THE WOODCUT

Evening Star, Issue 21992, 30 March 1935, Page 18

THE WOODCUT

AM ATTRACTIVE ART ITS EVOLUTION IN EUROPE TENDENCIES TO-DAY The art of engraving pictures on wood for purposes of reproduction on paper is a very old one, and while it has, in the course of centuries of application, passed through various adaptive phases, it has. from the first been marked by characteristics which give to it a special charm as a medium for book illustration (says a writer in the Melbourne ‘Age*), We are in the habit Of looking back to Albrecht Durei and Hans Holbein the younger as originators of this art, but it was also practised in the fifteenth century in Italy, chiefly by the Florentine school ol woodcutters, whose operations were mostly confined to subjects of a sacred or ecclesiastical nature. Though the examples which have survived the Wear and tear of time, and are still to he fdund in the natural print rooms •of Europe, vary considerably in point of craftsmanship, the best of them give evidence of a trained efficiency, both in the designing and the cutting of the lines. While, however, the church had a large say in this, as in other forms oi art fn Italy, it was by no means confined to the delineation of saints, as will be seen by an edict of the Venetian Senate issued in 1441, forbidding, in the _ interest _ of local wood engravers, the importation of printed playing cards into that city. All of which goes to show that the published woodcuts of the Italian fifteenth century artists serve as an index of the taste and character of the people, as did, later, those of Gernlans, Wohlgemuth, Durer, and Holbein. BETTER DEVELOPED. The work of the German masters was, of course, more developed and more cosmopolitan in attitude than that of the Italians, and in the case of Durer it formed only part of a wide range of activities as an. engraver, and before all he was a distinguished painter, who had given finality to his genius by travel add residence abroad. One of his noted woodcuts is 4 The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ’—War, Famine, Conquest, and Death—an elaborate and involved composition, designed and cut with meticulous skill. Hans Holbein, who was born- in Augsberg about thirty years later than Durer, lived during the latter and greater portion of his life in England, and though the real source of his fame was as a painter, he is perhaps best known popularly by his published woodcuts, and more particularly ‘ The Dance of Death,’ a series of small pictures depicting the progress of our common mortality much after the manner of the popular modern 44 strip.” In those early essays in the art of book illustration it will be noted that the field of operation is largely confined to matters directly or indirectly pertaining to religion; yet the work of the German artists, produced during a period of intellectual upheaval, had without doubt a marked influence on the thought and art of their own and succeeding generations. A DESIGNER. Holbein was a designer rather than an engraver, and his drawings done fpr Forbin and other printers include rich embellishments, such as ornamental title pages, chapter headings, and decorated borders. In some of these the

work was obviously marred by faulty cutting, but he was fortunate in the services of Hans Lutzel burger, who engraved 4 The Dance ot Death ’ and ■ The Table of Cebes,’ the latter design, incorporating many small figures illustrating the soul’s journey through life it will bo seen that the illustration of works from designs cut ou wood blocks was as early as the beginning of the fifteenth century an established branch of art, and thougu its use was never actually abandoned it became largely superseded in later years by the various processes of engraving on steel and copper till the great Bewick revival of the eighteenth century. There were three Bewicks—Thomas, the elder; his brother John, and his son Robert. Thomas, who was born at Cherryburn, Northumberland, in 1753, was, as every schoolboy knows, the great rivivalist, who, finding the art of wood engraving in England\ languishing through neglect, raised it by his genius and industry to a leading place among the reproductive processes, His life history is too big a subject to be more than touched upon in an article such as this, but it is worthy of note that he showed from his earliest youth a special interest in animal life, which accounts for the prodigality of his pictures of birds and beasts and the intimacy shown with their haunts and habits. MADE HIS FORTUNE.

His 4 History of Quadrupeds ’ had » great vogue, and, running through several editions, may be said to have laid the foundations of his fortunes and reputation. It was followed by a ‘ History of British Birds, 1 and later, in conjunction with his brother, two hundred illustrations for 4 The Progress of Man in Society ’ and other works in which the manipulation of John is to be distinguished from that of the master by a certain rigidity of lino and a proneness to barren spaces of white and solid blacks. John suffered from chronic ill health, and died in 1795. Robert, the only son of Thomas, was also trained as a wood engraver, but showed little adaptabil. ity, and was better-known as a Newcastle publisher. Thomas had many pupils, some of whom were no doubt men of limited ability, but a good many proved worthy followers, and explorers of second-hand book shops who coma across old volumes containing cuts suggesting Bewick and bearing the superscriptions, Anderson. Austin, or Harvey (the latter being a worker of special ability) could not go wrong in securing them. Following on the Bewick period came the great English revival of the ‘sixties and ties. The engravers and artists of this time acted indenendelitly of each other, in that the draftsman had no part in the cutting of his own picture drawn on the wood, this being the job of a skilled craftsman, who, at his best, could cut in the block a perfect imitation of the artist’s line or wash. In considering a reproduction of a Tenniel cartoon by this process it is worth while trying to estimate just how much skill and judgement was demanded by the onerator in preserving the continuity of line, and Snipping out with perfect precision the diamond shaped spaces of the cross-hatchings. DEGREES OF SKILL. There were certainly degrees of expertness among the cutters, and some play have done the artists less than credit, but the work of such men as Swain, the Dalziels, and Timothy Cola during different periods of the nineteenth century commands respect and admiration. The assumption of the metal process block, about fifty years ago, was a knockout for the wood cutter. It provided by a quick mechanical process a metal plate nearly approxiraating the wood block at a greatly reduced cost, and for long after the older process existed chiefly as a memory to be revived by a dipping into old volumes of 4 Punch ’ or 4 Good Words ’ —dormant, bat noli dead. Of late years, however, another development has been gradually revealing itself in the person of a new. type of auto, wood cutter. This lat-ter-day product must be in the first place an accomplished creative draftsman, and even colourist He approaches his work in a spirit more nearly akin to that of Bewick than the engraver of the Seventies, and ha makes free use of the white incised line, as distinct from the raised line of and Dalriel; but before all things he must be 44 creative.” In the beginning much of the new work wAs on the cyude side, and it was largely exploited by the ultramoderns in evolving queer prints, which, while possibly the last thing in significant form, administered shocks to the sensibilities of the normally minded. The new cult, however, pioneered by enthusiasts such as Charles Ricketts, Sturga Moore, Lucien Pissarro. Gordon Craig, Eric Gill, and William Nicholson, extended its influence to Europe and America, with, as an attractive adjunct, the wood-block colour print, which drew the lyric art of Japan into the compact. In its earlier stages it had the purely aesthetic appeal of art, practised for its own sake, but now, having achieved übiquity, its uses as an illustrating and publicity medium have revealed themselves, and since a series of river subjects by Mrs Raverat were secured by a London bus company for the purpose of advertising their local routes, the new wood cut has developed farreaching commercial as well as artistia possibilities. In Australia the movement, in all its variations, headed by Lionel Lindsay, in black and white, and Murray Griffin, as a colour printer, has taken definite root, and promises to become a distinctive feature of the art of tha Commonwealth.