THE EVOLUTION OF THE WOOD GUT

Evening Star, Issue 21994, 2 April 1935, Page 11

THE EVOLUTION OF THE WOOD GUT

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 (writes A.C., in the ‘Melbourne Age’). We are in the habit of looking back to Albrecht Durcr 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 of 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 be found in the national print rooms of Europe, var ( y 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 of art in Italy, it was by no means confined to the delineation of saints, as will bo 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 Germans, Wohlgemuth, Durcr, and Holbein. The work of the German masters was, of course, more developed aucl 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 and residence abroad. One of his most noted woodcuts is 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 lire in England, and though the real source of his fame is as a painter, he is perhaps best, known popularly by his published woodcuts, ana more particularly The Dance of Death, a senes of small pictures depicting the progress of our common mortality much after the manner of the popular modern “ 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, Holbein was a designer rather than an engraver, and his drawings done for Forbin and other printers include rich embellishments, such as ornamental title pages, chapter headings. 1 and decorated borders. In some of these the work was obviously marred by faulty cutting, but he was fortunate in the services of Hans Lutzelburger. who engraved The Dance of Death and The Table of Cebes, the latter design incorporating many email figures illustrating the soul’s journey through life. It will be seen that the illustration of works from designs cut on wood blocks was as early as the beginning of the fifteenth century an established branch of art, and though its use was never actually abandoned it became largely superseded in later years by the various processes or 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 revivalist 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 moth than touched upon in an article such as this, hut 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 jmd habits. Efts ‘ History of Quadrupeds ’ had a great vogue, and, running through several editions, may be said to have laid the foundation of his fortunes and reputation. Tt was followed by a ‘ History of British Birds,' and later, in conjunction with his brother, 200 illustrations for ‘ The Progress of Man in Society,’ and others works in which the manipulation of John H to bo distinguished from that of the master by a certain rigidity of line and a proneness to barren spaces of white and solid blacks. John suffered from chronic ill-health, and died in 179 b. Robert, the only son of Thomas, .was also trained as a wood engraver.

but showed little adaptability, 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 bookshops who come 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 ’seventies, which has already been dealt with at length in these columns. The engravers and artists of this time acted independently of each other, in that the draftsman had no part in the cutting of lus 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 judgment was demanded by the operator in preserving the continuity of line, and snipping out with perfect precision the diamond-shaped spaces of the crosshatchings. There were certainly degrees of experthess among the cutters, and some may have done the artists less than credit, but the work of such men as Swain, the Dalziels, and Timothy Cole 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 approximating the wood block at a greatlyreduced cost, and_ for long after the older process existed chiefly as a memory to be revived by a dipping into old volumes of ‘ Punch ’ or ‘ Good Words ’ —dormant, but' not dead. Of late years, however, another development has been gradually revealing itself in the person of a new type of auto, wood cutter. This latter-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 he makes free use of the white incised line, as distinct from the raised line of Swain and Dalziel; but before all things he must be •'* creative.” In the beginning much of the now work was on the crude side, and it was largely exploited by the ultra-moderns 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, Sturge 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 Ravcrat were secured by a London bus company for the purpose of advertising their local routes, the new wood cub has developed far-reaching commercial as well as artistic possibilities.

In Australia the movement, m 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 the Commonwealth.