A History of Wood Engraving – Chapter 6 Part 2

A HISTORY OF WOOD-ENGRAVING

Chapter 6 – Part II

These pages are a comprehensive history of wood-engraving, with some scanned images.

Source – The Illustrated London News.

From a series of articles published between April 20th 1844 and July 6th 1844

CHAPTER ONE – ORIGIN OF WOOD-ENGRAVING. OLD WOOD-CUTS AND BLOCK BOOKS IMPRESSED BY MEANS OF FRICTION.

CHAPTER TWO – OF THE INVENTION OF TYPOGRAPHY, OR THE ART OF MOVEABLE LETTERS, AND THE INVENTION OF THE PRINTING-PRESS.

CHAPTER THREE – WOOD-ENGRAVING IN CONNECTION WITH THE PRESS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY – 

CHAPTER FOUR – WOOD-ENGRAVING IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY :- PART I – PART II – PART III

CHAPTER FIVE – THE DECLINE OF WOOD-ENGRAVING IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY; ITS REVIVAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH; AND ITS SUBSEQUENT EXTENSION. PART I – PART II – PART III – PART IV

CHAPTER SIX – THE PRACTICE OF WOOD-ENGRAVING PART I – PART II

WOOD-ENGRAVING:

ITS HISTORY AND PRACTICE

BY

WILLIAM ANDREW CHATTO

THE PRACTICE OF WOOD-ENGRAVING

One of the great advantages which wood-engraving possesses over copper as a means of multiplying pictorial subjects, is the facility and cheapness with which its productions can be printed at the same time with letter-press.

Wood-engravers are not to be estimated by a comparison with copper-plates; but are to be judged of by the power and significance with which they excite ideas in the mind, with reference to the means employed in their execution, and on a consideration of the thousands whose knowledge is thus extended, and whose pleasure is thus increased, compared with the hundreds who can afford to purchase copper-plate engravings.

Though wood-engraving in connection with the press has already done much for the dissemination of both useful and entertaining knowledge, it has yet more to do. 

Artists of talent are not only every day becoming convinced of the advantages of wood-engraving as a means of communicating to the great body of the people a knowledge and a taste for works of art, but are also furnishing wood-engravers with new designs.

The steam press, a mighty engine, multiplies their joint productions by tens of thousands almost with the rapidity of thought; and yet the demand increases with the supply, and if in those, for whose gratification they are intended, the “appetite increase with what it fed on.”

For the purpose of showing how efficiently wood-engraving, in connection with the steam-press, can represent some of the higher creations of art and convey an idea of their most striking characteristics as displaying the sentiment or imagination of the original artist, the following subjects have been drawn and engraved, not as servile copies of copper-plate engravings, but with regard to the peculiar powers of wood-engraving to translate, if we may so speak such subjects into its own graphic language, with a view to their being multiplied by means of the steam-press.

How far the draughtsman and the engraver have succeeded, we leave our reader to decide for themselves.
The subjects are – 

A Cartoon by Raffaelle. It is to be observed that this subject is entirely executed by means of horizontal, parallel lines, intended to indicate its uniformity of colour as a chiaro-scuro. 

“The prophet Jeremiah” from an engraving after the original painting by Michael Angelo, among his frescos in the Sistine Chapel, at Rome.

A portion of “The Death of the Children of Niobe”, after Wolletts engraving from the painting by Wilson. The foliage, which, in the copper-plate, would cost the engraver much time and pains is, in the wood-cut, executed with great facility. 

“Garden Scene” from Watteau. 

“Head of Captain Coram,” the liberal promoter of the Foundling Hospital, after Hogarth. 

“The Infant Hercules,” after Sir Joshua Reynolds. 

“Imogene” after Westall.

Click on the image to view a larger version

For the proper execution of those cuts the proprietors of the ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS have spared no expense; for their wish has been to present them to their subscribers and readers as the best specimens of wood-engravings of their kind and character that have ever been previously printed by means of a steam-press.

…THE END…