CHAPTER III. OF THE PERIOD OF THE DECLINE OF DECORATIVE FEELING IN BOOK

DESIGN AFTER THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, AND OF THE MODERN REVIVAL.

As I indicated at the outset of the first chapter, my purpose is not to give a complete historical account of the decoration and illustration of books, but rather to dwell on the artistic treatment of the page from my own point of view as a designer. So far, however, the illustrations I have given, while serving their purpose, also furnished a fair idea of the development of style and variation of treatment of both the MS. and printed book under different influences, from the sixth to the close of the sixteenth century, but now I shall have to put on a pair of seven-league boots, and make some tremendous skips.

We have seen how, at the period of the early Renaissance, two streams met, as it were, and mingled, with very beautiful results. The freedom, the romance, the naturalism of the later Gothic, with the newly awakened Classical feeling, with its grace of line and mythological lore. The rich and delicate arabesques in which Italian designers delighted, and which so frequently decorated, as we have seen, the borders of the early printer, owe also something to Oriental influence, as indeed their name indicates. The decorative beauty of these early Renaissance books were really, therefore, the outcome of a very remarkable fusion of ideas and styles. Printing, as an art, and book decoration attained a perfection it has not since reached. The genius of the greatest designers of the time was associated with the new invention, and expressed itself with unparalleled vigour in the woodcut; while the type-founder, being still under the influence of a fine traditional style in handwriting, was in perfect harmony with the book decorator or illustrator. Even geometric diagrams were given without destroying the unity of the page, as may be seen in early editions of Euclid, and we have seen what faithful and characteristic work was done in illustrations of plants and animals, without loss of designing power and ornamental sense.

[Sidenote: THE CLASSICAL INFLUENCE.]

This happy equilibrium of artistic quality and practical adaptation after the middle of the sixteenth century began to decline. There were designers, like Oronce Finé and Geoffroy Tory, at Paris, who did much to preserve the traditions in book ornament of the early Italian printers, while adding a touch of grace and fancy of their own, but for the most part the taste of book designers ran to seed after this period. The classical influence, which had been only felt as one among other influences, became more and more paramount over the designer, triumphing over the naturalistic feeling, and over the Gothic and Eastern ornamental feeling; so that it might be said that, whereas Mediæval designers sought after colour and decorative beauty, Renaissance designers were influenced by considerations of line, form, and relief. This may have been due in a great measure to the fact that the influence of the antique and Classical art was a sculpturesque influence, mainly gathered from statues and relievos, gems and medals, and architectural carved ornaments, and more through Roman than Greek sources. While suggestions from such sources were but sparingly introduced at first, they gradually seemed to outweigh all other motives with the later designers, whose works often suggest that it is impossible to have too much Roman costume or too many Roman remains, which crowd their Bible subjects, and fill their borders with overfed pediments, corpulent scrolls, and volutes, and their interstices with scattered fragments and attitudinizing personifications of Classical mythology. The lavish use of such materials were enough to overweight even vigorous designers like Virgil Solis, who though able, facile, and versatile as he was, seems but a poor substitute for Holbein.

[Illustration: FRENCH SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

DESIGNED BY ORONCE FINÉ. (PARIS, SIMON DE COLINES, 1534.)

(_Comp. Dürer's title to Plutarch, 1513, and St. Ambrosius, 1520._)]

[Sidenote: THE RENAISSANCE.]

What was at first an inspiriting, imaginative, and refining influence in art became finally a destructive force. The youthful spirit of the early Renaissance became clouded and oppressed, and finally crushed with a weight of pompous pedantry and affectation. The natural development of a living style in art became arrested, and authority, and an endeavour to imitate the antique, took its place.

The introduction of the copper-plate marked a new epoch in book illustration, and wood-engraving declined with its increased adoption, which, in the form it took, as applied to books, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was certainly to the detriment and final extinction of the decorative side.

[Sidenote: COPPER-PLATE.]

It has already been pointed out how a copper-plate, requiring a different process of printing, and exhibiting as a necessary consequence such different qualities of line and effect, cannot harmonize with type and the conditions of the surface-printed page, since it is not in any mechanical relation with them. This mechanical relation is really the key to all good and therefore organic design; and therefore it is that design was in sounder condition when mechanical conditions and relations were simpler. A new invention often has a dislocating effect upon design. A new element is introduced, valued for some particular facility or effect, and it is often adopted without considering how--like a new element in a chemical combination--it alters the relations all round.

Copper-plate engraving was presumably adopted as a method for book-illustration for its greater fineness and precision of line, and its greater command of complexity in detail and chiaroscuro, for its purely pictorial qualities, in short, and its adoption corresponded to the period of the ascendancy of the painter above other kind of artists.

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. LATE XVITH CENTURY.

VIRGIL SOLIS, BIBLE. (FRANKFORT, SIGM. FEYRABEND, 1563.)]

[Illustration: VENETIAN SCHOOL. LATE XVITH CENTURY.

ARTIST UNKNOWN. (VENICE, G. GIOLITO, 1562.)]

As regards the books of the seventeenth century, while "of making many books there was no end," and however interesting for other than artistic reasons, but few would concern our immediate purpose. Woodcuts, headings, initials, tail-pieces, and printers' ornaments continued to be used, but greatly inferior in design and beauty of effect to those of the sixteenth century. The copper-plates introduced are quite apart from the page ornaments, and can hardly be considered decorative, although in the pompous title-pages of books of this period they are frequently formal and architectural enough, and, as a rule, founded more or less upon the ancient arches of triumph of Imperial Rome.

Histories and philosophical works, especially towards the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, were embellished with pompous portraits in frames of more or less classical joinery, with shields of arms, the worse for the decorative decline of heraldry, underneath. The specimen given is a good one of its type from a Venetian book of 1562, and gives the earlier form of this kind of treatment. Travels and topographical works increased, until by the middle of the eighteenth century we have them on the scale of Piranesi's scenic views of the architecture of ancient Rome.

The love of picturesqueness and natural scenery, or, perhaps, landscape gardening, gradually developing, concentrated interest on qualities the antithesis of constructive and inventive design, and drew the attention more and more away from them, until the painter, pure and simple, took all the artistic honours, and the days of the foundation of academies only confirmed and fixed the idea of art in this restricted sense in the public mind.

[Sidenote: HOGARTH.]

Hogarth, who availed himself of the copper-plate and publication in book form of his pictures, was yet wholly pictorial in his sympathies, and his instincts were dramatic and satiric rather than decorative. Able painter and designer as he was in his own way, the interest of his work is entirely on that side, and is rather valuable as illustrating the life and manners of his time than as furnishing examples of book illustration, and his work certainly has no decorative aim, although no doubt quite harmonious in an eighteenth century room.

[Sidenote: STOTHARD.]

Chodowiecki, who did a vast quantity of steel frontispieces and illustrations for books on a small scale, with plenty of character, must also be regarded rather as a maker of pictures for books than as a book decorator. He is sometimes mentioned as kindred in style to Stothard, but Stothard was much more of an idealist, and had, too, a very graceful decorative sense from the classical point of view. His book designs are very numerous, chiefly engraved on steel, and always showing a very graceful sense of line and composition. His designs to Rogers' "Poems," and "Italy," are well-known, and, in their earlier woodcut form, his groups of Amorini are very charming.

Flaxman had a high sense of sculpturesque style and simplicity, and great feeling and grace as a designer, but he can hardly be reckoned as a book decorator. His well-known series to Homer, Hesiod, Æschylus, and Dante are strictly distinct series of illustrative designs, to be taken by themselves without reference to their incorporation in, or relation to, a printed book. Their own lettering and explanatory text is engraved on the same plate beneath them, and so far they are consistent, but are not in any sense examples of page treatment or spacing.

[Illustration: XIXTH CENTURY. WILLIAM BLAKE.

"SONGS OF INNOCENCE," 1789.]

[Sidenote: WILLIAM BLAKE.]

We now come to a designer of a very different type, a type, too, of a new epoch, whatever resemblance in style and method there may be in his work to that of his contemporaries. William Blake is distinct, and stands alone. A poet and a seer, as well as a designer, in him seemed to awake something of the spirit of the old illuminator. He was not content to illustrate a book by isolated copper or steel plates apart from the text, although in his craft as engraver he constantly carried out the work of others. When he came to embody his own thoughts and dreams, he recurred quite spontaneously to the methods of the maker of the MS. books. He became his own calligrapher, illuminator and miniaturist, while availing himself of the copper-plate (which he turned into a surface printing block) and the printing press for the reproduction of his designs, and in some cases for producing them in tints. His hand-coloured drawings, the borderings and devices to his own poems, will always be things by themselves.

His treatment of the resources of black and white, and sense of page decoration, may be best judged perhaps by a reference to his "Book of Job," which contains a fine series of suggestive and imaginative designs. We seem to read in Blake something of the spirit of the Mediæval designers, through the sometimes mannered and semi-classic forms and treatment, according to the taste of his time; while he embodies its more daring aspiring thoughts, and the desire for simpler and more humane conditions of life. A revolutionary fire and fervour constantly breaks out both in his verse and in his designs, which show very various moods and impulses, and comprehend a wide range of power and sympathy. Sometimes mystic and prophetic, sometimes tragic, sometimes simple and pastoral.

Blake, in these mixed elements, and the extraordinary suggestiveness of his work and the freedom of his thought, seems nearer to us than others of his contemporaries. In his sense of the decorative treatment of the page, too, his work bears upon our purpose. In writing with his own hand and in his own character the text of his poems, he gained the great advantage which has been spoken of--of harmony between text and illustration. They become a harmonious whole, in complete relation. His woodcuts to Phillip's "Pastoral," though perhaps rough in themselves, show what a sense of colour he could convey, and of the effective use of white line.

[Illustration:

WILLIAM BLAKE.

WOODCUT FROM PHILLIP'S "PASTORAL."]

[Sidenote: EDWARD CALVERT.]

Among the later friends and disciples of Blake, a kindred spirit must have been Edward Calvert, whose book illustrations are also decorations; the masses of black and white being effectively distributed, and they are full of poetic feeling, imagination, and sense of colour. I am indebted for the first knowledge of them to Mr. William Blake Richmond, whose father, Mr. George Richmond, was a friend of William Blake and Calvert, as well as of John Linnell and of Samuel Palmer, who carried on the traditions of this English poetic school to our own times; especially the latter, whose imaginative drawings--glowing sunsets over remote hill-tops, romantic landscapes, and pastoral sentiment--were marked features in the room of the Old Water Colour Society, up to his death in 1881. His etched illustrations to his edition of "The Eclogues of Virgil," are a fine series of beautifully designed and poetically conceived landscapes; but they are strictly a series of pictures printed separately from the text. Palmer himself, in the account of the work given by his son, when he was planning the work, wished that William Blake had been alive to have designed his woodcut headings to the "Eclogues."[3]

[3] A memoir of Edward Calvert has since been published by his son, fully illustrated, and giving the little engravings just spoken of. They were engraved by Calvert himself, it appears, and I am indebted to his son, Mr. John Calvert, for permission to print them here.

[Sidenote: THOMAS BEWICK.]

To Thomas Bewick and his school is due the revival of wood-engraving as an art, and its adaptation to book illustration, quite distinct, of course, from the old knife-work on the plank. Bewick had none of the imaginative poetry of the designers just named, although plenty of humour and satire, which he compressed into his little tail-pieces. He shows his skill as a craftsman in the treatment of the wood block, in such works as his "British Birds;" but here, although the wood-engraving and type may be said to be in mechanical relation, there is no sense of decorative beauty or ornamental spacing whatever, and, as drawings, the engravings have none of the designer's power such as we found in the illustrations of Gesner and Matthiolus at Basle, in the middle of the sixteenth century. There is a very literal and plain presentment of facts as regards the bird and its plumage, but with scarcely more than the taste of the average stuffer and mounter in the composition of the picture, and no regard whatever to the design of the page as a whole.

[Illustration: XIXTH CENTURY. EDWARD CALVERT.

THE RETURN HOME.

THE FLOOD.

THE CHAMBER IDYLL.

FROM THE ORIGINAL BLOCKS DESIGNED AND ENGRAVED ON WOOD BY EDWARD CALVERT. BRIXTON, 1827-8-9.]

[Illustration: XIXTH CENTURY. EDWARD CALVERT.

THE LADY AND THE ROOKS.

IDEAL PASTORAL LIFE.

THE BROOK.

FROM THE BLOCKS DESIGNED AND ENGRAVED ON WOOD BY EDWARD CALVERT. BRIXTON, 1827-8-9.]

It was, however, a great point to have asserted the claims of wood-engraving, and demonstrated its capabilities as a method of book illustration.

[Sidenote: THE SCHOOL OF BEWICK.]

Bewick founded a school of very excellent craftsmen, who carried the art to a wonderful degree of finish. In both his and their hands it became quite distinct from literal translation of the drawing, which, unless in line, was treated by the engraver with a line, touch, and quality all his own, the use of white line,[4] and the rendering of tone and tint necessitating a certain power of design on his part, and giving him as important a position as the engraver on steel held in regard to the translation of a painted picture.

[4] A striking instance of the use of white line is seen in the title page "Pomerium de Tempore," printed by Johann Otmar, Augsburg, as early as 1502. It is possible, however, that this is a metal engraving. It is given overleaf.

Such a book as Northcote's "Fables," published 1828-29, each fable having a head-piece drawn on wood from Northcote's design by William Harvey--a well-known graceful designer and copious illustrator of books up to comparatively recent times--and with initial letters and tail-pieces of his own, shows the outcome of the Bewick school. Finally "fineness of line, tone, and finish--a misused word," as Mr. W. J. Linton says, "was preferred to the simple charm of truth." The wood engravers appeared to be anxious to vie with the steel engravers in the adornment of books, and so far as adaptation was concerned, they had certainly all the advantage on their side. The ornamental sense, however, had everywhere declined; pictorial qualities, fineness of line, and delicacy of tone, were sought after almost exclusively.

[Sidenote: STOTHARD AND TURNER.]

Such books as Rogers's "Poems" and "Italy," with vignettes on steel from Thomas Stothard and J. M. W. Turner, are characteristic of the taste of the period, and show about the high-water mark of the skill of the book engravers on steel. Stothard's designs are the only ones which have claims to be decorative, and he is always a graceful designer. Turner's landscapes, exquisite in themselves, and engraved with marvellous delicacy, do not in any sense decorate the page, and from that point of view are merely shapeless blots of printers' ink of different tones upon it, while the letterpress bears no relation whatever to the picture in method of printing or design, and has no independent beauty of its own. Book illustrations of this type--and it was a type which largely prevailed during the second quarter of the century--are simply pictures without frames.

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

JOHANN OTMAR. (AUGSBURG, 1502.)]

[Sidenote: W. J. LINTON.]

No survey of book illustration would be complete which contained no mention of William James Linton--whom I have already quoted. I may be allowed to speak of him with a peculiar regard and respect, as I may claim him as a very kind early friend and master. As a boy I was, in fact, apprenticed to him for the space of three years, not indeed with the object of wielding the graver, but rather with that of learning the craft of a draughtsman on wood. This, of course, was before the days of the use of photography, which has since practically revolutionized the system not only of drawing for books but of engraving also. It was then necessary to draw on the block itself, and to thoroughly understand what kind of work could be treated by the engraver.

I shall always regard those early years in Mr. Linton's office as of great value to me, as, despite changes of method and new inventions, it gave me a thorough knowledge of the mechanical conditions of wood-engraving at any rate, and has implanted a sense of necessary relationship between design, material, and method of production--of art and craft, in fact--which cannot be lost, and has had its effect in many ways.

Mr. Linton, too, is himself a notable historic link, carrying on the lamp of the older traditions of wood-engraving to these degenerate days, when whatever wonders of literal translation, and imitation of chalk, charcoal, or palette and brushes, it has exhibited under spell of American enterprise--and I am far from denying its achievements as such--it cannot be said to have preserved the distinction and independence of the engraver as an artist or original designer in any sense. When not extinguished altogether by some form of automatic reproductive process, he is reduced to the office of "process-server"--he becomes the slave of the pictorial artist. The picturesque sketcher loves his "bits" and "effects," which, moreover, however sensational and sparkling they may be in themselves, have no reference as a rule to the decoration of the page, being in this sense no more than more or less adroit splashes of ink upon it, which the text, torn into an irregularly ragged edge, seems instinctively to shrink from touching, squeezing itself together like the passengers in a crowded omnibus might do, reluctantly to admit a chimney-sweep.

While, by his early training and practice, he is united with the Bewick school, Mr. Linton--himself a poet, a social and political thinker, a scholar, as well as designer and engraver--having been associated with the best-known engravers and designers for books during the middle of the century, and having had art of such a different temper and tendency as that of Rossetti pass through his hands, and seen the effect of many new impulses, is finally face to face with what he himself has called the "American New Departure." He is therefore peculiarly and eminently qualified for the work to which he has addressed himself--his great work on "The Masters of Wood Engraving," which appeared in 1889, and is in every way complete as a history, learned in technique, and sumptuous as a book.

I have not mentioned Gustave Doré, who fills so large a space as an illustrator of books, because though possessed of a weird imagination, and a poetic feeling for dramatic landscapes and grotesque characters, as well as extraordinary pictorial invention, the mass of his work is purely scenic, and he never shows the decorative sense, or considers the design in relation to the page. His best and most spirited and sincere work is represented by his designs in the "Contes Drolatiques."

[Sidenote: THE PRE-RAPHAELITES.]

The new movement in painting in England, known as the pre-Raphaelite movement, which dates from about the middle years of our century, was in every way so remarkable and far-reaching, that it is not surprising that it should leave its mark upon the illustrations of books; particularly upon that form of luxury known as the modern gift-book, which, in the course of the twenty years following 1850, often took the shape of selections from or editions of the poets plentifully sprinkled with little pictorial vignettes engraved on wood. Birket Foster, John Gilbert, and John Tenniel were leading contributors to these collections.

In 1857 appeared an edition of "Tennyson's Poems" from the house of Moxon. This work, while having the general characteristics of the prevailing taste--an accidental collection of designs, the work of designers of varying degrees of substance, temper, and feeling, casually arranged, and without the slightest feeling for page decoration or harmony of text and illustration--yet possessed one remarkable feature which gives it a distinction among other collections, in that it contains certain designs of the chief leaders of the pre-Raphaelite movement, D. G. Rossetti, Millais and Holman Hunt.

[Illustration: DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.

FROM TENNYSON'S POEMS. (MOXON, 1857.)]

I give one of the Rossetti designs, "Sir Galahad"; the "S. Cecilia" and the "Morte d'Arthur" were engraved by the Brothers Dalziel, the "Sir Galahad" by Mr. W. J. Linton. It seems to me that the last gives the spirit and feeling of Rossetti, as well as his peculiar touch, far more successfully. These designs, in their poetic imagination, their richness of detail, sense of colour, passionate, mystic, and romantic feeling, and earnestness of expression mark a new epoch. They are decorative in themselves, and, though quite distinct in feeling, and original, they are more akin to the work of the Mediæval miniaturist than anything that had been seen since his days. Even here, however, there is no attempt to consider the page or to make the type harmonize with the picture, or to connect it by any bordering or device with the book as a whole, and being sandwiched with drawings of a very different tendency, their effect is much spoiled. In one or two other instances where Rossetti lent his hand to book illustration, however, he is fully mindful of the decorative effect of the page. I remember a title page to a book of poems by Miss Christina Rossetti, "Goblin Market," which emphatically showed this. The title-page designed for his "Early Italian Poets" (given here), and his sonnet on the sonnet too, in which the design encloses the text of the poem, written out by himself, are other instances.

[Illustration: DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.

DESIGN FOR A TITLE PAGE.]

[Sidenote: DALZIEL'S BIBLE GALLERY.]

Some of the designs made for a later work (Dalziel's Bible Gallery, about 1865-70) also show the effect of the pre-Raphaelite influence, as well as, in the case of the designs of Sir Frederic Leighton and Mr. Poynter, the influence of Continental ideas and training. I saw some of these drawings on the wood at the time, I remember. For study and research, and richness of resource in archæological detail, as well as firmness of drawing, I thought Mr. Poynter's designs were perhaps the most remarkable. A strikingly realized picture, and a bright and successful wood-engraving, is Ford Madox Brown's design of "Elijah and the Widow's Son." There is a dramatic intensity of expression about his other one also, "The Death of Eglon." Still, at best, we find that these are but carefully studied pictures rendered on the wood. The pre-Raphaelite designs show the most decorative sense, but they are now issued quite distinct from the page, whatever was the original intention, and while they may, as to scale and treatment, be justly considered as book illustrations, and as examples of our more important efforts in that direction at that time, they are not page decorations.

One may speak here of an admirable artist we have lost, Mr. Albert Moore, who so distinguished himself for his refined decorative sense in painting, and the outline group of figures given here shows that he felt the conditions of the book page and the press also.

[Illustration: ALBERT MOORE.

FROM MILTON'S ODE ON CHRIST'S NATIVITY. (NISBET, 1867.)]

[Sidenote: HENRY HOLIDAY.]

Mr. Henry Holiday is also a decorative artist of great refinement and facility. He has not done very much in book illustration, but his illustrations to Lewis Carroll's "Hunting of the Snark" were admirable. His decorative feeling in black and white, however, is marked, as may be seen in the title to "Aglaia."

[Illustration: HENRY HOLIDAY.

COVER FOR A MAGAZINE.]

[Sidenote: TOY BOOKS.]

As, until recently, I suppose I was scarcely known out of the nursery, it is meet that I should offer some remarks upon children's books. Here, undoubtedly, there has been a remarkable development and great activity of late years. We all remember the little cuts that adorned the books of our childhood. The ineffaceable quality of these early pictorial and literary impressions afford the strongest plea for good art in the nursery and the schoolroom. Every child, one might say every human being, takes in more through his eyes than his ears, and I think much more advantage might be taken of this fact.

If I may be personal, let me say that my first efforts in children's books were made in association with Mr. Edmund Evans. Here, again, I was fortunate to be in association with the craft of colour-printing, and I got to understand its possibilities. The books for babies, current at that time--about 1865 to 1870--of the cheaper sort called toy books were not very inspiriting. These were generally careless and unimaginative woodcuts, very casually coloured by hand, dabs of pink and emerald green being laid on across faces and frocks with a somewhat reckless aim. There was practically no choice between such as these and cheap German highly-coloured lithographs. The only attempt at decoration I remember was a set of coloured designs to nursery rhymes by Mr. H. S. Marks, which had been originally intended for cabinet panels. Bold outlines and flat tints were used. Mr. Marks has often shown his decorative sense in book illustration and printed designs in colour, but I have not been able to obtain any for this book.

It was, however, the influence of some Japanese printed pictures given to me by a lieutenant in the navy, who had brought them home from there as curiosities, which I believe, though I drew inspiration from many sources, gave the real impulse to that treatment in strong outlines, and flat tints and solid blacks, which I adopted with variations in books of this kind from that time (about 1870) onwards. Since then I have had many rivals for the favour of the nursery constituency, notably my late friend Randolph Caldecott, and Miss Kate Greenaway, though in both cases their aim lies more in the direction of character study, and their work is more of a pictorial character than strictly decorative. The little preface heading from his "Bracebridge Hall" gives a good idea of Caldecott's style when his aim was chiefly decorative. Miss Greenaway is the most distinctly so perhaps in the treatment of some of her calendars.

[Illustration: RANDOLPH CALDECOTT.

HEADPIECE TO "BRACEBRIDGE HALL." (MACMILLAN, 1877.)]

[Illustration: KATE GREENAWAY.

KEY BLOCK OF TITLE-PAGE OF "MOTHER GOOSE."

(ROUTLEDGE, N.D.)]

[Sidenote: CHILDREN'S BOOKS.]

Children's books and so-called children's books hold a peculiar position. They are attractive to designers of an imaginative tendency, for in a sober and matter-of-fact age they afford perhaps the only outlet for unrestricted flights of fancy open to the modern illustrator, who likes to revolt against "the despotism of facts." While on children's books, the poetic feeling in the designs of E. V. B. may be mentioned, and I mind me of some charming illustrations to a book of Mr. George Macdonald's, "At the Back of the North Wind," designed by Mr. Arthur Hughes, who in these and other wood engraved designs shows, no less than in his paintings, how refined and sympathetic an artist he is. Mr. Robert Bateman, too, designed some charming little woodcuts, full of poetic feeling and controlled by unusual taste. They were used in Macmillan's "Art at Home" series, though not, I believe, originally intended for it.

[Illustration: ARTHUR HUGHES.

FROM "AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND." (STRAHAN, 1871.)]

[Sidenote: JAPANESE INFLUENCE.]

[Sidenote: JAPANESE ILLUSTRATION.]

There is no doubt that the opening of Japanese ports to Western commerce, whatever its after effects--including its effect upon the arts of Japan itself--has had an enormous influence on European and American art. Japan is, or was, a country very much, as regards its arts and handicrafts with the exception of architecture, in the condition of a European country in the Middle Ages, with wonderfully skilled artists and craftsmen in all manner of work of the decorative kind, who were under the influence of a free and informal naturalism. Here at least was a living art, an art of the people, in which traditions and craftsmanship were unbroken, and the results full of attractive variety, quickness, and naturalistic force. What wonder that it took Western artists by storm, and that its effects have become so patent, though not always happy, ever since. We see unmistakable traces of Japanese influences, however, almost everywhere--from the Parisian impressionist painter to the Japanese fan in the corner of trade circulars, which shows it has been adopted as a stock printers' ornament. We see it in the sketchy blots and lines, and vignetted naturalistic flowers which are sometimes offered as page decorations, notably in American magazines and fashionable etchings. We have caught the vices of Japanese art certainly, even if we have assimilated some of the virtues.

[Illustration: ARTHUR HUGHES.

FROM "AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND." (STRAHAN, 1871.)]

In the absence of any really noble architecture or substantial constructive sense, the Japanese artists are not safe guides as designers. They may be able to throw a spray of leaves or a bird or fish across a blank panel or sheet of paper, drawing them with such consummate skill and certainty that it may delude us into the belief that it is decorative design; but if an artist of less skill essays to do the like the mistake becomes obvious. Granted they have a decorative sense--the _finesse_ which goes to the placing of a flower in a pot, of hanging a garland on a wall, or of placing a mat or a fan--taste, in short, that is a different thing from real constructive power of design, and satisfactory filling of spaces.

[Illustration: ROBERT BATEMAN.

FROM "ART IN THE HOUSE."

(MACMILLAN, 1876.)]

When we come to their books, therefore, marvellous as they are, and full of beauty and suggestion--apart from their naturalism, _grotesquerie_, and humour--they do not furnish fine examples of page decoration as a rule. The fact that their text is written vertically, however, must be allowed for. This, indeed, converts their page into a panel, and their printed books become rather what we should consider sets of designs for decorating light panels, and extremely charming as such.

[Illustration: ROBERT BATEMAN.

FROM "ART IN THE HOUSE."

(MACMILLAN, 1877.)]

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

[Sidenote: JAPANESE PRINTING.]

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

[5] Guide to the Chinese and Japanese Illustrated Books in the British Museum.

[6] Satow. "History of Printing in Japan."

[Illustration: ROBERT BATEMAN.

FROM "ART IN THE HOUSE."

(MACMILLAN, 1876.)]

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

[Illustration: ROBERT BATEMAN.

FROM "ART IN THE HOUSE."

(MACMILLAN, 1876.)]

[Sidenote: JOSEPH PENNELL.]

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

[Sidenote: AMERICAN DRAUGHTSMEN.]

Our American cousins have taught us another mode of treatment in magazine pages. It is what I have elsewhere described as the "card-basket style." A number of naturalistic sketches are thrown accidentally together, the upper ones hiding the under ones partly, and to give variety the corner is occasionally turned down. There has been a great run on this idea of late years, but I fancy it is a card trick about "played out."

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

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

[Illustration: HEYWOOD SUMNER.

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

[Illustration: CHARLES KEENE.

ILLUSTRATION TO "THE GOOD FIGHT." ("ONCE A WEEK," 1859.)

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

[Illustration: HEYWOOD SUMNER.

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

[Sidenote: THE "ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE."]

"The English Illustrated Magazine," under Mr. Comyns Carr's editorship, by its use of both old and modern headings, initials and ornaments, did something towards encouraging the taste for decorative design in books. Among the artists who designed pages therein should be named Henry Ryland and Louis Davis, both showing graceful ornamental feeling, the children of the latter artist being very charming.

[Illustration: LOUIS DAVIS.

FROM THE "ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE" (1892).]

[Illustration: HENRY RYLAND.

FROM THE "ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE" (1894).]

But it would need much more space to attempt to do justice to the ability of my contemporaries, especially in the purely illustrative division, than I am able to give.

[Sidenote: "ONCE A WEEK."]

The able artists of "Punch," however, from John Leech to Linley Sambourne, have done much to keep alive a vigorous style of drawing in line, which, in the case of Mr. Sambourne, is united with great invention, graphic force, and designing power. In speaking of "Punch," one ought not to forget either the important part played by "Once a Week" in introducing many first-rate artists in line. In its early days we had Charles Keene illustrating Charles Reade's "Good Fight," with much feeling for the decorative effect of the old German woodcut. Such admirable artists as M. J. Lawless and Frederick Sandys--the latter especially distinguished for his splendid line drawings in "Once a Week" and "The Cornhill;" one of his finest is here given, "The Old Chartist," which accompanied a poem by Mr. George Meredith. Indeed, it is impossible to speak too highly of Mr. Sandys' draughtsmanship and power of expression by means of line; he is one of our modern English masters who has never, I think, had justice done to him.

[Illustration: F. SANDYS.

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

[Illustration: M. J. LAWLESS.

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: THE INFLUENCE OF PHOTOGRAPHY.]

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

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

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

[Illustration: WALTER CRANE.

FROM GRIMM'S "HOUSEHOLD STORIES." (MACMILLAN, 1882.)]

[Illustration: WALTER CRANE.

FRONTISPIECE. "PRINCESS FIORIMONDE" (MACMILLAN, 1880).]

[Illustration: WALTER CRANE.

"THE SIRENS THREE" OPENING PAGE. (MACMILLAN, 1886.)]

[Sidenote: A DECORATIVE IDEAL.]

This, however, may be as much the tendency of an age as the result of photographic invention, although the influence of the photograph must count as one of the most powerful factors of that tendency. Thought and vision divide the world of art between them--our thoughts follow our vision, our vision is influenced by our thoughts. A book may be the home of both thought and vision. Speaking figuratively, in regard to book decoration, some are content with a rough shanty in the woods, and care only to get as close to nature in her more superficial aspects as they can. Others would surround their house with a garden indeed, but they demand something like an architectural plan. They would look at a frontispiece like a façade; they would take hospitable encouragement from the title-page as from a friendly inscription over the porch; they would hang a votive wreath at the dedication, and so pass on into the hall of welcome, take the author by the hand and be led by him and his artist from room to room, as page after page is turned, fairly decked and adorned with picture, and ornament, and device; and, perhaps, finding it a dwelling after his desire, the guest is content to rest in the ingle nook in the firelight of the spirit of the author or the play of fancy of the artist; and, weaving dreams in the changing lights and shadows, to forget life's rough way and the tempestuous world outside.

[Illustration]