Why Bewick Succeeded: A Note in the History of Wood Engraving

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Paper 11

Why Bewick Succeeded: A Note in the History of Wood Engraving

Jacob Kainen

WHY BEWICK SUCCEEDED:

The Contemporary View of Bewick

During the initial wave of Bewick appreciation, the usually sober Wordsworth wrote in the 1805 edition of Lyrical ballads:[1]

O now that the genius of Bewick were mine,
And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne!
Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose,
For I'd take my last leave both of verse and of prose.
What feats would I work with my magical hand!
Book learning and books would be banished the land.

If art critics as a class were the most conservative in their estimates of his ability, it was one of the most eminent, John Ruskin, whose praise went to most extravagant lengths. Bewick, he asserted, as late as 1890,[2] " ... without training, was Holbein's equal ... in this frame are set together a drawing by Hans Holbein, and one by Thomas Bewick. I know which is most scholarly; but I do not know which is best." Linking Bewick with Botticelli as a draughtsman, he added:[3] "I know no drawing so subtle as Bewick's since the fifteenth century, except Holbein's and Turner's." And as a typical example of popular appreciation, the following, from the June 1828 issue of Blackwood's Magazine, appearing a few months before Bewick's death, should suffice:

Have we forgotten, in our hurried and imperfect enumeration of wise worthies,—have we forgotten "The Genius that dwells on the banks of the Tyne," the matchless, Inimitable Bewick? No. His books lie in our parlour, dining-room, drawing-room, study-table, and are never out of place or time. Happy old man! The delight of childhood, manhood, decaying age!—A moral in every tail-piece—a sermon in every vignette.

This acclaim came to Bewick not only because his subjects had a homely honesty, but also, although not generally taken into account, because of the brilliance and clarity with which they were printed. Compared with the wood engravings of his predecessors, his were more detailed and resonant in black and white, and accordingly seemed miraculous and unprecedented. He could engrave finer lines and achieve better impressions in the press because of improvements in technology which will be discussed later, but for a century the convincing qualities of this new technique in combination with his subject matter led admirers to believe that he was an artist of great stature.

Later, more mature judgment has made it plain that his contributions as a craftsman outrank his worth as an artist. He was no Holbein, no Botticelli—it is absurd to think of him in such terms—but he did develop a fresh method of handling wood engraving. Because of this he represents a turning point in the development of this medium which led to its rise as the great popular vehicle for illustration in the 19th century. In his hands wood engraving underwent a special transformation; it became a means for rendering textures and tonal values. Earlier work on wood could not do this; it could manage only a rudimentary suggestion of tones. The refinements that followed, noticeable in the highly finished products of the later 19th century, came as a direct and natural consequence of Bewick's contributions to the art.

Linton[4] and a few others object to the general claim that Bewick was the reviver or founder of modern wood engraving, not only because the art was practiced earlier, if almost anonymously, and had never really died out, but also because his bold cuts had little in common with their technician's concern with infinite manipulation of surface tones, a feature of later work. But this misses the main point—that Bewick had taken the first actual steps in the new direction.

Unquestionably he gave the medium a new purpose, even though it was not generally adopted until after 1830. Through his pupils, his unrelenting industry, and his enormous influence he fathered a pictorial activity that brought a vastly increased quantity of illustrations to the public. Periodical literature, spurred by accompanying pictures that could be cheaply made, quickly printed, and dramatically pointed, became a livelier force in education. Textbooks, trade journals, dictionaries, and other publications could more effectively teach or describe; scientific journals could include in the body of text neat and accurate pictures to enliven the pages and illustrate the equipment and procedures described. Articles on travel could now have convincingly realistic renditions of architectural landmarks and of foreign sights, customs, personages, and views. The wood engraving, in short, made possible the modern illustrated publication because, unlike copper plate engraving or etching, it could be quickly set up with printed matter. Its use, therefore, multiplied increasingly until just before 1900, when it was superseded for these purposes by the photomechanical halftone.

But while Bewick was the prime mover in this revolutionary change, little attention has been given to the important technological development that cleared the way for him. Without it he could not have emerged so startlingly; without it there would have been no modern wood engraving. It is not captious to point out the purely industrial basis for his coming to prominence. Even had he been a greater artist, a study of the technical means at hand would have validity in showing the interrelation of industry and art although, of course, the aesthetic contribution would stand by itself.

But in Bewick's case the aesthetic level is not particularly high. Good as his art was, it wore an everyday aspect: he did not give it that additional expressive turn found in the work of greater artists. It should not be surprising, then, that his work was not inimitable. It is well-known that his pupils made many of the cuts attributed to him, making the original drawings and engraving in his style so well that the results form almost one indistinguishable body of work. The pupils were competent but not gifted, yet they could turn out wood engravings not inferior to Bewick's own. And so we find that such capable technicians as Nesbit, Clennell, Robinson, Hole, the Johnsons, Harvey, and others all contributed to the Bewick cult.

Linton, who worshipped him as an artist but found him primitive as a technician, commented:[5] "Widely praised by a crowd of unknowing connoisseurs and undiscriminating collectors, we have yet, half a century after his death, to point out how much of what is attributed to him is really by his hand.

Chatto,[6] who obtained his information from at least one Bewick pupil, says that many of the best tailpieces in the History of British birds were drawn by Robert Johnson, and that "the greater number of those contained in the second volume were engraved by Clennell." Granted that the outlook and the engraving style were Bewick's, and that these were notable contributions, the fact that the results were so close to his own points more to an effective method of illustration than to the outpourings of genius.

Low Status of the Woodcut

Bewick's training could not have been less promising. Apprenticed to Ralph Beilby at the age of fourteen, he says of his master:[7]

... The work-place was filled with the coarsest kind of steel-stamps, pipe moulds, bottle moulds, brass clock faces, door plates, coffin plates, bookbinders letters and stamps, steel, silver and gold seals, mourning rings, &c. He also undertook the engraving of arms, crests and cyphers, on silver, and every kind of job from the silversmiths; also engraving bills of exchange, bank notes, invoices, account heads, and cards.... The higher department of engraving, such as landscapes or historical plates, I dare say, was hardly thought of by my master....

A little engraving on wood was also done, but Bewick tells us that his master was uncomfortable in this field and almost always turned it over to him. His training, obviously, was of a rough and ready sort, based upon serviceable but routine engraving on metal. There was no study of drawing, composition, or any of the refinements that could be learned from a master who had a knowledge of art. Whatever Bewick had of the finer points of drawing and design he must have picked up by himself.

When he completed his apprenticeship in 1774 at the age of twenty-one, the art of engraving and cutting on wood was just beginning to show signs of life after more than a century and a half of occupying the lowest position in the graphic arts. Since it could not produce a full gamut of tones in the gray register, which could be managed brilliantly by the copper plate media—line engraving, etching, mezzotint and aquatint—it was confined to ruder and less exacting uses, such as ornamental headbands and tailpieces for printers and as illustrations for cheap popular broadsides. When good illustrations were needed in books and periodicals, copper plate work was almost invariably used, despite the fact that it was more costly, was much slower in execution and printing, and had to be bound in with text in a separate operation. But while the Society of Arts had begun to offer prizes for engraving or cutting on wood (Bewick received such a prize in 1775) the medium was still moribund. Dobson[8] described its status as follows:

During the earlier part of the eighteenth century engraving on wood can scarcely be said to have flourished in England. It existed—so much may be admitted—but it existed without recognition or importance. In the useful little État des Arts en Angleterre, published in 1755 by Roquet the enameller,—a treatise so catholic in its scope that it included both cookery and medicine,—there is no reference to the art of wood-engraving. In the Artist's Assistant, to take another book which might be expected to afford some information, even in the fifth edition of 1788, the subject finds no record, even though engraving on metal, etching, mezzotinto-scraping—to say nothing of "painting on silks, sattins, etc." are treated with sufficient detail. Turning from these authorities to the actual woodcuts of the period, it must be admitted that the survey is not encouraging.

Earlier, among other critics of the deficiencies of the woodcut, Horace Walpole[9] had remarked:

I have said, and for two reasons, shall say little of wooden cuts; that art never was executed with any perfection in England; engraving on metal was a final improvement of the art, and supplied the defects of cuttings in wood. The ancient wooden cuts were certainly carried to a great heighth, but that was the merit of the masters, not of the method.

Woodcut and Wood Engraving

The wood engraving, on the other hand, started with a section of dense wood of a uniform texture, usually box or maple, and with the end-grain rather than the plank as surface. For larger engravings a number of sections were mortised together. The drawing was made on the block, not in pen-and-ink although this could be done (certain types of wood engraving reproduced pen drawings) but in gray washes with a full range of tones. The engraver, using a burin similar to that employed in copper plate work, then ploughed out wood in delicate ribbons (see fig. 2). Since the surface was to receive ink, the procedure moved from black to white: the more lines taken away, the lighter the tones would appear, and, conversely, where fewest or finest lines were removed the tones would be the darkest. In the finished print the unworked surface printed black while each of the engraved lines showed as white. It was the "white line" that gave wood engraving its special quality. On the smoother end-grain it could be manipulated with extreme fineness, an impossibility with the plank side, which would tear slightly or "feather" when the burin was moved across the grain. Tones and textures approaching the scale of copper plate engraving could be created, except, of course, that the lines were white and the impressions not so brilliant. But since grays were achieved by the visual synthesis of black ink and white paper, it mattered little whether the engraved lines were black or white so long as the desired tones could be produced.

For purposes of realism, this was an enormous improvement over the old black-line woodcut. Natural tones and textures could be imitated. The engraver was no longer a mere mechanical craftsman cutting around existing lines; special skill was needed to translate tones in terms of white lines of varying thickness and spacing. The opportunity also existed for each engraver to work his own tones in his own manner, to develop a personal system. In short, the medium served the same purpose as copper plate line engraving, with the added virtue that it could be printed together with type in one impression. If it failed artistically to measure up to line engraving or to plank woodcut, this was not the fault of the process but of the popular reproductive ends which it almost invariably served.

Actually, white-line engraving for relief printing dates from the 15th century. The most conspicuous early examples are the so-called "dotted prints" or "gravures en manière criblée," in which the designs were brought out by dots punched in the plates, and by occasional engraved lines (see fig. 3). Until Koehler's[10] study made this fact plain, 19th-century critics could hardly believe that these were merely white-line metal relief prints, inked on the surface like woodcuts. But a number of other examples of the same period exist which were also made directly on copper or type metal—the method, although rudimentary, being similar in intent to 19th-century wood engraving. One of these examples (fig. 4), in the collection of the U. S. National Museum, is typical. This was not simply an ordinary line engraving printed in relief rather than in the usual way; the management of the lights shows that it was planned as a white-line engraving. The reason for this treatment, obviously, was to permit the picture and the type to be printed in one operation.

The well-known wood engravings of soldiers with standards, executed by Urs Graf in the early 1500's, are probably the only white-line prints in this medium by an accomplished artist until the 18th century. But these are mainly in outline, with little attempt to achieve tones. No advantage was gained by having the lines white rather than black other than an engaging roughness in spots: the prints were simply whimsical excursions by an inventive artist.

Relief engraving on type metal and end-grain wood really got under way as a consistent process in England at the beginning of the 18th century. Chatto[11] gives this date as conjecture, without actual evidence, but a first-hand account can be found in the rare and little-known book, published in 1752, in which the combination of anonymous authorship and a misleading title obscured the fact that it is a digest of John Baptist Jackson's manuscript journal. This eminent woodcutter, who was born about 1700 and worked in England during the early years of the century, must be considered an important and reliable witness. The unknown editor paraphrases Jackson on the subject of engraving for relief purposes:[12]

... I shall give a brief Account of the State of Cutting on Wood in England for the Type Press before he [Jackson] went to France in 1725. In the beginning of this Century a remarkable Blow was given to all Cutters on Wood, by an Invention of engraving on the same sort of Metal which Types are cast with. The celebrated Mr. Kirkhal, an able Engraver on Copper, is said to be the first who performed a Relievo Work to answer the use of Cutting on Wood. This could be dispatched much sooner, and consequently answered the purpose of Booksellers and Printers, who purchased those sort of Works at a much chaper [sic] Rate than could be expected from an Engraver on Wood; it required much more Time to execute with accuracy any piece of Work of the same Measure with those carved on Metal. This performance was very much in Vogue, and continued down to this Day, to serve for Initials, Fregii and Finali; it is called a clear Impression, but often gray and hazy, far from coming up to that clear black Impression produced with cutting on the side of a piece of Box-wood or Pear-tree. Much about the same time there started another Method of Engraving on the end ways of Wood itself, which was cut to the height of the Letters to accompany them in the Press, and engraved in the same Manner as the Metal Performance; this Method was also encouraged, and is the only way of Engraving on Wood at present used in the English Printing-houses. These performances are to be seen in Magazines, News Papers, &c. and are the Remains of the ancient Manner of Cutting on Wood, and is the reason why the Curious concluded it was intirely lost.

This is important evidence that end-grain wood engraving was not only known in England in the early 18th century but was actually the prevailing style. In that country, where a woodcut tradition did not exist, the new method gained its first foothold. But it was not yet conceived in terms of white lines; it was merely a cheaper substitute for cutting with the knife on the plank. In European countries with long art and printing traditions, this substitute method was considered beneath contempt. Jackson[13] describes the aversion of French woodcutters for the newer and cheaper process:

From this Account it is evident that there was little encouragement to be hoped for in England to a Person whose Genius led him to prosecute his Studies in the ancient Manner; which obliged Mr. Jackson to go over to the Continent, and see what was used in the Parisian Printing-houses. At his arrival there he found the French engravers on Wood all working in the old Manner; no Metal engravers, or any of the same performance on the end of the Wood, was ever used or countenanced by the Printers or Booksellers in that City.

There were good reasons for the lack of development of a white-line style, even in England with its lower standards in printing and illustrative techniques. On the coarse paper of the period fine white lines could not be adapted to relief (typographical) presswork; they would be lost in printing because the ribbed paper received ink unevenly. Even the simple black lines of the traditional woodcut usually printed spottily when combined with type. The white lines, then, had to be broadly separated. This did not permit the engraving of delicate tones. If this could not be achieved, the effect was similar to woodcutting but with less crispness and accuracy in the drawing. A good woodcut in the old manner could do everything the wood engraving could do, before Bewick, with the added virtue that the black line was comparatively clear and unequivocal, as can be seen in figure 5.

The woodcut, in the hands of a remarkable cutter, could produce miracles of delicacy. It could, in fact, have black lines so fine and so closely spaced as to take on the character of line engraving. It did not, of course, have the range of tones or the delicacy of modeling possible in the copper plate medium, where every little trench cut by the burin would hold ink BELOW the wiped-off surface, to be transferred to dampened paper under the heavy pressure of the cylinder press. In addition, the roughness of early paper, which was serious for the woodcut, created no difficulties for the line engraver or for other workers in the intaglio or gravure media.

But the influence of copper plate work was strong, and some skillful but misguided woodcut craftsmen tried to obtain some degree of its richness. French artists from about 1720, notably Jean M. Papillon, produced cuts so delicate that their printing became a problem (see fig. 6). Jackson, who had worked with the French artist in Paris, condemned his efforts to turn the woodcut into a tonal medium through the creation of numerous delicate lines because such effects were impossible to print. Jackson[14] is quoted in the Enquiry:

In 1728 Mr. Pappillon began his small Paris Almanack, wherein is placed Cuts (done on Wood) allusive to each Month, with the Signs of the Zodiack, in such a Minute Stile, that he seems to forget in that Work the Impossibility of printing it in a Press with any Clearness ... But alas! His father and M. le Seur [also woodcutters] had examined Impression and its Process, and saw how careful the Ancients were to keep a proper Distance between their Lines and hatched Works, so as to produce a clean Impression ... I saw the Almanack in a horrid Condition before I left Paris, the Signs of the Zodiack wore like a Blotch, notwithstanding the utmost Care and Diligence the Printer used to take up very little Ink to keep them clean.

It is clear that too thin a strip of white between black lines was not suitable for printing in the first half of the 18th century. But when Bewick's cuts after 1790 are examined we can see many white lines thinner than a hair. Obviously something had happened to permit him a flexibility not granted to earlier workers on wood. Bewick's whole craft depended upon his ability to control white lines of varying thickness. Why was he able to do this, and why could it be done without trouble by others after him?

Early paper, as already mentioned, had a ribbed grain because it was made on a hand mould in which wires were closely laid in one direction, but with enough space between to allow the water in the paper pulp to drain through. Crossing wires, set some distance apart, held them together. Each wire, however, made a slight impression in the finished paper, the result being a surface with minute ripples. The surface of this laid paper presented irregularities even after the glazing operation, done with hammers before about 1720 and with wooden rollers up to about 1825.[15]

In 1756 James Whatman began to manufacture a new, smooth paper to replace the laid variety that had been used since the importation of paper into Europe in the 12th century. Whether Whatman or the renowned printer John Baskerville was the guiding spirit in this development is uncertain.[16] Baskerville, who had been experimenting with type faces of a lighter and more delicate design, had been dissatisfied with the uneven surface of laid paper. Possibly he saw examples of the Chinese wallpaper on wove stock, made from a cloth mesh, which was a staple of the trade with the Orient. Hunter[17] describes the new mould:

The wove covering was made of fine brass screening and received its name because it was woven on a loom in about the same manner as cloth. It left in the paper an indistinct impression resembling a fabric. Baskerville had been in the japanning and metal-working trades before becoming a printer, so that he was naturally familiar with this material, metal screening having been used in England for other purposes before it was put to use as a material upon which to mould sheets of paper.

The first book printed in Europe on wove paper unquestionably was the Latin edition of Virgil produced by Baskerville in 1757. This was, however, partly on laid also. The actual paper was made in James Whatman's mill in Maidstone, Kent, on the banks of the river Len, where paper had been made since the 17th century. Whatman, who became sole owner of the mill in 1740, specialized in fine white paper of the highest quality. But while the book attracted considerable attention it did not immediately divert the demand for laid paper, since it was looked on more as an oddity than as a serious achievement. Baskerville was strictly an artist: he took unlimited time and pains, he had no regard for the prevailing market, and he produced sporadically; also, he was harshly criticized and even derided for his strange formats.[18] With such a reputation for impracticality the printer's influence was negligible during his lifetime although, of course, it was widely felt later.

About 1777 the French became acquainted with wove paper, which Franklin brought to Paris for exhibition. In 1779, according to Hunter,[19] M. Didot the famous printer, "having seen the papier vélin that Baskerville used, addressed a letter to M. Johannot of Annonay, a skilled papermaker, asking him to endeavour to duplicate the smooth and even surface of this new paper. Johannot was successful in his experiments, and for his work in this field he was in 1781 awarded a gold medal by Louis XVI."

Wove paper was so slow to come into use that Jenkins gives the date 1788 for its first appearance in book printing.[20] While he missed a few examples, notably by Baskerville, it is certain that few books with wove paper were published before 1790. But after that date its manufacture increased with such rapidity that by 1805 it had supplanted laid paper for many printing purposes.

The reasons for this gap between the introduction and the acceptance of the new paper are not clear; the inertia of tradition as well as the probable higher cost no doubt played a part, and we may assume that early wove paper had imperfections and other drawbacks serious enough to cause printers to prefer the older material.

Bewick's early work was printed on laid paper. Up to 1784 he had worked in a desultory fashion on wood, much of his time being occupied with seal cutting because there was still no real demand for wood engraving. In Gay's Fables, published in 1779, the cuts printed so poorly on the laid paper (see fig. 7) that Dobson[21] was moved to say:

Generally speaking, the printing of all these cuts, even in the earlier editions (and it is absolutely useless to consult any others), is weak and unskillful. The fine work of the backgrounds is seldom made out, and the whole impression is blurred and unequal.