Italian method since the beginning of the sixteenth century been attempted by any one except Mr. Jackson.” What is here called the “Italian method,” that is, the method of executing chiaro-scuros entirely on wood, was practised in France at the end of the seventeenth century: and Nicholas Le Sueur had engraved several cuts in this manner about 1730, the very time when Jackson was living in Paris. The principles of the art had also been applied in France to the execution of paper-hangings upwards of fifty years before Jackson attempted to establish the same kind of manufacture in England. Not a word is said of the chiaro-scuros of Kirkall,VII.11from whom it is likely that Jackson first acquired his knowledge of chiaro-scuro engraving: with the exception of the outlines and some other parts in these chiaro-scuros being executed in mezzotint, the printing of the rest from wood-blocks is precisely the same as in the Italian method.The Essay contains eight prints illustrative of Mr. Jackson’s method; four are chiaro-scuros, and four are printed in “proper colours,” as is expressed in the title, in imitation of drawings. They are very poorly executed, and are very much inferior to the chiaro-scuros engraved by Jackson when residing at Venice. The prints in “proper colours” are egregious failures. The following notices respecting Mr. Jackson are extracted from the Essay in question.“Certainly Mr. Jackson, the person of whom we speak, has not spent less time and pains, applied less assiduity, or travelled to fewer distant countries in search of perfecting his art, than other men; having passed twenty years in France and Italy to complete himself in drawing after the best masters in the best schools, and to see what antiquity had most worthy the attention of a student in his particular pursuits. After all this time spent in perfecting himself in his discoveries, like a true lover of his native country, he is returned with a design to communicate all the means which his endeavours can contribute to enrich the land where he drew his first breath, by adding to its commerce, and employing its inhabitants; and yet, like a citizen of it, he would willingly enjoy some little share of those advantages before he leaves this world, which he must leave behind him to his countrymen when he shall be no more.”“During his residence at Venice, where he made himself perfect457in the art which he professes, he finished many works well known to the nobility and gentry who travelled to that city whilst he lived in it.—Mr. Frederick, Mr. Lethuillier, and Mr. Smith, the English consul at Venice, encouraged Mr. Jackson to undertake to engrave in chiaro-oscuro, blocks after the most capital pictures of Titian, Tintoret, Giacomo Bassano, and Paul Veronese, which are to be found in Venice, and to this end procured him a subscription. In this work may be seen what engraving on wood will effectuate, and how truly the spirit and genius of every one of those celebrated masters are preserved in the prints.“During his executing this work he was honoured with the encouragement of the Right Honourable the Marquis of Hartington, Sir Roger Newdigate, Sir Bouchier Wrey, and other English gentlemen on their travels at Venice, who saw Mr. Jackson drawing on the blocks for the print after the famous picture of the Crucifixion painted by Tintoret in the albergo of St. Roche. Those prints may now be seen at his house at Battersea.—Not content with having brought his works in chiaro-oscuro to such perfection, he attempted to print landscapes in all their original colours; not only to give to the world all the outline light and shade, which is to be found in the paintings of the best masters, but in a great degree their very manner and taste of colouring. With this intent he published six landscapes,VII.12which are his first attempt in this nature, in imitation of painting inaquarilloor water-colours; which work was taken notice of by the Earl of Holderness, then ambassador extraordinary to the republic of Venice; and his excellency was pleased to permit the dedication of those prints to him, and to encourage this new attempt of printing pictures with a very particular and very favourable regard, and to express his approbation of the merit of the inventor.”John Michael Papillon, one of the best French wood engravers of his age, was born in 1698. His grandfather and his father, as has been previously observed, were both wood engravers. In 1706, when only eight years old, he secretly made his first essay in wood engraving; and when only nine, his father, who had become aware of his amusing himself in this manner, gave him a large block to engrave, which he appears to have executed to his father’s satisfaction, though he had previously received no instructions in the art.VII.13The block was intended458for printing paper-hangings, the manufacture of which was his father’s principal business. Though until the time of his father’s death, which happened in 1723, Papillon appears to have been chiefly employed in such works, and in hanging the papers which he had previously engraved, he yet executed several vignettes and ornaments for the booksellers, and sedulously endeavoured to improve himself in this higher department of his business.Shortly after the death of his father he married; and, having given up the business of engraving paper-hangings, he laboured so hard to perfect himself in the art of designing and engraving vignettes and ornaments for books, that his head became affected; and he sometimes displayed such absence of mind that his wife became alarmed, fancying that “he no longer loved her.” On his assuring her that his behaviour was the result of his anxiety to improve himself in drawing and engraving on wood, and to write something about the art, she encouraged him in his purpose, and aided him with her advice, for, as she was the daughter of a clever man, M. Chaveau, a sculptor, and had herself made many pretty drawings on fans, she had some knowledge of design. Papillon’s fits of absence, however, though they may have been proximately induced by close application and anxiety about his success in the line to which he intended to apply himself in future, appear to have originated in a tendency to insanity, which at a later period displayed itself in a more decided manner. In 1759, in consequence of a determination of blood to the head, as he says, through excessive joy at seeing his only daughter, who had lived from the age of four years with her uncle, combined with a recollection of his former sorrows, his mind became so much disordered that it was necessary to send him to an hospital, where, through repeated bleedings and other remedies, he seems to have speedily recovered. He mentions that in the same year, four other engravers were attacked by the same malady, and that only one of them regained his senses.VII.14Papillon’s endeavours to improve himself were not unsuccessful; the cuts which he engraved about 1724, though mostly small, possess459considerable merit; they are not only designed with much more feeling than the generality of those executed by other French engravers of the period, but are also much more effective, displaying a variety of tint and a contrast of light and shade which are not to be found in the works of his contemporaries. In 1726, in order to divert his anxiety and to bring his cuts into notice, he projectedLe petit Almanach de Paris, which subsequently was generally known as “Le Papillon.” The first that he published was for the year 1727; and the wood-cuts which it contained equally attracted the attention of the public and of connoisseurs. Monsieur Colombat, the editor of the Court Calendar, spoke highly of the cut for the mouth of January; the cross-hatchings, he said, were executed in the first style of wood engraving, and he kindly predicted to Papillon that he would one day excel in his art. From this time he seems to have no longer had any doubt of his own abilities, but, on the contrary, to have entertained a very high opinion of them. He appears to have considered wood engraving as the highest of all the graphic arts, and himself as the greatest of all its professors, either ancient or modern.From this, to him, memorable epoch,—the publication of “Le petit Almanach de Paris,” with cuts byPapillon,—he appears to have been seldom without employment, for in the Supplement to the “Traité de la Gravure en Bois,” he mentions that in 1768, the “Collection of the Works of the Papillons,” presented by him to the Royal Library, contained upwards offive thousandpieces of his own engraving. This “Recueil des Papillons,” which he seems to have considered as a family monument “ære perennius,” is perpetually referred to in the course of his work. It consisted of four large folio volumes containing specimens of wood engravings executed by the different members of the Papillon family for three generations—his grandfather, his father, his uncle, his brother, and himself.Papillon was employed not only by the booksellers of his own country, but also by those of Holland. A book, entitled “Historische School en Huis-Bybel,” printed at Amsterdam in 1743, contains two hundred and seventeen cuts, all of which appear to have been either engraved by Papillon himself, or under his superintendence. His name appears on several of them, and they are all engraved in the same style. From a passage in the dedication, it seems likely that they had appeared in a similar work printed at the same place a few years previously. They are generally executed in a coarser manner than those contained in Papillon’s own work, but the style of engraving and general effect are the same. The cut on the next page is a copy of the first, which is one of the best in the work. To the left is460Papillon’s name, engraved, as was customary with him, in very small letters, with the date, 1734.see textPapillon’s History of Wood Engraving, published in 1766, in two octavo volumes, with a Supplement,VII.15under the title of “Traité Historique et Pratique de la Gravure en Bois,” is said to have been projected, and partly written, upwards of thirty years before it was given to the public. Shortly after his being admitted a member of the Society of Arts, in 1733, he read, at one of the meetings, a paper on the history and practice of wood engraving; and in 1735 the Society signified their approbation that a work written by him on the subject should be printed. It appears that the first volume of such a work was actually printed between 1736 and 1738, but never published. He does not explain why the work was not proceeded with at that time; and it would be useless to speculate on the possible causes of the interruption. He mentions that a copy of this volume was preserved in the Royal Library; and he charges Fournier the younger, who between 1758 and 1761 published three tracts on the invention of wood engraving and printing, with having availed himself of a portion of the historical information contained in this volume. The public, however, according to his own statement, gained by the delay; as he grew older he gained more knowledge of the history of the art, and “invented” several important improvements in his practice, all of which are embodied in his later work. In 1758 he also discovered the memoranda which he had made at Monsieur De Greder’s, in 1719 or 1720, relative to the interesting twins,461Alexander Alberic Cunio and his sister Isabella, who, about 1284, between the fourteenth and sixteenth years of their age, executed a series of wood engravings illustrative of the history of Alexander the Great.VII.16However the reader may be delighted or amused by the romantic narrative of the Cunio, Papillon’s reputation as the historian of his art would most likely have stood alittlehigher had he never discovered those memoranda. They have very much the character of ill-contrived forgeries; and even supposing that he believed them, and printed them in good faith, his judgment must be sacrificed to save his honesty.The first volume of Papillon’s work contains the history of the art; it is divided into two parts, the first treating of wood engraving for the purpose of printing in the usual manner from a single block, and the second treating of chiaro-scuro. He does not trace the progress of the art by pointing out the improvements introduced at different periods; he enumerates all the principal cuts that he had seen, without reference to their execution as compared with those of an earlier date; and, from his desire to enhance the importance of his art, he claims almost every eminent painter whose name or mark is to be found on a cut, as a wood engraver. He is in this respect so extremely credulous as to assert that Mary de Medici, Queen of Henry IV. of France, had occasionally amused herself with engraving on wood; and in order to place the fact beyond doubt he refers to a cut representing the bust of a female, with the following inscription: “Maria Medici. F. m.d.lxxxvii.” “The engraving,” he observes, with his usualbonhomie, “is rather better than what might be reasonably expected from a person of such quality; it contains many cross-hatchings, somewhat unequal indeed, and occasionally imperfect, but, notwithstanding, sufficiently well engraved to show that she had executed several wood-cuts before she had attempted this. I know more than one wood engraver—or at least calling himself such—who is incapable of doing the like.” In 1587, the date of this cut, Mary de Medici was only fourteen years old; and since its execution, according to Papillon, shows that she was then no novice in the art, she must have acquired her practical knowledge of wood engraving at rather an early age,—at least for a princess. Papillon never seems to have considered that F is the first letter of “Filia” as well as of “Fecit,” nor to have suspected that the cut was simply a portrait of Mary de Medici, and not a specimen of her engraving.From the following passage in the preface, he seems to have been462aware that his including the names of many eminent painters in his list of wood engravers would be objected to. “Some persons, who entertain a preconceived opinion that many painters whom I mention have not engraved on wood, may perhaps dispute the works which I ascribe to them. Of such persons I have to request that they will not condemn me before they have acquainted themselves with my researches and examined my proofs, and that they will judge of them without prejudice or partiality.” The “researches” to which he alludes, appear to have consisted in searching out the names and marks of eminent painters in old wood-cuts, and his “proofs” are of the same kind as that which he alleges in support of his assertion that Mary de Medici had engraved on wood,—a fact which, as he remarks, “was unknown to Rubens.” The historical portion of Papillon’s work is indeed little more than a confused catalogue of all the wood-cuts which had come under his observation; it abounds in errors, and almost every page affords an instance of his credulity.In the second volume, which is occupied with details relative to the practice of the art, Papillon gives his instructions and enumerates his “inventions” in a style of complacent self-conceit. The most trifling remarks are accompanied by a reference to the “Recueil des Papillons;” and the most obvious means of effecting certain objects,—such means as had been regularly adopted by wood engravers for upwards of two hundred years previously, and such as in succeeding times have suggested themselves to persons who never received any instructions in the art,—are spoken of as important discoveries, and credit taken for them accordingly. One of his fancied discoveries is that of lowering the surface of a block towards the edges in order that the engraved lines in those parts may be less subject to the action of theplattinin printing, and consequently lighter in the impression. The Lyons Dance of Death, 1538, affords several instances of blocks lowered in this manner, not only towards the edges, but also in the middle of the cut, whenever it was necessary that certain delicately engraved lines should be lightly printed, and thus have the appearance of gradually diminishing till their extremities should scarcely be distinguishable from the paper on which they are impressed. Numerous instances of this practice are frequent in wood-cuts executed from 1540 to the decline of the art in the seventeenth century. Lowering was also practised by the engraver of the cuts in Croxall’s Æsop; by Thomas Bewick, who acquired a knowledge of wood engraving without a master; and by the self-taught artist who executed the cuts in Alexander’s Expedition down the Hydaspes, a poem by Dr. Thomas Beddoes, printed in 1792, but never published.VII.17As the463same practice has recently been claimed as an “invention,” it would seem that some wood engravers are either apt to ascribe much importance to little things, or are singularly ignorant of what has been done by their predecessors. Such an “invention,” though unquestionably useful, surely does not require any particular ingenuity for its discovery; such “discoveries” every man makes for himself as soon as he feels the want of that which the so-called invention will supply. The man who pares the cork of a quart bottle in order to make it fit a smaller one is, with equal justice, entitled to the name of an inventor, provided he was not aware of the thing having been done before: such an “adaptation of means to the end” cannot, however, be considered as an effort of genius deserving of public commendation.In Papillon’s time it was not customary with French engravers on wood to have the subject perfectly drawn on the block, with all the lines and hatchings pencilled in, and theeffectand the different tints indicated either in pencil or in Indian ink, as is the usual practice in the present day. The design was first drawn on paper; from this, by means of tracing paper, the engraver made an outline copy on the block; and, without pencilling in all the lines or washing in the tints, he proceeded to “translate” the original, to which he constantly referred in the progress of his work, in the same manner as a copper-plate engraver does to the drawing or painting before him. Papillon perceived the disadvantages which resulted from this mode of proceeding; and though he still continued to make his first drawing on paper, he copied it more carefully and distinctly on the block than was usual with his contemporaries. He was thus enabled to proceed with greater certainty in his engraving; what he had to effect was immediately before him, and it was no longer necessary to refer so frequently to the original. To the circumstance of the drawings being perfectly made on the block, Papillon ascribes in a great measure the excellence of the old wood engravings of the time of Durer and Holbein.Papillon, although always inclined to magnify little things connected with wood engraving, and to take great credit to himself for trifling “inventions,” was yet thoroughly acquainted with the practice of his art. The mode of thickening the lines in certain parts of a cut, after it has464been engraved, by scraping them down, was frequently practised by him, and he explains the manner of proceeding, and gives a cut of the tools required in the operation.VII.18As Papillon, previous to the publication of his book, had contributed several papers on the subject of wood engraving to the famed Encyclopédie, he avails himself of the second volume of the Traité to propose several additions and corrections to those articles. The following definition proposed to be inserted in the Encyclopédie, after the articleGratuit, will afford some idea of the manner in which he is accustomed to speak of his “inventions.” The term which he explains is “GrattureouGrattage,” literally, “Scraping,” the practice just alluded to. “This is, according to the new manner of engraving on wood, the operation of skilfully and carefully scraping down parts in an engraved block which are not sufficiently dark, in order to give them, as may be required, greater strength, and to render the shades more effective. This admirable plan, utterly unknown before, was accidentally discovered in 1731 by M. Papillon, by whom the art of wood engraving is advanced to a state tending to perfection, and approaching more and more towards the beauty of engraving on copper.” The tools used by Papillon to scrape down the lines of an engraved block, and thus render them thicker and, consequently, the impression darker, differ considerably in shape from those used for the same purpose by modern wood engravers in England. This tool now principally used is something like a copper-plate engraver’s burnisher, and occasionally a fine and sharp file is employed.In Papillon’s time the French wood engravers appear to have held the graver in the manner of a pen, and in forming a line to have cuttowards themas in forming a down-stroke in writing, and to have engraved on the longitudinal, and not the cross section of the wood. Modern English wood engravers, having the rounded handle of the graver supported against the hollow of the hand, and directing the blade by means of the fore-finger and thumb, cut the linefrom them; and always engrave on the cross section of the wood. Papillon mentions box, pear-tree, apple-tree, and the wood of the service-tree, as the best for the purposes of engraving: box was generally used for the smaller and finer cuts intended for the illustration or ornament of books; the larger cuts, in which delicacy was not required, were mostly engraved on pear-tree wood. Apple-tree wood was principally used by the wood engravers of Normandy. Next to box, Papillon prefers the wood of the service-tree. The box brought from Turkey, though of larger size, he considers inferior to that of Provence, Italy, or Spain.465Although Papillon’smodus operandidiffers considerably from that of English wood engravers of the present day, I am not aware of any supposed discovery in the modern practice of the art that was not known to him. The methods of lowering a block in certain parts before drawing the subject on it, and of thickening the lines, and thus getting morecolour, by scraping the surface of the cut when engraved, were, as has been observed, known to him; he occasionally introduced cross-hatchings in his cuts;VII.19and in one of his chapters he gives instructions how to insert aplugin a block, in order to replace a part which had either been spoiled in the course of engraving or subsequently damaged. One of the improvements which he suggested, but did not put in practice, was a plan for engraving the same subject on two, three, or four blocks, in order to obtain cross-hatchings and a variety of tints with less trouble than if the subject were entirely engraved on the same block. Such cuts were not to be printed as chiaro-scuros, but in the usual manner, with printer’s ink. It is worthy of observation that Bewick in the latter part of his life had formed a similar opinion of the advantages of engraving a subject on two or more blocks, and thus obtaining with comparative ease such cross-lines and varied tints as could only be executed with great difficulty on a single block. He, however, proceeded further than Papillon, for he began to engrave a large cut which he intended to finish in this manner; and he was so satisfied that the experiment would be successful, that when the pressman handed to him a proof of the first block, he exclaimed, “I wish I was but twenty years younger!”Papillon, in his account of the practice of the art, explains the manner of engraving and printing chiaro-scuros; and in illustration of the process he gives a cut executed in this style, together with separate impressions from each of the four blocks from which it is printed. There is also another cut of the same kind prefixed to the second part of the first volume, containing the history of engraving in chiaro-scuro. Scarcely anything connected with the practice of wood engraving appears to have escaped his notice. He mentions the effect of the breath in cold weather as rendering the block damp and the drawing less distinct; and he gives in one of his cuts the figure of a “mentonnière,”—that is to say, a piece of quilted linen, like the pad used by women to keep their bonnets cocked up,—which, being placed466before the mouth and nostrils, and kept in its place by strings tied behind the head, screened the block from the direct action of the engraver’s breath.He frequently complains of the careless manner in which wood-cuts were printed;VII.20but from the following passage we learn that the inferiority of the printed cuts when compared with the engraver’s proofs did not always proceed from the negligence of the printer. “Some wood engravers have the art of fabricating proofs of their cuts much more excellent and delicate than they fairly ought to be; and the following is the manner in which they contrive to obtain tolerably decent proofs from very indifferent engravings. They first take two or three impressions, and then, to obtain one to their liking, and with which they may deceive their employers, they only ink the block on those places which ought to be dark, leaving the distances and lighter parts without any ink, except what remained after taking the previous impressions. The proof which they now obtain appears extremely delicate in those parts which were not properly inked; but when they come to be printed in a page with type, the impression is quite different from the proof which the engraver delivers with the blocks; there is no variety of tint, all is hard, and the distance is sometimes darker than objects in the fore-ground. I run no great risk in saying that all the threeLe Sueurshave been accustomed to practise this deception.”VII.21All the cuts in Papillon’s work, except the portrait prefixed to the first volume,VII.22are his own engraving, and, for the most part, from his own designs. The most of the blocks were lent to the author by the different persons for whom he had engraved them long previous to the appearance of his work.VII.23They are introduced as ornaments at the beginning and end of the chapters; but though they may enable the reader to judge of Papillon’s abilities as a designer and engraver on wood, beyond this they do not in the least illustrate the progress of the art.467The execution of some of the best is extremely neat; and almost all of them display an effect—a contrast of black and white—which is not to be found in any other wood-cuts of the period. A few of the designs possess considerable merit, but in by far the greater number simplicity and truth are sacrificed to ornament and French taste. Whatever may be Papillon’s faults as a historian of the art, he deserves great credit for the diligence with which he pursued it under unfavourable circumstances, and for his endeavours to bring it into notice at a time when it was greatly neglected. His labours in this respect were, however, attended with no immediate fruit. He died in 1776, and his immediate successors do not appear to have profited by his instructions. The wood-cuts executed in France between 1776 and 1815 are generally much inferior to those of Papillon; and the recent progress which wood engraving has made in that country seems rather to have been influenced by English example than by his precepts.Nicholas Le Sueur—born 1691, died 1764,—was, next to Papillon, the best French wood engraver of his time. His chiaro-scuros, printed entirely from wood-blocks, are executed with great boldness and spirit, and partake more of the character of the earlier Italian chiaro-scuros than any other works of the same kind engraved by his contemporaries.VII.24He chiefly excelled in the execution of chiaro-scuros and large cuts; his small cuts are of very ordinary character; they are generally engraved in a hard and meagre style, want variety of tint, and are deficient in effect.see textP. S. Fournier, the younger, a letter-founder of considerable reputation,—born at Paris 1712, died 1768,—occasionally engraved on wood. Papillon says that he was self-taught; and that he certainly would have made greater progress in the art had he not devoted himself almost exclusively to the business of type-founding. Monsieur Fournier is, however, better known as a writer on the history of the art than as a practical wood engraver. Between 1758 and 1761 he published three tracts relating to the origin and progress of wood engraving, and the invention of typography.VII.25From these works it is evident that, though468he takes no small credit to himself for his practical knowledge of wood engraving and printing, he was very imperfectly acquainted with his subject. They abound in errors which it is impossible that any person possessing the knowledge he boasts of should commit, unless he had very superficially examined the books and cuts on which he pronounces an opinion. He seems indeed to have thought that, from the circumstance of his being a wood engraver and letter-founder, his decisions on all doubtful matters in the early history of wood engraving and printing should be received with implicit faith. Looking at the comparatively small size of his works, no writer, not even Papillon himself, has committed so many mistakes; and his decisions are generally most peremptory when utterly groundless or evidently wrong. He asserts that Faust and Scheffer’s Psalter, 1457-1459, is printed from moveable types of wood, and that the most of the earliest specimens of typography are printed from the same kind of types; and in the fulness of his knowledge he also declares that the text of the Theurdank is printed not from types, but from engraved wood-blocks. Like Papillon, he seems to have possessed a marvellous sagacity in ferreting out old wood engravers. He says that Andrea Mantegna engraved on wood a grand triumph in 1486; that Sebastian Brandt engraved in 1490 the wood-cuts in the Ship of Fools,VII.26after the designs of J. Locher; and that Parmegiano469executed several wood-cuts after designs by Raffaele. He decides positively that Albert Durer, Lucas Cranach, Titian, and Holbein were wood engravers, and, like Papillon, he includes Mary de Medici in the list. Papillon appears to have had good reason to complain that Fournier had availed himself of his volume printed in 1738. His taste appears to have been scarcely superior to his knowledge and judgment: he mentions a large and coarsely engraved cut of the head of Christ as one of the best specimens of Albert Durer’s engraving; and he says that Papillon’s cuts are for excellence of design and execution equal to those of the greatest masters!From a passage in one of Fournier’s tracts—Remarques Typographiques, 1761,—it is evident that wood engraving was then greatly neglected in Germany. It relates to the following observation of M. Bär’s, almoner of the Swedish chapel at Paris, on the length of time necessary to engrave a number of wooden types sufficient to print such a work as Faust and Scheffer’s Psalter: “M. Schœpflin declares that, by the general admission of all experienced persons, it would require upwards of six years to complete such a work in so perfect a manner.” The following is Fournier’s rejoinder: “To understand the value of this remark, it ought to be known that, so far from there being many experienced wood engravers to choose from, M. Schœpflin would most likely experience some difficulty in finding one to consult.” The wood-cuts which occur in German books printed between 1700 and 1760 are certainly of the most wretched kind; contemptible alike in design and execution. Some of the best which I have seen—and they are very bad—are to be found in a thin folio entitled “Orbis Literatus Germanico-Europaeus,” printed at Frankfort in 1737. They are cuts of the seals of all the principal colleges and academical foundations in Germany. The art in Italy about the same period was almost equally neglected. An Italian wood engraver, named Lucchesini, executed several cuts between 1760 and 1770. Most of the head-pieces and ornaments in the Popes’ Decretals, printed at Rome at this period, were engraved by him; and he also engraved the cuts in a Spanish book entitled “Letania Lauretana de la Virgen Santissima,” printed at Valencia in 1768. It is scarcely necessary to say that these cuts are of the humblest character.Though wood engraving did not make any progress in England from 1722 to the time of Thomas Bewick, yet the art was certainly never lost in this country; the old stock still continued to put forth a branch—non deficit alter—although not a golden one. Two wood-cuts tolerably well executed, and which show that the engraver was acquainted with the practice of “lowering,” occur in a thin quarto, London, printed for H. Payne, 1760. The book and the cuts are thus noticed in Southey’s Life470of Cowper, volumeI.page 50. The writer is speaking of the Nonsense Club, of which Cowper was a member.“At those meetings of
Althoughwood engraving had fallen into almost utter neglect by the end of the seventeenth century, and continued in a languishing state for many years afterward, yet the art was never lost, as some persons have stated; for both in England and in France a regular succession of wood engravers can be traced from 1700 to the time of Thomas Bewick. The cuts which appear in books printed in Germany, Holland, and Italy during the same period, though of very inferior execution, sufficiently prove that the art continued to be practised in those countries.
The first English book of this period which requires notice is an edition of Howel’s Medulla Historiæ Anglicanæ, octavo, printed at London in 1712.VII.1There are upwards of sixty wood-cuts in this work,447and the manner in which they are executed sufficiently indicates that the engraver must have either been self-taught or the pupil of a master who did not understand the art. The blocks have, for the most part, been engraved in the manner of copper-plates; most of the lines, which a regular wood engraver would have left in relief, are cut inintaglio, and hence in the impression they appear white where they ought to be black. The bookseller, in an address to the reader, thus proceeds to show the advantages of those cuts, and to answer any objection that might be urged against them on account of their being engraved on wood. “The cuts added in this edition are intended more for use than show. The utility consists in these two particulars. 1. To make the better impression on the memory. 2. To show more readily when the notable passages in our history were transacted; which, without the knowledge of the names of the persons, are not to be found out, by even the best indexes. As for example: In what reign was it that a rebellious rout, headed by a vile fellow, made great ravage, and appearing in the King’s presence with insolence, their captain was stabbed upon the spot by the Lord-Mayor? Here, without knowing the names of some of the parties, which a world of people are ignorant of, the story is not to be found by an index; but by the help of the cut, which catches the eye, is soon discovered. We all have heard of the piety of one of our queens who sucked the poison out of her husband’s wound, but very few remember which of them it was, which the cut presently shows. The same is to be said of all the rest, since we have chosen only such things as areNOTABILIAin the history to describe in our sculptures.—And if it be objected that the graving is in wood, and not in copper, which would be more beautiful; we answer, that such would be much more expensive too. And we were willing to save the buyer’s purse; especially since even the best engraving would not better serve the purposes above-said.”
Though no mark is to be found on any of those cuts, I am inclined to think that they were executed by Edward Kirkall, whose name appears as the engraver of the copper-plate frontispiece to the book. The accounts which we have of Kirkall are extremely unsatisfactory. Strutt says that he was born at Sheffield in 1695; and that, visiting London in search of improvement, he was for some time employed in graving arms, stamps, and ornaments for books. It is, however, likely that he was born previous to 1695; for the frontispiece to Howel’s448Medulla is dated 1712, when, if Strutt be correct, Kirkall would be only seventeen. That he engraved on wood, as well as on copper, is unquestionable; and I am inclined to think that he either occasionally engraved small ornaments and head-pieces on type-metal for the use of printers, or that casts in this kind of metal were taken from some of his small cuts.VII.2
The head-pieces and ornaments in Maittaire’s Latin Classics, duodecimo, published by Tonson and Watts, 1713, were probably engraved on wood by Kirkall, as his initials, E. K., are to be found on one of the tail-pieces. Papillon speaks rather favourably of those small cuts, though he objects to the uniformity of the tint and the want of precision in the more delicate parts of the figures, such as the faces and hands. He notices the tail-piece with the mark E. K. as one of the best executed; and he suspects that these letters were intended for the name of an English painter—calledEkwits, to the best of his recollection,—who “taught the arts of painting and of engraving on wood to J. B. Jackson, so well known to the printers of Paris about 1730 from his having supplied them with so large a stock of indifferent cuts.”VII.3
The cuts in Croxall’s edition of Æsop’s Fables, first published by J. and R. Tonson and J. Watts, in 1722, were, in all probability, executed by the same person who engraved the head-pieces and other ornaments in Maittaire’s Latin Classics, printed for the same publishers about nine years before; and there is reason to believe that this person, as has been previously observed, was E. Kirkall. Bewick, in the introduction prefixed to his “Fables of Æsop and others,” first printed in 1818, says that the cuts in Croxall’s edition were “on metal, in the manner of wood.” He, however, gives no reason for this opinion, and I very much question its correctness. After a careful inspection I have not been able to discover any peculiar mark which should induce me to suppose that they had been engraved on metal; and without some such mark indicating that the engraved surface had been fastened to the block to raise it to the height of the type, I consider it impossible for any person to decide merely from the appearance of the impressions that those cuts were printed from a metallic surface. The difference, in point of impression, between a wood-cut and an engraving on type-metal in the same manner, or a cast in type-metal from a wood-cut, is not to be distinguished. A wood engraver of the present day, when casts449from wood-cuts are so frequently used instead of the original engraved block, decides that a certain impression has been from a cast, not in consequence of any peculiarity in its appearance denoting that it is printed from a metallic surface, but from certain marks—little flaws in the lines and minute “picks”—which he knows are characteristic of a “cast.” When a cast, however, has been well taken, and afterwards carefully cleared out with the graver, it is frequently impossible to decide that the impression has been taken from it, unless the examiner have also before him an impression from the original block with which it may be compared; and even then, a person not very well acquainted with the practice of wood engraving and the method of taking casts from engraved wood-blocks, will be extremely liable to decide erroneously.
Though it is by no means improbable that a person like Kirkall, who had been accustomed to engrave on copper, might attempt to engrave on type-metal in the same manner as on wood, and that he might thus execute a few small head-pieces and flowered ornaments, yet I consider it very unlikely that he shouldcontinue to prefer metalfor the purpose of relief engraving after he had made a few experiments. The advantages of wood over type-metal are indeed so great, both as regards clearness of line and facility of execution, that it seems incredible that any person who had tried both materials should hesitate to give the preference to wood. If, however, the cuts in Croxall’s Æsop were really engraved on metal in the manner of wood, they are, as a series, the most extraordinary specimens of relief engraving for the purpose of printing, that have ever been executed. When Bewick stated that those cuts were engraved on metal, I am inclined to think that he founded his opinion rather on popular report than on close and impartial examination of the cuts themselves; and it is further to be observed that Thomas Bewick, with all his merits as a wood engraver, was not without his weaknesses as a man; he was not unwilling that people should believe that the art of wood engraving was lost in this country, and that the honour of its re-discovery, as well as of its subsequent advancement, was due to him. Though he was no doubt sincere in the opinion which he gave, yet those who know him are well aware that he would not have felt any pleasure in calling the attention of his readers to a series of wood-cuts executed in England upwards of thirty years before he was born, and which are not much inferior—except as regards the animals—to the cuts of fables engraved by himself and his brother previous to 1780.VII.4The cuts in Croxall’s Æsop not only450display great improvement in the engraver, supposing him to be the same person that executed the head-pieces and ornaments in Maittaire’s Latin Classics printed in 1713, but are very much superior to any cuts contained in works of the same kind printed in France between 1700 and 1760.VII.5
see text and captionFROM A COPPER-PLATE BY S. LE CLERC.see text and captionFROM A WOOD-CUT IN CROXALL’S ÆSOP.
see text and captionFROM A COPPER-PLATE BY S. LE CLERC.
see text and caption
FROM A COPPER-PLATE BY S. LE CLERC.
see text and captionFROM A WOOD-CUT IN CROXALL’S ÆSOP.
see text and caption
FROM A WOOD-CUT IN CROXALL’S ÆSOP.
Many of the subjects in Croxall are merely reversed copies of engravings on copper by S. Le Clerc, illustrative of a French edition451of Æsop’s Fables published about 1694. The first of the preceding cuts is a fac-simile of one of Le Clerc’s engravings; and the second is a copy of the same subject as it appears in Croxall. The fable to which they both relate is the Fox and the Goat.
see text
The above cut is by no means one of the best in Croxall: it has not been selected as a specimen of the manner in which those cuts are executed, but as an instance of the closeness with which the English wood-cuts have been copied from the French copper-plates. In several of the cuts in Bewick’s Fables of Æsop and others, the arrangement and composition appear to have been suggested by those in Croxall; but in every instance of this kind the modern artist has made the subject his own by the superior manner in which it is treated: he restores to the animals their proper forms, represents themactingtheir parts as described in the fable, and frequently introduces an incident or sketch of landscape which gives to the whole subject a natural character. The following copy of the Fox and Goat, in the Fables of Æsop and others, 1818-1823, will serve to show how little the modern artist has borrowed in such instances from the cuts in Croxall, and how much has been supplied by himself.
Between 1722 and 1724, Kirkall published by subscription twelve chiaro-scuros engraved by himself, chiefly after designs by old Italian masters. In those chiaro-scuros the outlines and the darker parts of the figures are printed from copper-plates, and the sepia-coloured tints afterwards impressed from wood-blocks; though they possess considerable merit, they are deficient in spirit, and will not bear a comparison with the chiaro-scuros executed by Ugo da Carpi and other early452Italian wood engravers. Most of them are too smooth, and want the bold outline and vigorous character which distinguish the old chiaro-scuros: what Kirkall gained in delicacy and precision by the introduction of mezzotint, he lost through the inefficient engraving of the wood-blocks. One of the largest of those chiaro-scuros is a copy of one of Ugo da Carpi’s—Æneas carrying his father on his shoulders—after a design by Raffaele. In Walpole’s Catalogue of Engravers, a notice of Kirkall’s “new method of printing, composed of etching, mezzotinto, and wooden stamps,” concludes with the following passage: “He performed several prints in this manner, and did great justice to the drawing and expression of the masters he imitated. This invention, for one may call it so, had much success, much applause, no imitators.—I suppose it is too laborious and too tedious. In an opulent country where there is great facility of getting money, it is seldom got by merit. Our artists are in too much hurry to gain it, or deserve it.”
About 1724 Kirkall published seventeen views of shipping, from designs by W. Vandevelde, which he also called “prints in chiaro-scuro.” They have, however, no just pretensions to the name as it is usually understood when applied to prints, for they are merely tinted engravings worked off in a greenish-blue ink. These so-called chiaro-scuros are decided failures.
Kirkall engraved, on copper, the plates in Rowe’s translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia, folio, published by Tonson, 1718; the plates for an edition of Inigo Jones’s Stonehenge, 1725; and a frontispiece to the works of Mrs. Eliza Haywood, which is thus alluded to in the Dunciad:
“See in the circle next Eliza placed,Two babes of love close clinging to her waist;Fair as before her works she stands confest,In flowers and pearls by bounteous Kirkall drest.”
“See in the circle next Eliza placed,
Two babes of love close clinging to her waist;
Fair as before her works she stands confest,
In flowers and pearls by bounteous Kirkall drest.”
A considerable number of rude and tasteless ornaments and head-pieces, with the mark F. H., engraved on wood, are to be found in English books printed between 1720 and 1740. Several of them have been cast in type-metal,VII.6as is evident from the marks of the pins, in the impressions, by which they have been fastened to the blocks; the same head-piece or ornament is also frequently found in books printed in the same year by different printers. Some of the best headings and tail-pieces of this period occur in a volume of “Miscellaneous Poems, original and translated, by several hands. Published453by Mr. Concanen,” London, printed for J. Peele, octavo, 1724. The subjects are, Apollo with a lyre; Minerva with a spear and shield; two men sifting corn; Hercules destroying the hydra; and a man with a large lantern. They are much superior to any cuts of the same kind with the mark F. H.; and from the manner in which they are executed, I am inclined to think that they are the work of the person who engraved the cuts in Croxall’s Æsop. The following is a fac-simile of one of the best of the cuts that I have ever seen with the mark F. H. It occurs as a tail-piece at the end of the preface to “Strephon’s Revenge: A Satire on the Oxford Toasts,” octavo, London, 1724.VII.7
see text
John Baptist Jackson, an English wood engraver, was, according to Papillon, a pupil of the person who engraved the small head-pieces and ornaments in Maittaire’s Latin Classics, published by Tonson and Watts in 1713; and as the cuts in Croxall’s Æsop were probably engraved by the same person, as has been previously observed, it is not unlikely that Jackson, as his apprentice, might have some share in their execution. Though these cuts were much superior to any that had appeared in England for about a hundred years previously, wood engraving seems to have received but little encouragement. Probably from want of employment in his own country, Jackson proceeded to Paris, where he remained several years, chiefly employed in engraving head-pieces and ornaments for the booksellers. Papillon, who seems to have borne no good-will towards Jackson, thus speaks of him in the first volume of his “Traité de la Gravure en Bois.”
“J. Jackson, an Englishman, who resided several years in Paris, might have perfected himself in wood engraving, which he had learnt of an English painter, as I have previously mentioned, if he had been willing to follow the advice which it was in my power to give him. Having called on me, as soon as he arrived in Paris, to ask for work, I for several months gave him a few things to execute in order to afford him the means of subsistence. He, however, repaid me with ingratitude; he made a duplicate of a flowered ornament of my drawing, which he offered, before delivering to me the block, to the person for whom it was to be engraved. From the reproaches that I received, on the matter being discovered, I naturally declined to employ him any longer. He then went the round of the printing-offices in Paris, and was obliged to engrave his cuts without order, and to offer them for almost nothing; and many of the printers, profiting by his distress, supplied themselves amply with his cuts. He had acquired a certain insipid taste which was not above the little mosaics on snuff-boxes; and with ornaments of this kind, after the manner of several other inferior engravers, he surcharged his works. His mosaics, however delicately engraved, are always deficient in effect, and display the engraver’s patience rather than his talent; for the other parts of the cut, consisting of delicate lines without tints or a gradation of light and shade, want that force which is necessary to render the whole striking. Such wood engravings, however deficient in this respect, are yet admired by printers of vulgar taste, who foolishly pretend that they most resemble copper-plates, and that they print better than cuts of a picturesque character, and containing a variety of tints.
“Jackson, being obliged, through destitution, to leave Paris, where he could get nothing more to do, travelled in France; and afterwards, being disgusted with his profession, he accompanied a painter to Rome, from whence he went to Venice, where, as I am informed, he married, and subsequently returned to England, his native country.”VII.8
Though Papillon speaks disparagingly of Jackson, the latter was at least as good an engraver as himself. Jackson appears to have visited Paris not later than 1726, for Papillon mentions a vignette and a large letter engraved by him in that year for a Latin and French dictionary, printed in 1727 by the brothers Barbou; and it is likely that he remained there till about 1731. In an Italian translation of the Lives of the Twelve Cæsars, printed there in quarto 1738, there is a large ornamental title-page of his engraving; and in the same year he engraved a chiaro-scuro of Christ taken down from the cross, from a455painting by Rembrandt,VII.9in the possession of Joseph Smith, Esq. the British consul at Venice, a well-known collector of pictures and other works of art. Between 1738 and 1742, when residing at Venice, he also engraved twenty-seven large chiaro-scuros,—chiefly after pictures by Titian, G. Bassano, Tintoret, and P. Veronese,—which were published in a large folio volume in the latter year. They are very unequal in point of merit; some of them appearing harsh and crude, and others flat and spiritless, when compared with similar productions of the old Italian wood engravers. One of the best is the Martyrdom of St. Peter Dominicanus, after Titian, with the date 1739; the manner in which the foliage of the trees is represented is particularly good. On his return to England he seems to have totally abandoned the practice of wood engraving in the ordinary manner for the purpose of illustrating or ornamenting books; for I have not been able to discover any English wood-cut of the period that either contains his mark, or seems, from its comparative excellence, to have been of his engraving. Finding no demand in this country for wood-cuts, he appears to have tried to render his knowledge of engraving in chiaro-scuro available for the purpose of printing paper-hangings. In an “Essay on the Invention of Engraving and Printing in Chiaro Oscuro,”VII.10published in his name in 1754, we learn that he was then engaged in a manufacture of this kind at Battersea. The account given in this essay of the origin and progress of chiaro-scuro engraving is frequently incorrect; and from several of the statements which it contains, it would seem that the writer was very imperfectly acquainted with the works of his predecessors and contemporaries in the same department of wood engraving. From the following passage, which is to be found in the fifth page, it is evident that the writer was either ignorant of what had been done in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and even in his own age, or that he was wishful to enhance the merit of Mr. Jackson’s process by concealing what had recently been done in the same manner by others. “After having said all this, it may seem highly improper to give to Mr. Jackson the merit of inventing this art; but let me be permitted to say, that an art recovered is less little than an art invented. The works of the former artists remain indeed; but the manner in which they were done is entirely lost: the inventing then the manner is really due to this latter undertaker, since no writings, or other remains, are to be found by456which the method of former artists can be discovered, or in what manner they executed their works; nor, in truth, has the Italian method since the beginning of the sixteenth century been attempted by any one except Mr. Jackson.” What is here called the “Italian method,” that is, the method of executing chiaro-scuros entirely on wood, was practised in France at the end of the seventeenth century: and Nicholas Le Sueur had engraved several cuts in this manner about 1730, the very time when Jackson was living in Paris. The principles of the art had also been applied in France to the execution of paper-hangings upwards of fifty years before Jackson attempted to establish the same kind of manufacture in England. Not a word is said of the chiaro-scuros of Kirkall,VII.11from whom it is likely that Jackson first acquired his knowledge of chiaro-scuro engraving: with the exception of the outlines and some other parts in these chiaro-scuros being executed in mezzotint, the printing of the rest from wood-blocks is precisely the same as in the Italian method.
The Essay contains eight prints illustrative of Mr. Jackson’s method; four are chiaro-scuros, and four are printed in “proper colours,” as is expressed in the title, in imitation of drawings. They are very poorly executed, and are very much inferior to the chiaro-scuros engraved by Jackson when residing at Venice. The prints in “proper colours” are egregious failures. The following notices respecting Mr. Jackson are extracted from the Essay in question.
“Certainly Mr. Jackson, the person of whom we speak, has not spent less time and pains, applied less assiduity, or travelled to fewer distant countries in search of perfecting his art, than other men; having passed twenty years in France and Italy to complete himself in drawing after the best masters in the best schools, and to see what antiquity had most worthy the attention of a student in his particular pursuits. After all this time spent in perfecting himself in his discoveries, like a true lover of his native country, he is returned with a design to communicate all the means which his endeavours can contribute to enrich the land where he drew his first breath, by adding to its commerce, and employing its inhabitants; and yet, like a citizen of it, he would willingly enjoy some little share of those advantages before he leaves this world, which he must leave behind him to his countrymen when he shall be no more.”
“During his residence at Venice, where he made himself perfect457in the art which he professes, he finished many works well known to the nobility and gentry who travelled to that city whilst he lived in it.—Mr. Frederick, Mr. Lethuillier, and Mr. Smith, the English consul at Venice, encouraged Mr. Jackson to undertake to engrave in chiaro-oscuro, blocks after the most capital pictures of Titian, Tintoret, Giacomo Bassano, and Paul Veronese, which are to be found in Venice, and to this end procured him a subscription. In this work may be seen what engraving on wood will effectuate, and how truly the spirit and genius of every one of those celebrated masters are preserved in the prints.
“During his executing this work he was honoured with the encouragement of the Right Honourable the Marquis of Hartington, Sir Roger Newdigate, Sir Bouchier Wrey, and other English gentlemen on their travels at Venice, who saw Mr. Jackson drawing on the blocks for the print after the famous picture of the Crucifixion painted by Tintoret in the albergo of St. Roche. Those prints may now be seen at his house at Battersea.—Not content with having brought his works in chiaro-oscuro to such perfection, he attempted to print landscapes in all their original colours; not only to give to the world all the outline light and shade, which is to be found in the paintings of the best masters, but in a great degree their very manner and taste of colouring. With this intent he published six landscapes,VII.12which are his first attempt in this nature, in imitation of painting inaquarilloor water-colours; which work was taken notice of by the Earl of Holderness, then ambassador extraordinary to the republic of Venice; and his excellency was pleased to permit the dedication of those prints to him, and to encourage this new attempt of printing pictures with a very particular and very favourable regard, and to express his approbation of the merit of the inventor.”
John Michael Papillon, one of the best French wood engravers of his age, was born in 1698. His grandfather and his father, as has been previously observed, were both wood engravers. In 1706, when only eight years old, he secretly made his first essay in wood engraving; and when only nine, his father, who had become aware of his amusing himself in this manner, gave him a large block to engrave, which he appears to have executed to his father’s satisfaction, though he had previously received no instructions in the art.VII.13The block was intended458for printing paper-hangings, the manufacture of which was his father’s principal business. Though until the time of his father’s death, which happened in 1723, Papillon appears to have been chiefly employed in such works, and in hanging the papers which he had previously engraved, he yet executed several vignettes and ornaments for the booksellers, and sedulously endeavoured to improve himself in this higher department of his business.
Shortly after the death of his father he married; and, having given up the business of engraving paper-hangings, he laboured so hard to perfect himself in the art of designing and engraving vignettes and ornaments for books, that his head became affected; and he sometimes displayed such absence of mind that his wife became alarmed, fancying that “he no longer loved her.” On his assuring her that his behaviour was the result of his anxiety to improve himself in drawing and engraving on wood, and to write something about the art, she encouraged him in his purpose, and aided him with her advice, for, as she was the daughter of a clever man, M. Chaveau, a sculptor, and had herself made many pretty drawings on fans, she had some knowledge of design. Papillon’s fits of absence, however, though they may have been proximately induced by close application and anxiety about his success in the line to which he intended to apply himself in future, appear to have originated in a tendency to insanity, which at a later period displayed itself in a more decided manner. In 1759, in consequence of a determination of blood to the head, as he says, through excessive joy at seeing his only daughter, who had lived from the age of four years with her uncle, combined with a recollection of his former sorrows, his mind became so much disordered that it was necessary to send him to an hospital, where, through repeated bleedings and other remedies, he seems to have speedily recovered. He mentions that in the same year, four other engravers were attacked by the same malady, and that only one of them regained his senses.VII.14
Papillon’s endeavours to improve himself were not unsuccessful; the cuts which he engraved about 1724, though mostly small, possess459considerable merit; they are not only designed with much more feeling than the generality of those executed by other French engravers of the period, but are also much more effective, displaying a variety of tint and a contrast of light and shade which are not to be found in the works of his contemporaries. In 1726, in order to divert his anxiety and to bring his cuts into notice, he projectedLe petit Almanach de Paris, which subsequently was generally known as “Le Papillon.” The first that he published was for the year 1727; and the wood-cuts which it contained equally attracted the attention of the public and of connoisseurs. Monsieur Colombat, the editor of the Court Calendar, spoke highly of the cut for the mouth of January; the cross-hatchings, he said, were executed in the first style of wood engraving, and he kindly predicted to Papillon that he would one day excel in his art. From this time he seems to have no longer had any doubt of his own abilities, but, on the contrary, to have entertained a very high opinion of them. He appears to have considered wood engraving as the highest of all the graphic arts, and himself as the greatest of all its professors, either ancient or modern.
From this, to him, memorable epoch,—the publication of “Le petit Almanach de Paris,” with cuts byPapillon,—he appears to have been seldom without employment, for in the Supplement to the “Traité de la Gravure en Bois,” he mentions that in 1768, the “Collection of the Works of the Papillons,” presented by him to the Royal Library, contained upwards offive thousandpieces of his own engraving. This “Recueil des Papillons,” which he seems to have considered as a family monument “ære perennius,” is perpetually referred to in the course of his work. It consisted of four large folio volumes containing specimens of wood engravings executed by the different members of the Papillon family for three generations—his grandfather, his father, his uncle, his brother, and himself.
Papillon was employed not only by the booksellers of his own country, but also by those of Holland. A book, entitled “Historische School en Huis-Bybel,” printed at Amsterdam in 1743, contains two hundred and seventeen cuts, all of which appear to have been either engraved by Papillon himself, or under his superintendence. His name appears on several of them, and they are all engraved in the same style. From a passage in the dedication, it seems likely that they had appeared in a similar work printed at the same place a few years previously. They are generally executed in a coarser manner than those contained in Papillon’s own work, but the style of engraving and general effect are the same. The cut on the next page is a copy of the first, which is one of the best in the work. To the left is460Papillon’s name, engraved, as was customary with him, in very small letters, with the date, 1734.
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Papillon’s History of Wood Engraving, published in 1766, in two octavo volumes, with a Supplement,VII.15under the title of “Traité Historique et Pratique de la Gravure en Bois,” is said to have been projected, and partly written, upwards of thirty years before it was given to the public. Shortly after his being admitted a member of the Society of Arts, in 1733, he read, at one of the meetings, a paper on the history and practice of wood engraving; and in 1735 the Society signified their approbation that a work written by him on the subject should be printed. It appears that the first volume of such a work was actually printed between 1736 and 1738, but never published. He does not explain why the work was not proceeded with at that time; and it would be useless to speculate on the possible causes of the interruption. He mentions that a copy of this volume was preserved in the Royal Library; and he charges Fournier the younger, who between 1758 and 1761 published three tracts on the invention of wood engraving and printing, with having availed himself of a portion of the historical information contained in this volume. The public, however, according to his own statement, gained by the delay; as he grew older he gained more knowledge of the history of the art, and “invented” several important improvements in his practice, all of which are embodied in his later work. In 1758 he also discovered the memoranda which he had made at Monsieur De Greder’s, in 1719 or 1720, relative to the interesting twins,461Alexander Alberic Cunio and his sister Isabella, who, about 1284, between the fourteenth and sixteenth years of their age, executed a series of wood engravings illustrative of the history of Alexander the Great.VII.16However the reader may be delighted or amused by the romantic narrative of the Cunio, Papillon’s reputation as the historian of his art would most likely have stood alittlehigher had he never discovered those memoranda. They have very much the character of ill-contrived forgeries; and even supposing that he believed them, and printed them in good faith, his judgment must be sacrificed to save his honesty.
The first volume of Papillon’s work contains the history of the art; it is divided into two parts, the first treating of wood engraving for the purpose of printing in the usual manner from a single block, and the second treating of chiaro-scuro. He does not trace the progress of the art by pointing out the improvements introduced at different periods; he enumerates all the principal cuts that he had seen, without reference to their execution as compared with those of an earlier date; and, from his desire to enhance the importance of his art, he claims almost every eminent painter whose name or mark is to be found on a cut, as a wood engraver. He is in this respect so extremely credulous as to assert that Mary de Medici, Queen of Henry IV. of France, had occasionally amused herself with engraving on wood; and in order to place the fact beyond doubt he refers to a cut representing the bust of a female, with the following inscription: “Maria Medici. F. m.d.lxxxvii.” “The engraving,” he observes, with his usualbonhomie, “is rather better than what might be reasonably expected from a person of such quality; it contains many cross-hatchings, somewhat unequal indeed, and occasionally imperfect, but, notwithstanding, sufficiently well engraved to show that she had executed several wood-cuts before she had attempted this. I know more than one wood engraver—or at least calling himself such—who is incapable of doing the like.” In 1587, the date of this cut, Mary de Medici was only fourteen years old; and since its execution, according to Papillon, shows that she was then no novice in the art, she must have acquired her practical knowledge of wood engraving at rather an early age,—at least for a princess. Papillon never seems to have considered that F is the first letter of “Filia” as well as of “Fecit,” nor to have suspected that the cut was simply a portrait of Mary de Medici, and not a specimen of her engraving.
From the following passage in the preface, he seems to have been462aware that his including the names of many eminent painters in his list of wood engravers would be objected to. “Some persons, who entertain a preconceived opinion that many painters whom I mention have not engraved on wood, may perhaps dispute the works which I ascribe to them. Of such persons I have to request that they will not condemn me before they have acquainted themselves with my researches and examined my proofs, and that they will judge of them without prejudice or partiality.” The “researches” to which he alludes, appear to have consisted in searching out the names and marks of eminent painters in old wood-cuts, and his “proofs” are of the same kind as that which he alleges in support of his assertion that Mary de Medici had engraved on wood,—a fact which, as he remarks, “was unknown to Rubens.” The historical portion of Papillon’s work is indeed little more than a confused catalogue of all the wood-cuts which had come under his observation; it abounds in errors, and almost every page affords an instance of his credulity.
In the second volume, which is occupied with details relative to the practice of the art, Papillon gives his instructions and enumerates his “inventions” in a style of complacent self-conceit. The most trifling remarks are accompanied by a reference to the “Recueil des Papillons;” and the most obvious means of effecting certain objects,—such means as had been regularly adopted by wood engravers for upwards of two hundred years previously, and such as in succeeding times have suggested themselves to persons who never received any instructions in the art,—are spoken of as important discoveries, and credit taken for them accordingly. One of his fancied discoveries is that of lowering the surface of a block towards the edges in order that the engraved lines in those parts may be less subject to the action of theplattinin printing, and consequently lighter in the impression. The Lyons Dance of Death, 1538, affords several instances of blocks lowered in this manner, not only towards the edges, but also in the middle of the cut, whenever it was necessary that certain delicately engraved lines should be lightly printed, and thus have the appearance of gradually diminishing till their extremities should scarcely be distinguishable from the paper on which they are impressed. Numerous instances of this practice are frequent in wood-cuts executed from 1540 to the decline of the art in the seventeenth century. Lowering was also practised by the engraver of the cuts in Croxall’s Æsop; by Thomas Bewick, who acquired a knowledge of wood engraving without a master; and by the self-taught artist who executed the cuts in Alexander’s Expedition down the Hydaspes, a poem by Dr. Thomas Beddoes, printed in 1792, but never published.VII.17As the463same practice has recently been claimed as an “invention,” it would seem that some wood engravers are either apt to ascribe much importance to little things, or are singularly ignorant of what has been done by their predecessors. Such an “invention,” though unquestionably useful, surely does not require any particular ingenuity for its discovery; such “discoveries” every man makes for himself as soon as he feels the want of that which the so-called invention will supply. The man who pares the cork of a quart bottle in order to make it fit a smaller one is, with equal justice, entitled to the name of an inventor, provided he was not aware of the thing having been done before: such an “adaptation of means to the end” cannot, however, be considered as an effort of genius deserving of public commendation.
In Papillon’s time it was not customary with French engravers on wood to have the subject perfectly drawn on the block, with all the lines and hatchings pencilled in, and theeffectand the different tints indicated either in pencil or in Indian ink, as is the usual practice in the present day. The design was first drawn on paper; from this, by means of tracing paper, the engraver made an outline copy on the block; and, without pencilling in all the lines or washing in the tints, he proceeded to “translate” the original, to which he constantly referred in the progress of his work, in the same manner as a copper-plate engraver does to the drawing or painting before him. Papillon perceived the disadvantages which resulted from this mode of proceeding; and though he still continued to make his first drawing on paper, he copied it more carefully and distinctly on the block than was usual with his contemporaries. He was thus enabled to proceed with greater certainty in his engraving; what he had to effect was immediately before him, and it was no longer necessary to refer so frequently to the original. To the circumstance of the drawings being perfectly made on the block, Papillon ascribes in a great measure the excellence of the old wood engravings of the time of Durer and Holbein.
Papillon, although always inclined to magnify little things connected with wood engraving, and to take great credit to himself for trifling “inventions,” was yet thoroughly acquainted with the practice of his art. The mode of thickening the lines in certain parts of a cut, after it has464been engraved, by scraping them down, was frequently practised by him, and he explains the manner of proceeding, and gives a cut of the tools required in the operation.VII.18As Papillon, previous to the publication of his book, had contributed several papers on the subject of wood engraving to the famed Encyclopédie, he avails himself of the second volume of the Traité to propose several additions and corrections to those articles. The following definition proposed to be inserted in the Encyclopédie, after the articleGratuit, will afford some idea of the manner in which he is accustomed to speak of his “inventions.” The term which he explains is “GrattureouGrattage,” literally, “Scraping,” the practice just alluded to. “This is, according to the new manner of engraving on wood, the operation of skilfully and carefully scraping down parts in an engraved block which are not sufficiently dark, in order to give them, as may be required, greater strength, and to render the shades more effective. This admirable plan, utterly unknown before, was accidentally discovered in 1731 by M. Papillon, by whom the art of wood engraving is advanced to a state tending to perfection, and approaching more and more towards the beauty of engraving on copper.” The tools used by Papillon to scrape down the lines of an engraved block, and thus render them thicker and, consequently, the impression darker, differ considerably in shape from those used for the same purpose by modern wood engravers in England. This tool now principally used is something like a copper-plate engraver’s burnisher, and occasionally a fine and sharp file is employed.
In Papillon’s time the French wood engravers appear to have held the graver in the manner of a pen, and in forming a line to have cuttowards themas in forming a down-stroke in writing, and to have engraved on the longitudinal, and not the cross section of the wood. Modern English wood engravers, having the rounded handle of the graver supported against the hollow of the hand, and directing the blade by means of the fore-finger and thumb, cut the linefrom them; and always engrave on the cross section of the wood. Papillon mentions box, pear-tree, apple-tree, and the wood of the service-tree, as the best for the purposes of engraving: box was generally used for the smaller and finer cuts intended for the illustration or ornament of books; the larger cuts, in which delicacy was not required, were mostly engraved on pear-tree wood. Apple-tree wood was principally used by the wood engravers of Normandy. Next to box, Papillon prefers the wood of the service-tree. The box brought from Turkey, though of larger size, he considers inferior to that of Provence, Italy, or Spain.
Although Papillon’smodus operandidiffers considerably from that of English wood engravers of the present day, I am not aware of any supposed discovery in the modern practice of the art that was not known to him. The methods of lowering a block in certain parts before drawing the subject on it, and of thickening the lines, and thus getting morecolour, by scraping the surface of the cut when engraved, were, as has been observed, known to him; he occasionally introduced cross-hatchings in his cuts;VII.19and in one of his chapters he gives instructions how to insert aplugin a block, in order to replace a part which had either been spoiled in the course of engraving or subsequently damaged. One of the improvements which he suggested, but did not put in practice, was a plan for engraving the same subject on two, three, or four blocks, in order to obtain cross-hatchings and a variety of tints with less trouble than if the subject were entirely engraved on the same block. Such cuts were not to be printed as chiaro-scuros, but in the usual manner, with printer’s ink. It is worthy of observation that Bewick in the latter part of his life had formed a similar opinion of the advantages of engraving a subject on two or more blocks, and thus obtaining with comparative ease such cross-lines and varied tints as could only be executed with great difficulty on a single block. He, however, proceeded further than Papillon, for he began to engrave a large cut which he intended to finish in this manner; and he was so satisfied that the experiment would be successful, that when the pressman handed to him a proof of the first block, he exclaimed, “I wish I was but twenty years younger!”
Papillon, in his account of the practice of the art, explains the manner of engraving and printing chiaro-scuros; and in illustration of the process he gives a cut executed in this style, together with separate impressions from each of the four blocks from which it is printed. There is also another cut of the same kind prefixed to the second part of the first volume, containing the history of engraving in chiaro-scuro. Scarcely anything connected with the practice of wood engraving appears to have escaped his notice. He mentions the effect of the breath in cold weather as rendering the block damp and the drawing less distinct; and he gives in one of his cuts the figure of a “mentonnière,”—that is to say, a piece of quilted linen, like the pad used by women to keep their bonnets cocked up,—which, being placed466before the mouth and nostrils, and kept in its place by strings tied behind the head, screened the block from the direct action of the engraver’s breath.
He frequently complains of the careless manner in which wood-cuts were printed;VII.20but from the following passage we learn that the inferiority of the printed cuts when compared with the engraver’s proofs did not always proceed from the negligence of the printer. “Some wood engravers have the art of fabricating proofs of their cuts much more excellent and delicate than they fairly ought to be; and the following is the manner in which they contrive to obtain tolerably decent proofs from very indifferent engravings. They first take two or three impressions, and then, to obtain one to their liking, and with which they may deceive their employers, they only ink the block on those places which ought to be dark, leaving the distances and lighter parts without any ink, except what remained after taking the previous impressions. The proof which they now obtain appears extremely delicate in those parts which were not properly inked; but when they come to be printed in a page with type, the impression is quite different from the proof which the engraver delivers with the blocks; there is no variety of tint, all is hard, and the distance is sometimes darker than objects in the fore-ground. I run no great risk in saying that all the threeLe Sueurshave been accustomed to practise this deception.”VII.21
All the cuts in Papillon’s work, except the portrait prefixed to the first volume,VII.22are his own engraving, and, for the most part, from his own designs. The most of the blocks were lent to the author by the different persons for whom he had engraved them long previous to the appearance of his work.VII.23They are introduced as ornaments at the beginning and end of the chapters; but though they may enable the reader to judge of Papillon’s abilities as a designer and engraver on wood, beyond this they do not in the least illustrate the progress of the art.467The execution of some of the best is extremely neat; and almost all of them display an effect—a contrast of black and white—which is not to be found in any other wood-cuts of the period. A few of the designs possess considerable merit, but in by far the greater number simplicity and truth are sacrificed to ornament and French taste. Whatever may be Papillon’s faults as a historian of the art, he deserves great credit for the diligence with which he pursued it under unfavourable circumstances, and for his endeavours to bring it into notice at a time when it was greatly neglected. His labours in this respect were, however, attended with no immediate fruit. He died in 1776, and his immediate successors do not appear to have profited by his instructions. The wood-cuts executed in France between 1776 and 1815 are generally much inferior to those of Papillon; and the recent progress which wood engraving has made in that country seems rather to have been influenced by English example than by his precepts.
Nicholas Le Sueur—born 1691, died 1764,—was, next to Papillon, the best French wood engraver of his time. His chiaro-scuros, printed entirely from wood-blocks, are executed with great boldness and spirit, and partake more of the character of the earlier Italian chiaro-scuros than any other works of the same kind engraved by his contemporaries.VII.24He chiefly excelled in the execution of chiaro-scuros and large cuts; his small cuts are of very ordinary character; they are generally engraved in a hard and meagre style, want variety of tint, and are deficient in effect.
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P. S. Fournier, the younger, a letter-founder of considerable reputation,—born at Paris 1712, died 1768,—occasionally engraved on wood. Papillon says that he was self-taught; and that he certainly would have made greater progress in the art had he not devoted himself almost exclusively to the business of type-founding. Monsieur Fournier is, however, better known as a writer on the history of the art than as a practical wood engraver. Between 1758 and 1761 he published three tracts relating to the origin and progress of wood engraving, and the invention of typography.VII.25From these works it is evident that, though468he takes no small credit to himself for his practical knowledge of wood engraving and printing, he was very imperfectly acquainted with his subject. They abound in errors which it is impossible that any person possessing the knowledge he boasts of should commit, unless he had very superficially examined the books and cuts on which he pronounces an opinion. He seems indeed to have thought that, from the circumstance of his being a wood engraver and letter-founder, his decisions on all doubtful matters in the early history of wood engraving and printing should be received with implicit faith. Looking at the comparatively small size of his works, no writer, not even Papillon himself, has committed so many mistakes; and his decisions are generally most peremptory when utterly groundless or evidently wrong. He asserts that Faust and Scheffer’s Psalter, 1457-1459, is printed from moveable types of wood, and that the most of the earliest specimens of typography are printed from the same kind of types; and in the fulness of his knowledge he also declares that the text of the Theurdank is printed not from types, but from engraved wood-blocks. Like Papillon, he seems to have possessed a marvellous sagacity in ferreting out old wood engravers. He says that Andrea Mantegna engraved on wood a grand triumph in 1486; that Sebastian Brandt engraved in 1490 the wood-cuts in the Ship of Fools,VII.26after the designs of J. Locher; and that Parmegiano469executed several wood-cuts after designs by Raffaele. He decides positively that Albert Durer, Lucas Cranach, Titian, and Holbein were wood engravers, and, like Papillon, he includes Mary de Medici in the list. Papillon appears to have had good reason to complain that Fournier had availed himself of his volume printed in 1738. His taste appears to have been scarcely superior to his knowledge and judgment: he mentions a large and coarsely engraved cut of the head of Christ as one of the best specimens of Albert Durer’s engraving; and he says that Papillon’s cuts are for excellence of design and execution equal to those of the greatest masters!
From a passage in one of Fournier’s tracts—Remarques Typographiques, 1761,—it is evident that wood engraving was then greatly neglected in Germany. It relates to the following observation of M. Bär’s, almoner of the Swedish chapel at Paris, on the length of time necessary to engrave a number of wooden types sufficient to print such a work as Faust and Scheffer’s Psalter: “M. Schœpflin declares that, by the general admission of all experienced persons, it would require upwards of six years to complete such a work in so perfect a manner.” The following is Fournier’s rejoinder: “To understand the value of this remark, it ought to be known that, so far from there being many experienced wood engravers to choose from, M. Schœpflin would most likely experience some difficulty in finding one to consult.” The wood-cuts which occur in German books printed between 1700 and 1760 are certainly of the most wretched kind; contemptible alike in design and execution. Some of the best which I have seen—and they are very bad—are to be found in a thin folio entitled “Orbis Literatus Germanico-Europaeus,” printed at Frankfort in 1737. They are cuts of the seals of all the principal colleges and academical foundations in Germany. The art in Italy about the same period was almost equally neglected. An Italian wood engraver, named Lucchesini, executed several cuts between 1760 and 1770. Most of the head-pieces and ornaments in the Popes’ Decretals, printed at Rome at this period, were engraved by him; and he also engraved the cuts in a Spanish book entitled “Letania Lauretana de la Virgen Santissima,” printed at Valencia in 1768. It is scarcely necessary to say that these cuts are of the humblest character.
Though wood engraving did not make any progress in England from 1722 to the time of Thomas Bewick, yet the art was certainly never lost in this country; the old stock still continued to put forth a branch—non deficit alter—although not a golden one. Two wood-cuts tolerably well executed, and which show that the engraver was acquainted with the practice of “lowering,” occur in a thin quarto, London, printed for H. Payne, 1760. The book and the cuts are thus noticed in Southey’s Life470of Cowper, volumeI.page 50. The writer is speaking of the Nonsense Club, of which Cowper was a member.
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