A STUDY OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE CRAFT
BY HERBERT FÜRST (\'TIS\') WITH A CHAPTER
ON THE PRACTICE OF XYLOGRAPHY BY
W. THOMAS SMITH WITH OVER TWO
HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS IN
BLACK & WHITE AND
SIXTEEN PLATES
IN COLOUR

Made and Printed in Great Britain by
Lund, Humphries & Company, Limited
The Country Press, Bradford, England
and at Three Amen Corner
London, E.C.4

R. MALCOLM SALAMAN was good enough to
bring Mrs. Raverat\'s woodcuts under my notice ;
they excited in me an interest in xylography as a
means of free aesthetic expression. Mr. Salaman was
thus the " first cause " of the following study and to
him as the indefatigable charnpion of print makers I

for the opinions I have expressed, the inferences and deductions I
have made and the conclusions I have come to.
My thanks are also due to Mr. Campbell Dodgson, Mr. M. T. H.
Sadler, Mr. R. A. Walker, Mr. John Lea, Mr. Frank Brangwyn,
Mr. E. O. Hoppé and Mr. Léon de Smet for the kindness with which
they have placed their valuable possessions at my disposal ; to Mr.
Laurence Binyon, Professor A. M. Hind, Professor A. W. Pollard,
Mr. Martin Hardie, who have allowed me to consult them ; to Mr.
Huntly Carter, for interesting information about Russian art and
permission to reproduce some of the material collected by him in
Russia ; to Messrs. H. W. Davies, of J. J. Leighton\'s, A. Zvemmer,
successor to R. Jaeschke, Arthur Greatorex, Bromhead and Cutts, and
" the XXL Gallery," for information and help. Further, I am indebted
to Signor Ettore Cozzani, the Editor of the Italian pioneer magazine
" Eroica," for permission to reproduce some of its interesting contents ;
and to Mr. J. J. A. Murphy, who made himself responsible for a
collection of the most characteristic American work and obtained the
necessary permissions from the artists ; to Mr. Ludovic Rodo, who
helped me in a like manner, with regard to a number of French artists.
Last, but not least, I wish to thank all those artists, both English and
foreign, who freely consented to the reproduction of their work and so
helped to give the book a more vital and immediate interest. In this
connection and in fairness to the artists, it should be pointed out that
it has been found impossible to do them in every case perfect justice
so far as the illustrations are concerned. A compromise was inevitaWe
if the price of the book was to remain at a reasonable figure. The
difficulties are threefold. Without printing each colour reproduction
separately and in the process most suitable for each case, it is impossible
to produce entirely accurate results. Next, it has not been found prac-
ticable to keep the size of the illustrations to a uniform scale ; some

of the prints have had to be reduced so greatly, that the application of
the same ratio of reduction to the smaller ones would have destroyed
their purpose. Lastly, the technique employed by some artists, e.g.,
Mr Timothy Cole, is unsuitable for reproduction either by line or
half-tone process, and to employ any other was, for reasons already

Witli^rSerence to the chapter on " Hints on the Practice of Xylo-
graphy," for which Mr. W. Thomas Smith is entirely responsible, it
should be stated that Mr. Smith was asked by me to add it to my
book as he is one of the now rapidly diminishing band of craftsmen
who were properly apprenticed to wood engraving as a trade; his
thorough and practical knowledge of " the white line," coupled with
his sympathy with creative design will, I hope, be found of value to
artists who may wish to take up xylography as an additional means ot
expressing their emotions and thoughts.

The Introduction: Pointing out the relation of the modern
Woodcut to our own times - xxvii.

The First Chapter : Defining the nature of the Woodcut and
the Wood Engraving, which together constitute the Craft
of Xylography ------ i

The Second Chapter: Giving a short survey of the History of
the Woodcut from the earliest known example to the
commencement of the Nineteenth Century

The Third Chapter: DeaHng with the Qualities of Design and
Craft during the period surveyed in the preceding chapter

The Fourth Chapter : Creative Design in Xylography : Its
Origin and First Developments - - .

The Ninth Chapter: A short one, preparing the ground
for the change that has come over the Artist\'s attitude
towards Nature - - - - - -163

1ST of ILLUSTRATIONS in the ALPHABETICAL
ORDER OF THE NAMES OF THE ARTISTS

The figures in brackets denote the number of the illustration ; the
figures in black type the page on which they appear ; the other figures
the pages on which reference to them is made in the text. Anonymous
cuts are mentioned under the name of the cutter\'s country. The
nationality of the artist is indicated as follows : (A.) United States ;
(Au.) Austrian ; (B.) Belgian ; (Br.) British ; (D.) Dutch ; (F1)
Flemish; (Fr.) French; (G.) German; (Gr.) Greek; (I.) Italian;

Japanese ; (N.) Norwegian ; (P.) Polish ; (R.) Russian ; (S.) Swiss ;
[Sp.) Spanish.

\'s) denotes a cut on Soft wood ; (/f) a cut or engraving on Hard wood ;
7) a Linoleum cut; it has, however, not been possible to verify these
designations in every case.

ARIEL, Marie (Fr.) Illustration {h) for a projected poem :
" Les Marguérites sont effeuillées," designed by
Maximilian Vox (Fr.)

BERNARD, Emile (Fr.) Illustration (s) for " Chansons
de France " ; published by Pelletan Helleu, Paris.

BEWICK, John (Br.) Illustration {h) for Goldsmith\'s
" Deserted Village " ; " The Sad Historian."

BEWICK, Thomas (Br.) "The Owl," (A) from
" Fibres of British Landbirds, engraved by T.
Bewick, to which are added a few foreign birds with
their vulgar and scientific names." Vol. i.* New-
castle-upon-Tyne, 1800.

BEWICK, Thomas (Br.) Illustration {h) for Goldsmith\'s
" Deserted Village " ; " The Hermit at his morning
devotion," designed by J. Johnson. From " Poems
of Goldsmith and Parnell."

BEWICK\'S School (Br.) " Grasshopper " (5) a cut used
by Grocers ; from The Rev. Thos. Hugo\'s " Bewick\'s
Woodcuts."

BEWICK\'S School (Br.) " Horrid Deed " (A), cut for a
Broadside first published in Newcastle, 1799 ; from

BLAKE, William (Br.) Two of the seventeen cuts {h) for
Ambrose Phillips\' " Imitation of Virgil\'s first

-" Sheep shearing " {h) ; from " Modern Wood-
cutters," No. 2. Edited and published by Herbert

CALVERT, Edward (Br.) \'\' Christian ploughing the
last furrow of life " (A), one of his " ten spiritual
designs." From the proof in the British Museum.

CARPI, Ugo da (1.) Chiaroscuro print after Raphael\'s
" Descent from the Cross." From the print in the
British Museum. plate

CHINESE, a.d. 868. Cut (5) from the Chinese Text of
the Sanscrit Book : " The Diamond Sutra " re-
presenting " The Buddha discoursing to Subhuti."
From the copy in the British Museum. plate

COLE, Timothy (A.) Engraving {h) after Duccio da
Buoninsegna\'s fresco in the Duomo at Siena. plate
By kind permission of the Artist.

for Claudel\'s " Protée," and tailpiece for the same. [126, 127], 160 160/1
By kind permission of the Artist.

DERAIN, a. (Fr.) One of the Woodcuts for " L\'enchan-
teur pourissant " {h) Editions de la nouvelle Revue
Française. From the print published in " Broom."
By permission of M. Gaston Gallimard and Mr. Cecil
Palmer.

DISERTORI, Benvenuto (L) " Still Life " (5). ^^ [140], 176 177
By kind permission of the Editor of " Eroica."

Marche\'s " Le Chevalier Délibéré," reproduced
from the reproduction in " Illustrated Monographs,"

ENGLISH, Late XVII. Century. Cut (s) from "Robin
Hood\'s Garland " from The Rev. Thomas Hugo\'s

FLEMISH, about 1450. A page from a block book (5)
" Biblia Pauperum " From the copy in the British

FOSTER, Marcia Lane (Br.) Illustrations {h) for Anatole
France\'s " The Merrie Tales of Jacques Tourne-

Both woodcuts are reproduced with the consent of the
Société des Droits des Auteurs and by courtesy of Sir
Michael Sadler.

1504. "St. Matthew" (s) from Petrus de
Kosenhem\'s " Memorabiles evangelistarum figurae "

GRAF, Urs (G.) " The Standard bearer of Zug " (s),
one of a series of " Standard bearers of the Swiss

GRIBBLE, Vivien (Br.) Decoration {h) for the Title
page of " Sixe Idillia," published by Messrs. Duck-
worths. [77], no 107
By kind permission of the Artist and the Publishers.

HOKUSAI (J.) " Kirifuri Fall, in Kurakarni Mountain,
Province of Shimotsuke " ; Colour woodcut (s) from
" The Waterfalls," a series of eight prints ; published
according to Goncourt,i827, or according to Fenollosa
between 1830-1835. See Laurence Binyon\'s Cata-
logue—British Museum. plate

ITALIAN, 1490. A page (reduced) and illustration (s)
from the so-called " Malermi Bible." Venice :
Lucantonio Giunta.

— 1499. A page from the " Hypnerotomachia Poli-
phili " (s.) Venice, Aldus Manutius.

JACKSON, J. B. (Br.) " View of Roman Ruins " after
Marco Ricci colour print (s.) From the print in the
British Museum. plate

JONNARD (Fr.) Wood engraving {h) after J. F. Millet\'s
La Tricoteuse."
From CasselVs Magazine, 1889, by kind permission of
the Publishers.

JOU, Louis (Sp.-Fr.) " Portrait of a Poet " (/?). From
a proof in possession of J. J. A. Murphy, Esq.
By courtesy of Le Goupy, Le Caplain & Co., Paris.

JUNGTOW (G.) " Death as a Friend " {h) from a
Dance of Death " series, designed by Alfred Rethel.

KANDINSKY, WassiU (P.) Illustrations (5) for
Klaenge," published by R. Piper, Munich.

-— One of the illustrations (5) for Flaubert\'s " St. Julien
l\'Hospitallier." From proofs in possession of the

LEPÈRE, Auguste (Fr.) " L\'Abbreuvoir " {h). From
a proof in possession of Campbell Dodgson, Esq.,

LÜTZELBURGER, Hans (G.) " Der Edelmann " {s)
from the " Dance of Death " series designed by

Reproduced from the proof in the possession of R.
Glenday, Esq., by the owner\'s courtesy and with
permission of the Artist\'s widow.

MASEREEL, Frans (B.) The first four illustrations of
the picture-story " Le Soleil " " Editions du

NICHOLSON, William (Br.) " Sada Yacco." Wood-
cut coloured (5) from the second series of " Twelve
Woodcuts," published by William Heinemann.

LL.D." (5). Made for the Savile Club, and re-
produced for the first time. plate [57], 76 face 76
By kind permission of the Artist.

NOLDE, Emil (G.) "Portrait of a Young Man" {s)
reproduced from " Das Holzschnittbuch," by P.

PAPILLON, J. M. (Fr.) Page decoration headpiece {h)
(1727) from a proof in the British Museum.

PISSARRO, Lucien, (Fr.-Br.) " Les Bûcherons "
Illustration {h) from " The Queen of the Fishes."
Eragny Press.

PISSARRO, Paul Emile (Fr.) " Landscape" (A).
From a proof kindly lent by M. Ludovic Rodo, with
the Artist\'s permission.
PISSARRO, Ludovic Rodolphe. See Rodo.
RAVERAT, Gwendolen (Br.) " Sir Thomas Browne "

REUWICH, Erhard, of Utrecht (D.) Frontispiece (5) of
the i486, Dutch Edition of Breydenbach\'s " Pil-
grimage to Jerusalem."

RICKETTS, Charles and SHANNON, Charles (Br.)
Opening page for their edition of Marlowe and Chap-
man\'s " Hero and Leander" (1894) (/?).

RICKETTS, Charles (Br.) Opening pages for " Gray\'s
Spiritual Poems " (h). Vale Press.

ROBERTS, Jack (Br.-Fr.) " La Rue du Calvaire,
Montmartre " (5). By kind permission of the Artist.

ROHLFS, Christian (G.) "The Prisoner" (s) from
" Das Holzschnittbuch," by P. Westheim.
By kind permission of the publisher, Herr Gustav
Kiepenheuer.

RUSSIAN. Three woodcuts (s) reproduced in " Tcher-
naia Goduna " (The Black Year), published 1922 by
the Soviet. By courtesy of Huntly Carter, Esq. [204-

SCHLANGENHAUSEN, Emma (Au.) " Peace, be
still! " (/) from " Die Worte Christi." plate

SEABY, Allen E. (Br.) " The Halcyon " woodcut (s).
in Colours. By kind permission of the Artist, plate

SHANNON, Charles, R.A. (Br.) "The Porch" Chiar-
oscuro cut {h), one of a series of months and seasons,
designed for plates. plate

SKOCZYLAS, Wladislaw (P.) Illustration (A) for
" Janosik," a Polish ballad, published at Warsaw,
1920.

SWAp (Br.) " The Old Chartist "(A) engraved from
1863 Frederick Sandys for " Once a Week,"

TAYLOR, Henry Fitch (A.) " Man on Horseback "
^ By kind permission of the Artist.

UNZELMANN, (G.) " The Death of Frederick the
Great " {h) from Adolph Menzel\'s designs for
Kugler\'s " History of Frederick the Great."

URUSjHIBA^, Y. (J.) " The Devil\'s Bridge " Colour
print (s) in 52 printings after a water-colour by Frank
Brangwyn, R.A. plate

VALLOTTON, Felix (Fr.) "Portrait of Robert Schu-
mann (s). Par autorisation Ed. Sagot, Paris.

VERA, Paul (Fr.) Frontispiece {h) for " Architectures,
édité par la Compagnie des Arts Français."

Printed in the " Modern Woodcutters," published
by Herbert Fürst. By kind permission of the Artist.

WEISS, Josef (G.) " Dives and Lazarus " from a
series of New Testament illustrations.

WILLIAMS, M. A. (Br.) " Sidney\'s Tree" {h), en-
graved from a design by J. T. Horn. From a proof in
the British Museum.

WOLF, Gustav, Professor (G.) "The Third day of
Creation " (5) one of a series of illustrations for the
Book of Genesis.

[136], i74face 174

[137], 174 169

[138], 174 175

[139]. 175 176

ZORACH, Marguerite (A.) " Province Town Players "
(0- By kind permission of the Artist.

the introduction : pointing out the
relation of the modern woodcut to
our own times

HE " general reader," that faithful shadow of the
equally insubstantial but perennially popular " man
in the street," may well be forgiven if not a few of
the illustrations which accompany the text of this
book cause him, instead of pleasure, no more than

The world, which, though few will believe it,
includes also the "Art world," has passed and is
still passing through a quick succession of curious phases ; each
apparently in violent opposition to its immediate predecessor and yet
all linked together by the vital energies of organic growth.
Later ages will probably decide that humanity after an infancy—
strictly speaking an incapacity of articulate utterance—of many aeons,
came of age about the turn of the Twentieth Century, A.D., its
adolescence having lasted from Aristode to Darwin or thereabouts.
What we are witnessing now, the clash of opinions and the clatter of
niore substantial things, is the outward sign of humanity\'s endeavour
to settle down and to make itself at home in and on a sphere, the
material extent of which it has only recently, that is within a child\'s
memory, fully measured. . , . . ,

Man is at last becoming self-conscious : that is to say, trying to take
an objective view of all things, and in particular, of their all-enwrapping
envelope : his own Ego. In course of this attempt he is suffering many
shocks, some of them violent, as might be expected. He is discovering
on the one hand his limitations, on the other a hitherto uniniagined
and unimaginable increase of his potentialities. He may make mistakes,
he may err ; he may sin ; innocent he is no longer. He cannot excuse
himself with " The woman thou gavest me," nor she thrust the blame
on the " beguiling serpent." ^ .

Mankind is learning to shoulder the responsibihty of its own actions:
" is about to take—within inevitable limitations—the control of its
destiny. No wonder it is both restive and nervous,
fhis may sound a strange and grandiloquent sort of introduction to
so humble a theme as " The Modern Woodcut." But the reader will
find that its outstanding characteristics are self-consciousness and a

sense of personal value, qualities strikingly absent from earlier
stages. There is in all earlier work a trait of aesthetic innocence, a
confiding trust in the absoluteness of its ideals, be these personified by
a thousand goblins or a single God, or found in ancient creeds or
" the new learning." To-day all this is gone : lost—I think irretrievably
—to the modern artist.

The simplicity, the crudity even, that is apparent in so much modern
work is in fact a manifestation of heightened complexity. To-day, the
artist knows more consciously than ever before, that art consists in
leaving out rather than in putting in; he will, therefore, seek to do with
one stroke as much as his immediate forbears did with a hundred.
But what distinguishes him, in common with all other truly modern
workers, is that he feels hiniself the father of a potent future rather
than the degenerate grandchild of a " glorious " past.

THE FIRST CHAPTER: DEFINING THE NATURE
OF THE WOODCUT AND THE WOOD ENGRAVING
WHICH TOGETHER CONSTITUTE THE CRAFT OF
XYLOGRAPHY

NCE generally understood as a form of illustration,
the term " cut" has all but lost its significance. Our
grandfathers used the word to designate cheap prints
and illustrations generally, and in this sense it still
survives in the name of a weekly publication, popular
with the errand boys and office boys, who thus helped
its proprietor to a viscountcy and a Westminster funeral. Habent
sua fata. . .

There is no doubt that, in the north of Europe at all events, wood
was the cheapest and most convenient material employed for the
pictorial sublimation and perpetuation of thought, and we, who use
a germanic language, may enjoy the subde relation of scriptures
and pictures made manifest by etymology; the written book being
etymologicalV a species of incised wood. To-day, the cheapest medium

Write, Anglo-Saxon writan = to cut; book, Anglo-Saxon hoc = beech. " The original \' books \' were
pieces of writing on beechen board." skeat, concise etymol. dict.

for the perpetuation, or rather for the multiplication, of both writing
and picture making is metal, and the use of wood for pictorial purposes
is due to other than purely economical reasons. What these reasons
are is the problem we have set ourselves here to study. We must,
therefore, first define the meaning of the term " Woodcut." There are
now about the word " cut" what Sir Thomas Browne, to whom we
owe its first use, would have called " bivious theorems and Janus faced
doctrines"; so that a distinction is attempted between a woodcut and a
wood engraving. That the difference between the two is not funda-
mental will be clear when the methods which distinguish them are
analysed. A woodcut, strictly speaking, is a print from a flat piece of
softwood, e.g^., beech, apple, pear or sycamore wood,^ out of which the
craftsman has carved a design, in such a manner that it niay be inked and
printed upon paper or other similar material. The carving is done with
a small knife or a graver and a gouge, and in the following manner
The craftsman either draws directly or traces an already existing
drawing on the surface of a " plank " of wood, that is to say a board
of about 7/8 inch thickness, sawn parallel with the grain and carefully
planed. The cutter next makes his incisions along the lines of the
drawing, so that after removal of the superfluous wood with knife or
" scrive" and scorper, the design stands out raised from the ground and
ready to be inked. A piece of suitable paper, previously moistened, is
laid upon the inked surface, and subjected to pressure. The kind and
degree of pressure depends on the nature of the design on and the
nature of the paper, the harder and harsher the latter, the greater the

This is a rough oudine of the traditional method employed m the
making of woodcuts. ,

The procedure in the case of wood engraving is very similar, with
the following differences. The wood used is hard wood, generally
boxwood, cut across the grain, not, as in the woodcut, with the grain.
The surface, being on the endgrain of a dense wood, is very much
firmer, and enables the engraver to use a different set of tools, namely,
in addition to the scorpers, and instead of the knife: grpers, tint tools
and " spit stickers " (a tool with a slightly convex cutting edge), and
the threading tool, which produces a series of parallel lines. The object
of these different tools is to enable the craftsman to vary not only the

»Both Linoleum and Rubber are occasionally used as substitutes for soft wood ; the rpulting prints do
not differ from soft-wood cuts necessarily sufficiently to make such differences as exist unmistakable.
^For practical instructions in the craft, the reader is referred to Mr. Thomas Smith\'s chapter at the end
of the book.

width but the character of his lines, and to cover surfaces of even tone
more quickly.

The main difference, however, between the cut and the engraving is
in the cutting action, which, in the case of the knife, is towards, and
in the case of the graver, is away from, the body. It must be noted
that, nevertheless, some craftsmen use the knife on the hard wood,
and the graver,\'or " scrive," has always been used in connection with
soft wood so that, if for no other reason, a hard and fast distinction
cannot be made. But there is another reason which makes it preferable
to regard both methods as one : it is this, that the problem is
fundamentally the same, viz: the production of a print from a relief-
block of wood; that is to say, from a block of wood so cut that its
surface will print the design, exactly as is the case with a rubber

done with a vertical pressure, which may be applied either through
the ordinary printing press or, as is the case with all the engravers\' or
cutters\' proofs, by hand through the means of a burnisher, a brush, a
roller, or even the finger-nail or the^sole of the foot.
As regards the printing, the following observations have to be made.
Woodcuts proper, those cut on the plank of soft wood can, and
often do, show the grain of the wood in printing, a quality much
exploited by the Japanese and also to some extent by European artists.
Wood engravings printed from hard wood show no grain, but
occasionally white lines that cut across the design. These are caused
by the fact that it is impossible to make boxwood blocks of any con-
siderable size ; a nine inch block, such as one of Bewick\'s, preserved
in the British Museum, is now hardly procurable. The modern blocks
are composed of small squares not exceeding one or two square inches
very greatly. These small blocks are glued together and " keyed "
together to make larger surfaces and it happens, either when the wood
is not properly seasoned or when the printing press is not properly geared
that the joints separate, causing the white lines to appear in the print.
Such seams occur frequently also in composite woodcuts on soft wood.
Described in this manner the method of producing prints from wood
would appear to be a very simple matter, but this description has not
touched upon the main problem, which, is the method and the quality
of design ; a great deal, everything in fact, depends upon this.
I would emphasize the method of design, and not the word design

»Amongst Sir Aurel Stein\'s coUection of ninth century Buddhist woodcuts at the British Museum, sheets
of such stamped woodcuts impressions may be seen.

only, which is generally and quite wrongly stressed, because it
inevitably leads to a misunderstanding. The design in itself is not
always and, as we shall see, not necessarily a criterion at all.
Let us, first, visualize the difference between xylography (a term I
will use as including wood cutting as well as wood engraving), and

The simplest of these latter is lithography, because, in the tirst place,
it requires no special tool. The lithographer can draw on the stone
(or its substitutes) either with chalk (lithographic) or with the pen
or with the brush; he can also use a knife to scrape, or a needle to
scratch his drawing if he wishes to break or lighten his tones. Litho-
graphy is based on the antipathy between grease and water, ihe
lithographic stone is, naturally, aluminium or zinc, as substitutes are,
artificially, so constituted that they will greedily absorb both water and
grease. The lithographic chalk is like the lithographic ink, greasy. It
follows that the lithographic surface where it has been first touched
by the greasy chalk and subsequently soaked in water, rejects the grease
on its moistened surface and holds the ink on its greased surface. A
sheet of paper laid upon the stone (or its substitute) will be imprinted,
under pressure with the ink that has been held by the parts ot the

With the exception of the fixing of the drawing by acids, there is,
therefore, no kind of " process," and the actual drawing presents
hardly more difficulties to the artist than a drawing on paper.
The lithograph, like the xylograph, is a surface print.
The " dry point" and the etching are like engravings on metal
" intaglio" prints, that is to say, the ink instead of being picked up
from the surface, is pressed on to the paper from the grooves made
by the tools or the acid. It follows that whilst it is possible both in
xylography and in lithography to print blacks (or any other colour for
that matter) in masses, it is only possible to print blacks trom the
etched and the engraved plate (dry-point is a species ot engraving)
in lines.\' Here then, is the great distinction between the wood and
stone on the one hand and the cited metal processes on the other.
It means that in engraving, in etching and diy point, the artist has to
limit his method of design severely to such forms as are expressible
by fines or parts of Hnes-/.^., dots. In mezzotint and aquatint, on the
other hand, the mechanical disability consists in the fact that these

»There are. it is true, also soft metal cuts which resemble the woodcut, but they are not capable of
producing black masses of the richness which distinguishes the wood block.

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processes, the nature of which we need not discuss here, cannot in
themselves express lines at all. i • i

It is clear then that each process, except the lithographic one perhaps,
imposes upon the craftsman a Uniitation on which his method as
distinct from the nature of his design must be based.
Xylography imposes upon the craftsman\'s hand perhaps a greater
number of limitations than any of the other multiplying processes.
To begin with his material is wooden, even in the metaphorical sense
of the word ; it is not ingratiating; it speaks naturally only in black
and white ; it has no half-tones. It can be forced to render half-tones
only in two ways. One of these consists in lowering the level of the
parts which are to print grey, so that they will not receive so much ink
and will not be subjected to so much pressure. The other method is
to break up the blacks by a system of lines or dots. The planning of
this linear convention can be approached from two opposite directions.
The first and simplest approach was, historically, discovered or at least
exploited last. It starts from the premise that the wood block, uncut,
prints a solid black (or any other colour). Therefore, to draw on it,
it is only necessary to cut grooves into the block which will print
as white lines. The nature, width and number of these white lines will
determine the nature, character and quality of the design. The other
less practical method and the less natural one, but which, requiring
less forethought in cutting, came, for that reason, first into use, is to
regard the block as if it were like a sheet of white paper upon which
the design has to be drawn in black in order to produce the Picture.
The craftsman in this case transfers his drawing to the wood block
and removes all those parts of the wood which are not drawn upon ;
his half-tones are made by preserving the black lines and rendering
shading by hatching or cross hatching of these Unes.When it is con-
sidered that at least eight manipulations of the knife are necessary to
make a single black line in this manner it will be realized how tedious
and cumbersome this approach becomes.

It will be appreciated that the method of design m xylography must
also be affected by the character of the material, i.e., the wood itself
in which the design is made. This method will, however, be still
further modified by the tools with which the design is effected.
Whilst there is no kinship between the tools of hthography—chalk,
pen or brush—and the xylographic tools, there is a cptam amount of
kinship between the latter and the graver and the " needle," of the
metal engraver and " dry point etcher " (wrongly so called because he

uses no etching fluid). In all these cases the tool is driven with more
or less force into the surface of the material from which a physical
restraint of varying degree on the freedom of the line naturally remits,
a restraint which the draughtsman, the painter and the etcher experience

Now^let us^see how the method of designing due to the nature of
xylography influences the nature of the design. i • n ^ .

iLe^the craftsman intending to use the black line regards the block
as if it were a sheet of white paper, his problem is to remove all mat
part of the surface which is not to print—/.g., the greater part, ine
primitive craftsman drew—either with a lead point or a reed pen, or
possibly, as in the East, with brush and ink-his black Ime design on
the block He then severed the oudines from the mam surface, wiiicn
he removed with a gouge or scorper, when the " picture " would
stand out in relief ready to be inked and printed from. The nature ot
the design would be that of a very coarse oudine drawing, seemingly
done with pen or pencil, but actually modified by the nature of material

The next aim of the craftsman, and this apphes to the primitive as well
as the modern beginner, would be to suppress the evidence ot the tool
bv meticulous preservation of the drawn lines, and with increasing
dkterity he would be tempted to cut more and more ambitious
drawings in which a freer rein would be given to pen or pencil
Shading would be attempted first by a simple method ot parallel
hatching, next by cross hatching. Since, however, a system ot shading
by lines of necessity brings a number of black lines close together the
craftsman would early discover that by using a scrive, mstead ot the
knife, he could do with a single movement of the tool what would
require a quadruple appHcation of the knife-and his black hnes would
result virtually from the cutting of intersticial whtte hnes.
This method would bring his prints in appearance nearer to the
linear convention of the metal engraver, and the woodcut, after having
effaced itself in order to imitate a drawing, would now ettace itselt m
order to become something in the nature of metal engraving.
There is, however, also another evolution from the black line. The
first purpose of the woodcut was essentially a substitution of the
painted picture. The craftsman would use his lines as outhnes for the
colours appUed by hand. By a simple association of ideas he would

discover the use of a colour block which would add, after being inked
all over, at least one tone or colour to the black and white print. Pro-
ceeding further by simple stages he would add morç blocks in order
to produce more colours, and find that simple excisions of the surface
of the "tone" block would give the effect of high lights m imitation of
drawings heightened with white.

The woodcutter would now be well on the way to discovering the
woodcut in colour and other complex processes of to-day. ^ ,
Thus the black line method keeps the woodprint from beginning to
end in a servile reproductive state, the onus of design falling all along
on the original designer, whether he be identical with the cutter or not.
The problem of the designer in white line is an entirely different one,
requiring for its solution more forethought even than that which the
black line designer may impose upon himself.

From purely associative causes white is in design the equivalent ot light
and black the equivalent of shade. Consequently, the white Une mcised
upon the wood block will tell as a light value, whether it is intended
to do so or not. If the cutter takes no notice of this fact he will get
results similar to the rubbings taken from engraved stones, or to the
rare and curious " Teigdrucke " or paste prints.\' The effect of these
is that of a negative, and only negative results can be obtained by such
means unless the cutter takes the (black) surface of his block into
consideration as an integral, and, as it were, already existing part of
his design. This means, in other words, that in devising the shape and
function of the white line he cuts he must consider the shape and
function of the black surface the excision leaves behind. To have done
this—albeit in the technique of the metal engraver—is Bewick s great
jnerit—but his achievement was exploited by engravers and reproducers
who thought in black line, and did so of necessity, since the drawings
or paintings they " interpreted " were for the most part concaved m
the traditional contour line of the Old Masters. Creative exploitation
of the white line became possible only after the Impressionists had
accustomed the artist\'s eye not only to think in hght values—but also

The white line cut, therefore, which always has required more intelh-
gence in its application, is the natural method of the creative artist, and
as such, used by the truly modern woodcutter, whether as a hght or
as colour value, whether for its plastic or its decorative worth.

i"GeneraUy a glutinous ink (paste) was used, so that gold leaf could be attached and further Mnts of
colour were sometimes added to the impressions." A Guide to the Processes and Schools of
Engraving, etc British Museum publication, 1914.

THE SECOND CHAPTER : GIVING A SHORT
SURVEY OF THE HISTORY OF THE WOODCUT
FROM THE EARLIEST KNOWN EXAMPLE TO
THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY

HE earliest woodcut known in the world at present"
Mr. Laurence Binyon states,\' is the Frontispiece to
the Chinese text of a Sanscrit book " The Diamond
Sutra." It is dated " the ninth year of Hsien-t\'ung,
^\'.f., 868 A.D.," and represents \'/The Buddha
discoursing to Subhuti," his aged disciple [i]. Far
from being primitive in execution, this crowded
r . design is cut with great skill in simple black line

tacsimile, and more expertly than some much later work. Chinese
woodcuts were, however, produced not only as book illustrations,
^^^ Probably in great masses as aids to popular devotion and as
cheap substitutes for religious paintings."

rrecisely the same is true of the use which this craft was first put to,
although at a much later date, in Europe. Woodcuts were distributed
in quandties amongst the faithful as mementos of religious festivals and
pilgrimages; they were also sent as New Year greetings. In addition to
this, however, they served to decorate the insides of bookcovers, the lids
of offertory boxes ; they were used for calendars and almanacs ; and
the playing-card makers formed a separate branch of the craft. Further-
more, printed in large composite sheets, the woodcut served the
purpose of mural paintings and, eventually, the humbler purposes of
the paperhanger and cotton printer.

The earliest specimens of the pictorial woodcut in Europe only take us
l^ck to the threshold of the fifteenth century. It is useless to pretend that
the majority of such prints have much aesthetic value. In every age the
bulk of aesthetic manufacture is more or less insignificant. Nevertheless,
in the case of these early woodcuts, there are a considerable number of
exceptions [2a], and this at least should be said, that even the indifferent
cuts of the earlier periods are aesthetically more justifiable than the
average of the later and technically more accomplished productions.
As none of the earlier prints are associated with the names of known
artists or craftsmen an enumeration of the more remarkable ones,

without accompanying illustrations, would here hardly serve a useful
purpose. Good collections of originals and reproductions are to be seen
in most of the public print cabinets of Europe.
The transition from the single sheet pictorial woodcut to the printed
book illustration is represented by the so-called block books. These
were books made up of single sheets printed from wooden " blocks "
on which not only the picture, but also the text was cut. There are such
books in which the pictorial part is printed and the text inserted in
manuscript, but it does not follow that such books were necessarily the
earlier ones ; nor indeed that block books are always earlier than those
printed after Gutenberg\'s invention of movable type. Block books vary
in quality inimensely, but in the best examples show a high degree of
characterization, and a nice feeling for architectural composition. They
are generally printed in a pale ink and were intended for hand colour-
ing. Amongst the most celebrated block books the following may be
mentioned : the "Apocalypse," of Netherlandish origin, circa 1430;
the " Biblia Pauperum," [5] a handbook for the poorer clergy, about the
same date, and the "Ars Moriendi," [6] of about 1450, of which the
first edition is in the British Museum. Two other well-known block
books are the " Historia beatae Virginis ex cantico canticorum " and
the " Speculum humanae salvationis," both circa 1460 in their first
editions. Altogether there are about thirty block books and one hundred
editions known. Their characteristic is the deep impression caused by
rubbing the paper down on the block, so that its edges show in relief
on the back.

The woodcut as a book illustration, as we understand the term to-day,
begins soon after the establishment of the printing press. The earliest
books were, except for initials, not illustrated; and where illustrations
appear their object is rather to deceive the unwary into the belief that
they were acquiring hand-painted illuminated manuscripts. We shall
revert to this point presently.

Albrecht Pfister, of Bamberg, is credited with the first issue of illus-
trated books—at the beginning of the fourteen sixties, amongst them
a Latin and a German edition of the " Biblia Pauperum." After a
lapse of several years, the publication of illustrated books suddenly
bupt forth with incredible vigour from 1470 onwards.
Printing presses were established not only in Germany, but in Italy
and France, and in the Netherlands by the Germans. Individual
towns, with individual rather than national characteristics, thus became
centres of civilization. In Germany—Ulm, Augsburg, Nuremburg,

From the Chinese woodcut, a.d. 868: "The Buddha discoursing to Subhuti." Illustration for the
Chinese Translation of the " Diamond Sutra." " The earhest woodcut known." [i]

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Strassburg, Basle, Mainz, Cologne, Wittenberg, Lübeck, lead the way ;
in Italy—Venice, Verona, Florence, Rome, Ferrara; m France-
Paris and Lyons; in the Netherlands—Louvam, Delft, Utrecht,
Gouda, Haarlem, the Flemish activities being finally all absorbed
by Antwerp, which became the centre of the entire Netherlandish

The subject matter of these books which mark the arrival of humanistic
culture was no longer primarily religious. Pfister\'s first illustrated book,
1461, viz., Boner\'s " Edelstein" was a collection of Fables. Boccaccio\'s
" De claris mulieribus " was, both in Latin and German, a favourite
of the period; JEsop\'s Fables, always henceforth popular with woodcut
illustrators, appear as early as 1476 in Ulm, an Italian edition three
years later in Verona, and another one in Naples in 1489, earlier than
the famous Florentine book illustrators began their work. Books of

POLIPHILO QVIVINAKKA.CHE GLIPARVE AN^
COR.A DI DOKMIKE.ET ALTRONDE IN SOMNO
R.ITR.OVAKSE IN VNA CONVALLE.LAQVALE NEL
FINE ER. A SER. ATA DE VNA MIKABJLECLAVS VKA
CVM VNA POKTENTOSA PYRAMIDE,DE ADMI-
KATIONE DIGNA.ET VNO EXCELSOOBELISCO DE
SOPR.A.LAQYALE CVM DILIGENTIA ET PIACEF.E
S VBTILMENTE LA CONSIDEROE.

A SPAVENTEVOLE SILVA.ET CONSTI-
paco Nemoreeiiaro.Sigli primialtri lochiper el dolcc
; fomno.che fe hauea per le fefle &c profternate mebre dif<
fiiforeIidi,meritrouaidi nouo in unopiu deleftabilc
\' fito aflfai piu cheel prscedente,Elquale non era de mon
ti ho rridi.Sc crepidmofe rupe intorniato, ne falcato di
"rumo/Tiugi. Ma compofitamente dc grate montagniole dinontro-
pe aitecia» Siluofe di giouani quercioli, di robiiri,fraxini &c Carpi-
ni,8c di frondofi Efciili,Sc Ilice.& di teneri Coryli,8:di Alni,8i di Tu
"e.& di Opio, 8c de infruduofi Oleaftri ,difpofitifecondo lafpeao dc
gliarboriferi Colli,Etgiu alpiano erano gratefiluuledialtrililuatici

A page from the " Hypnerotomachia Poliphili," printed by Aldus Manutius Venice
H99- 8|x6Jin. j-j^j

travel, such as " Mandeville\'s Journey to Jerusalem appear m a
German translation at Augsburg in 1481, and Breydenbach s ^Pere-
grinationes in Hontem Syon," a " Pilgrimage to the Holy City I7, 8]
five years later, at Mainz. An illustrated edition of Dante s Divina
Comedia" is published in Venice in 1491; a medical book, Kelham s
"Fasciculus Medicinae" in 1493. The most famous illustrated Italian
book of this period, a novel entided the " Hypnerotomachia Poliphih,
[12] which has had a great influence on modern book illustration and
book-" building " generally, was issued by Aldus Manutius, at Venice,

illustrator was able to try his hand at and apply his ingenuity to eve^
variety of subject matter, from the religious to the scientific, from the
most fantastic to the most prosaic. Life, hitherto on the whole only a
pilgrimage through the Vale of Tears, in which the highest art one
could acquire was the "Ars Moriendi\'—the art of dying—became
suddenly " the great adventure." The flight of imagination which had
fixed man\'s eyes, not so much on the stars as on the glory of heaven
and the tortures of hell, ceases. Man comes down to earth. This conaing
down to concrete realities, or perhaps better expressed to realities which
are visualized and represented as if they had a concrete existence, is
mirrored by the work of that artist whose reputation as a woodcutter
stands highest, whose influence was for a long time greatest, and of
whom it is yet doubtful how much actual " woodcutting he ever
did, Dürer. That such a doubt can exist is both natural and charac-
teristic for the turn the craft took from Dürer\'s day and for a long

imagination twines itself like a passion flower round the words of the
evangelist, revealing his inexhaustible courage in attempting to visualize
the darkly turbulent imagery of the book. At the same time the artist
began his series of the so-called " Great Passion," of which the com-
nlete series of twelve was not issued until 1511, which year also saw
the publication of the " Litde Passion," a series of thirty-seven prints
only begun in 1520. In the same year another series, begun in ibU4,
als J made its appearance, "The Life of Mary," which is at once^ h^^
least austere and the most popular of all his work. Virtually an idyll
on family life and home happiness, it shows the master s human
rather than the brooding philosophic side of his character.
Dürer designed a number of separate cuts, portraits, of which ^P^anus
Hesse " deserves special mention ; rehgious subjects, of which tne
" Last Supper " of 1523 was one of the best, and he also took part in
Emperor Maximihan\'s gigantic but ill-conceived woodcut enterprises,
the " Arch of Triumph" and the " Triumphal Procession.
Amongst the most important of Dürer\'s followers were Hans Leonhard
Schauffelein, Hans Sebald Beham and Hans Baldung Grien, the latter
gifted with an extraordinary power and unusual trend of imagination
which he probably owes more to that strange genius, the painter
Matthias Gruenewald, whom we may acclaim as an early ^pres-
sionist." Grien\'s aesthetic language expressed itself mainly m the hunian
figure, but his "Fighting Horses"[22] have been a source of inspiration

A œnîS toSn\'^sIs the work of Albrecht Altdorffer Equally
remarkable as one of the first painters and designers of pure landscape
and as a most delicate and skilful maker of woodcuts, he was also the

Hans Burgkmair, associated with Dürer in the Emperor s employ, for
wLm he designed nearly the whole of the " Triumphal Procession
and the incomplete "Weiss Kunig," was an artist whose talents were
particularly fit for the translation of the Italian Renaissance Spirit into
German diction. He must be noted here as one of the first designers
for the woodcut in colour. His equestrian portr^t of Emperor Maxi-
milian appeared in 1508, but the actual colour prmting-black line and
a red tone block with heightening in gold-was due to his woodcutter
Jobst de Negker. This manner of producing colour prints was preceded
by another famous woodcut designer\'s invention, or at least practice,
of " heightening " the prints with gold and silver-a block with an
adhesive substance being imprinted on the line block and the gold

dusted upon it subsequently. This artist was Lucas Granach, in his
best works, for instance a standing figure of St. George, and the
adoration of the Heart of Jesus, second only to Dürer.
As an illustrator Hans Holbein stands head and shoulders above all his
contemporaries, Dürer not excluded. There was indeed no one in any
country to equal him, not so much for depth of feeling or imagination
but for clearness of expression. Many of his designs were cut in metal\'
some of them in both metal and wood. His greatest works in woodcut

are the Old Testament illustrations and the so-called " Dance of
Death," which was a spirited satire and socialistic comment on life
rather than the morbid expression of dogmadc faith. The " Dance of
Death " cuts [21], though designed between 1523 and 1526, were not
published until 1538, that is to say at the same time as the Old Testa-
ment illustrations, and they were issued in Lyons, not in Basle where
they had been designed, nor in England where the ardst had setded
in 1532. But Holbein did design the dde page of Miles Coverdale\'s first
Bible in English, and also several cuts for Cranmer\'s Catechisna. ^
What might be regarded as an obstacle to success proved in Holbein\'s
case an advantage; unlike Dürer he was not his own publisher, but
had to submit to the requirements of publishers, not only as to size,
but also as to style and subject. Based on the woodcuts of the Venetian

Malermi Bible [10,11], his style developed something of Italian simph-
city and clarity of expression ; but to this he added Teutonic depth of
sentiment. The requirements of book building, the artist s aesthetic
appreciation of the printed page as a whole, rather than of the individual
design, constitutes Holbein\'s style, which influenced the book illus-
trators of France more than his own compatriots. j • 1
What we appreciate in these illustrations of Holbein s and m the work
that came after, has, however, very litde to do with the woodcut as such,
and the further we recede from the end of the fifteenth century and the
nearer we approach to the nineteenth century the less does the material
count. Holbein was fortunate in having a craftsman such as Hans
Lutzelburger for a cutter ; without a skilful craftsman the value of the
design would have been lost. On the other hand, with an absolutely
faithful method of reproduction, even though it were entirely

apprcfoa uno arbore per capilli monWKmorto
lui Dauid recupero ei regno:« la tcrra.& cofeque/
temente regno î pacc:6i alhora dauid feceqfto pfai
mo & e claro qfto titulo cioc pfalroo de dau^: ^a
do full reftituita la terra, etcct.

L fignor ha regnatotralcgrari la terra le
ralegrarâno le moite îfule.intorno a lu»
e la nube ôi obfcurita:la iuftitia di iudi
aai!^^ Cio faranno caftigamento delà fua feia-
^^^iandaracl faocoiSibrufara Hnimid fuoi
Storno a lui.Refpl£detero le fulgura fua al circui.
ro d la terraïuid la terra fa comofa.Çoe cera fe fq
gliorono i môti dala faccia dl fignor.-dala faaa di ^
Inor ogniterra.Rac5toronoi celila iuftma fua:&

Sidero tutti 1 populi la gloria fua.Suno cofufi tutti
ch adorano lydola fculpiciiK qlli che fe glonano ne
lifalfi dei fuoi:Adoratilo tutti uoiangcli fuoi-.fyon
halo udico ôi e fatta lieta.Et alegranfi g!i figlioli de
iuda:o fignor per gli iudicii tuoi.Perho che tu fei al
tiflimo fignor fopra ogni terra: molto fci exaltato
ft>pra tutti i dci. Voi che araate cl fignore:habiate
in odio el roale:ei fignor guarda lanime de fuoi fan
(Sine lamano delpcccatorc iiberaraquelli. Nafciu
toe la luce al iufto:Si la leticia a i dritti del cuor.
Ralegrariue iufti nel fignore:confeflatiuc alla me-
monade la landificatione fua. Amen. Titulo,
Pfalmo de Dauid.

Laexpofitioncdequefto titulo pm uolree ftata
dimonTata;6i de la materia del pfalmo:glie da fape
re che fono doe cofe che ferua Ihuomo da la uolun
ta de prcgare\':& îducelo al bene delà utrtu; cioe b\'
more de la gloria:&: cl timor de la pena. Vndeel ti.
more delà pena retrahe Ihomodal male:ma lamore
delà glona mduce al bene:Et qucfte doe cofe fe eau
fano i noi:per côfidcratione de i duo auenimenti de
chiifto:cioe del auenimcnto de chrifto cheeflato î
quefto mondo;â: del auenimento al di del iudicio.
Dicheel pfalmifta uolendoci nrarealamore:&:al
timor de dio traita in quefto pfalmo de luno ôi lai
îro aucnimento de chnfto^tcecera. XC Vil.

Antateal fignor el nouo canto: pche le
meraueglie ha fatto: Egli ha fe faluato
cô Ja fuo dcxtra;6<: el braccio fanflo fuo

rel cofpedo delegéte harcuelato laïuftitia fua.Ha
fe arccordaro delà fua mifencordia& ucnta;&: delà
cafa de ifrael.Videro tutti h termini delà tetra:e] fal
«ator del dio nofrro.lubilarea dio ogni terra:cârax
tcralesratiueî&piàlraigate.Lodaceel fignoine Ja

cythara:colIa uoce del pfalrao:con tube battute:8i
c5 uoce de tuba cornea.lubilate al fignor ne! côfpe
âo del re:mouaGel mare;&,]a fuaplenitudine el cir
cuito de la tcrra;&: ogniuno che habita m.cflâ.Fad
no fefta câ mane i fmmi.îfieme j môti (è legrarano
dala faccia del fignor iperho che glie uenuto a iudi
care la terra:lud]cara el circuito de la tcrra:nela iufli
cia & i populi nela equita, Amen. Titulov
Pfalmo de dauid :
Quefîopfalmo non e fondato lopra alcûa hifto
ria:auenga che fecôdo gli hebrei: & maxmie Rabi
Salomone:dice come dauid fece quefto pfalmo pro
phetizando del re mefias:& del fuo regno:ma loro
îtendendo del regno teraporale:& e uero chel pfai
moeapropriato a chrifto uero meiria;& de! fuo re--
gno fpirituale:5d eterno & amaeftrace cb adoriamo
el uerodio:&: uero re:etcetera. XCVllI:

Dirâfi i populi pcfe:el fignor ha fgnaco:
mouafi la terra pche tu îedi fopra li che
rubini.El fignor e grade î fyô:ô; e excel
^ fo fopra tutti i populi. CôfefTino al tuo
nome grâde:pche eglie terribile ôi fâdo: Si Ihonor
del re ama el iudicio:tu pparafti le dirediôei iacob
tu fecefti el iudicio & la iufticia. Exalrate cl fig^nor
Â\'o nfo adorate el fcabello di fuoi piedi:ipho clVgli
e fandto.Moyfes &aar5 fuorono ne fuoi facerdoti
Si famuel tra color che îuoca\'o el nome fuojnuoca
no el fignor ôi lui gli ex3udiua:ne la colôna: de nu\'
be a lor parlaua.Obferuauano li fuoiteftimonii: ôi
el cômâdaméto che dicde a qlIi.Signof dio nfo tu
li exaudiui:dio tu li foffi^cniuolo & uîdicatore m
tutte lor îtentiôe.Ëxaltate e! fignor dio nfo,&: ado
rate nel môte fâdlo fuo;pho che glie fa\'cSo el fignur
dionfo.Amé: Titulo. Pfalmonelacôfeffiôe.

Quefto pfalmo nôe fôdato fopra\'alaia hiftona:
ma traâadelacôfefTiÔc.eadunqjel fentimentodel
titulo.\'pfalmo delà côfeffione cioe qfto pfalmo tra
da de doe c5fcfrioe:cioe cofcfTiôe delà laudeiS; con
fefTiÔe dela.colpa.Vnde la itentione del pfalmifla e
iducere h pfe<3i a laudaredio.ô; gli peccatori a con
feffare lor peccati:&: defecti:etcerera. XCIX
Vbilate a dio ogni terr3:al fignor feruiV
te m alegreza.intrate nel confpcélo fuo
ne la Icgrera. Sapiatecomeel fignore e
i dio:egli ne ha fatto non noi ce fàciamo
oi che fete populo fuo;â: pecore delà fua paîtura
jntratenele fue porte &confeffione:ne fuoi porti\'
Clin laudeaconfefTarealui. Laudateel nome fuo
perche fuauee el fignor in eterno e la fna mifericor
dia:&infino nela generatione : 8i lageneratiôe c la
uerita fua. Amé. Titiilo, Pfalmo de dàuid.

Qyello pfalmo eattribuito a Dauid. Etquanto
alla littera glie da fapere come Dauid quando dop^
po moite perfecutione feuide effcreda Dio libera-
to ôi fublimato al regno come fe lege nel fecondo
diKal.v.capitulo,Alhora Dauid fe difpofe firma-
métenel fuo cuorede beneufare larcgia potcna.ôi
pcfi fon doe fpeciale uirtu regie côe la mifencordia
ôîiufticiaicomediceyfidoroneleethimolQgic fue
alnono:&pho fe difpofe côferuare nel fuo cuorq
fte doe uirtu aao che a boni fuolTc piatofo & mifc/

A page from the " Malermi " Bible, an Italian Translation printed at Venice by Lucantonio
Giunta, 1490. gfxdfin.

mechanical, it is conceivable that Holbein\'s designs niight have been
superior Lützelburger\'s cuts. It is, as I say, conceivable. Neverthe-
less, we must grant that the peculiar attractiveness of such a series
as the " Dance of Death " is, apart from the treatment of the subject,
due to the manner in which the artist designed for the woodcutter.
But in this way our appreciation is divided against itselt, tor we have
to separate the design from the cut, and if we were to pursue this
plan we should find ourselves analysing either the history of creative
design or the histories of the various reproductive methods ; neither
of which investigations are germane to the purpose ot t^s book.
Suffice it here to say that the culmination which ;he woodcut found
under Dürer and Holbein, neither of whom practiced the craft to any
extent, if at all, led immediately to its downfall as a form of creative
art. Henceforth and until the last, the nineteenth century no artist of
the first rank had anything to do with it, with perhaps the exception
of Titian, whose bold pen drawings were cut in wood by Niccolo
Boldrini and others, and of Rubens, who found in Christopher Jegher

From Holbein\'s " Dance of Death." 1538. Designed between
1523 and 1526. Cut by H. Liitzelburger. Original size. [21]

an apt and able interpreter of his fleshy, subde and penetrating virility.
But however skilful the cutdng, and some wonderful performpces
(such as the portrait-cut of Fr. Friscianesi, from a book Delia Lingua
romana," Venice, 1540) were made in the later years of the sixteenth
century in Italy and France, the woodcut was no longer expressive
except of some outside quality—be it that of drawing, painting or metal
engraving. Ugo da Carpi had in the early sixteenth century introduced
his method of Chiaroscuro cutting [23] by which he produced inter-
pretative reproductions of RaphaeFs and other masters drawings, pd
in the seventeenth century Christopher Jegher won, as we have just
said, Rubens\' aid and appreciation in his—as such remarkable—ettorts
to interpret the master\'s qualities in black and white, but these qualities
were got by methods of the line engraver adapted to the relief technique

Towards the end of the eighteenth century Thomas Bewick by adopting
a new technique, [30, 3 ob] based nevertheless on the nietal engraver s,
gave the old craft a new lease of life. His illustrations of natural history
books, the " General History of Quadrupeds "-pubhshed m 1790-
ushered in a new era. Some of his animals were fantastic enough for
the sixteenth century, but the method in which the blocks were cut
was his own. Much better and far more attractive was his History
of British Birds," published in 1809. The best cuts m this volume
were the tail pieces, which often displayed a love of country life and
a whimsical or moralizing humour. The illustrations to Aesop s
Fables,"published in 1809, were also often good; but Bewick was, as
an artist, by no means great ; his achievement is techmcal That he
was as a craftsman also well acquainted with the history of the craft is
proved by the fact that he copied designs of Virgil Sohs and other old

Wkh^Bewi^^ pupils and successors, such as Luke Clennell, Charlton
Nesbit, William Harvey, Robert Branston, be^ns that form of xylo-
graphie activity which led eventually to the establishment of commercial
houses, such as in England the Dalziels and Swains ; m Germany
the Vogels, the Müllers, the Kretzschmars, the Ungers ; m France,

From Frederick Sandys\' Design : " The Old Chartist," cut by Swain. 1862. 4^x5 in. [38]

C. Thompson\'s, who introduced the craft of engraving on the end
grain into that country; further, the Pannemakers, the Pisans and
Leloir Best; in America, W. J. Linton, Juengling, Johnson, and so
forth. Mention should here also be made of George Baxter, whose
patented colour process (1830), was founded on xylography.
It is usual to disregard these engravers, with the exception of George
Baxter, whose productions are valued by a certain type of collector,
and to speak only of the artists whose works they reproduced.
The sUght on the craftsman which this disregard implies is hardly
justifiable, seeing that only very few of the artists had any conception
of the beauty and significance of the medium, and imposed upon the
unfortunate wood engravers difficult, and often impossible, tasks.
Amongst the few who understood the medium, and whose designs
deserve to be mentioned, though not quite in the same breath, with
Dürer and Holbein, are Alfred Rethel, Ludwig Richter and Frederick
Sandys ; also occasionally Millais and Leighton. RethePs two designs:
" Death as a Friend" [36] and " Death the Strangler" ; Richter\'s
illustrations for Grimm\'s " Fairy Tales" and Frederick Sandys\' " Old
Chartist," [38] are worthy of their great prototypes.
This was, nevertheless, from the designer\'s point of view,"The Golden
Decade " in English art, and in particular of illustration; and most of
it was done in xylography. " No matter how little we like to acknow-
ledge it," wrote Joseph Pennell in the first number of the Savoy,
far back in 1896, " many of our luxuries and necessities come from
Germany ; and it is to Germany that one turns for the inspiration of
modern illustration, and to Adolph Menzel [37] as its prophet."
Through Menzel\'s Prussian disciplining of his unfortunate wood-
engravers, the xylographer was no doubt further spurred to efface
himself; nor could he ever satisfy the artists in this respect.
This, however, is only natural and logical nemesis on a craft which
from the Renaissance onward showed its tendency to sink its indivi-
duality, its true character, in that of other media, and so served its
own aesthetic purposes only indirectly, and, as it were, by accident.
The ideals which inspired this method of multiplication are somewhat
pathetically revealed at its close by the Dalziels\' " dying " confession:
" When we look at the reproductions of tint drawings," they wrote at

our occupation gone" ; and then with a heroism amounting to self
immolation : "In saying this we wish to add that we hail with

satisfaction the marvellous results from the many ingenious adaptations
of photography and the consequent wide spread of the art of
illustration." This is at once my excuse and my justification for
refusing to pursue this note on the history of the craft any further,
so far as " reproductions " are concerned.

The history of creative xylography begins where the Dalziels thought
their occupation gone, and it is with xylography as a creative art that
we are here concerned.

Early XV. Century : German : " St. Christopher." 1423. After the
Print in the Rylands Library. [2c]

THE THIRD CHAPTER: DEALING WITH THE
QUALITIES OF DESIGN AND CRAFT DURING
THE PERIOD SURVEYED IN THE PRECEDING
CHAPTER

N seeking to appraise the value of xylography as a
medium of design, rather than as means of multiplication,
reproduction or interpretation, we must approach its
development from another direction, viz., that of the
means employed by the cutter to gain his ends.
We notice then, first of all, that the early woodcuts at the
commencement of the fifteenth century were substitutes for pictures
rather than for drawings. The early woodcuts have a certain
peculiarity of form, as indicated in their suave rounded and evenly
thick oudines, which make it difficult to say whether they were
actually cut in wood or in soft metal, and which causes them to look
much like cartoons for stained glass.

The artist—if indeed he regarded himself as such—was mainly con-
cerned with clarity of expression and with balance of composition.
Clarity depended on an effort of his intellect, balance on the exercise
of a natural sense, which even children and primitive races possess.
The desire for clarity made him introduce only such figures or objects
as were essential to his theme and, subject to the requirements of his
sense of balance, in the order of their intellectual importance. The
proportion of his figures, his mountains, his trees, would be regulated
by the order of their subject value and not by their relation to optical
truth. [2c] It is, however, misleading to speak of planes in this

connection, since to the primitive designer a picture was always a
thing of a single plane, viz,, that of wall, panel or paper. It is this
which gives the early wood prints a stability of composition and a
clearness of statement which was subsequently lost.
So far then we have a design built of strong even contours, which latter
were intended as the demarcation of the different colours applied to
the print subsequently by hand. [2b] The method of obtaining the
contour lines was the application of the knife and scorper to the plank
of wood, but the change from the loop lines to the greater angularity
and woodiness in the drapery of the second style [2a], after the first
third of the fifteenth century, was not due to any aesthetic desire for
the expression of the material; a similar change occurs likewise in the
drapery of painted pictures, and was no doubt due to the introduction
of a new kind of cloth.

In the woodcut this change is accompanied by the appearance of
shading, produced by short parallel lines, which gives the design a
greater plastic value, as we see in the block books. We may also
notice here that the woodcutter by no means relied only on the knife
for the purpose of producing his lines, which are often the result of a
pushed tool, a scrive of some thickness. The block books are printed
in a fine grey tone to leave the colourist a freer hand. Lettering occurs
in the body of the cut and as part of the design. The unity of composi-
tion is in these books no longer so firm, but, nevertheless, in the best
editions for example of the " Biblia pauperum," maintained by an
architectural frame work. [5]

With the advent of the book printed with movable type the design
becomes more palpably a drawing. But the earlier book illustrations
are always designed with a view to colouring, and, therefore, mainly
in oudine. We may notice now that the cutter often leaves spaces of
solid black, not necessarily as a value of light and shade, though in
windows and door openings it has that appearance, but as a matter of
colour. It was no doubt in its inception an economic device to save
the labour of the colourist. Hatching and cross-hatcWng is resorted to,
a feeble attempt at the latter [s^] may be seen in the Boccaccio\'s
" De Claris Mulieribus," published in 1473, thirteen years earHer
than the famous " Pilgrimage to Jerusalem," of Breydenbach. This
latter book, illustrated by the Dutch painter Erhard Reuwich, of
Utrecht, gives a particularly good example of the damaging influence the
Renaissance had on aesthetic expression. It is illustrated by a great
number of excellent cuts, in which the skilful use of the pushed tool,

From the Design by Alfred Rethel: "Death as a Friend." Cut by J. Jungtow. izxiof in. [36]

along with the drawn tool, is clearly evident. The text illustrations
have, in the best edition (1486), a virile, spontaneous character and an
aesthetically congruous style, testifying to the artist\'s keen appreciation of
actuality. [8] The much belauded tide page on the other hand is loaded
with a veritable galaxy of Renaissance "star" performances. [7] The
page is crowded with a mass of scroll work. Saint Catherine occupies
the centre, flanked by two coats of arms under a sort of rose arbour,
in the branches of which a large number of naked children play hide
and seek. Were this cut, which in Johnson\'s book is hailed as " the

finest engraving which had appeared up to that date," a metal engraving,
there might be some justification for the enthusiasm with which it is
commonly acclaimed, but even then it wouM need to be qualified ;
it is stilted and confused, overcrowded and irrelevant, in short it has
rather more than the usual amount of vices that stultified the woodcut
as such—from the sixteenth century onward.

Only occasionally do we henceforward find work that maintains, or
indeed exceeds, the standard set by Reuwich\'s text illustrations. So
for example the wonderful illustrator of the Lübeck Bible (1494),
the illustrative qualities of which are remarkable for directness and

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comparative simplicity ; or the beautiful production of the Venetian
Press : for example the elegant black line cuts of the " Malermi "
Bible [lo, 11] of 1490, with its dainty chapter headings subservient to
the printed type, and manifestly designed by different cutters, not all
of equal excellence; then the " Hypnerotomachia PoliphiU," [12]
published by Aldus, in 1499, remarkable not only for the simplicity
of line, but the typographical taste and architectural structure. So also
examples of the Florentine press, such as the " Giuochi di Scacchi,"
and the " Morgante Maggiore," of 1493 and 1500 respectively. Here,
as everywhere in Florentine books, black is used with great decorative
effect, both in the body and the borders of the cut, and the white Une
and plane employed with great effectiveness as colour values in borders
and picture ornamentations.

The black Hne in these books of the turn of the century becomes more
suave and more intricate, but also more shallow in France, whpe
we can follow its development from " L\'Art de bien vivre et de bien
mourir," Paris, 1492 [14], to the attractive "Discours du Songe de
Poliphile," of 1554, where the line is very refined, but despite greater
realism in representation as characterless as drawn wire. [13]
One must, indeed, not imagine that earher book production was
guided by a very conscious aesthetic feeling : the aesthetic qualities
came, if not always, at any rate, for the most part, haphazard.
So different, at the commencement of the Cinquecento, were the aesthetic
sensibilities of the pubhc—and it was the most cultured section of the
public too—from our conceptions that the printers and publishers, such
as Gruninger, Vérard and Wynkyn de Worde, did not hesitate to save
trouble and expense in the following naive manner : blocks of about
three inches by one, representing figures, houses, trees or pass plots,
were built up like a child\'s picture bricks into composite illustrations.
Usually, five of such bricks were in this fashion united, s^rounded by
a black rule, and thus printed on one page of the text. The identical
composite block might be repeated on the very next page ; it niight
be used again in another part of the book. Then parts of it m
combination with some different blocks would reappear m a
different order and the same figures would represent different
persons. Thus we find in editions of \'\'Terence, both French and
German, a figure representing " Geta " on one page becomes
" Antipho " on another and " Parmeno " further on. More strangely
still we find Wynkyn de Worde\'s (1510) edition of the morality
play " Hycke Scorner" illustrated with single figures from Vérard\'s

\\l2lufxte^i(0t a^pom (eutêtic^effeé
\\<Bt} fmwetf^tquefqMC. foxefi ou 6oîô
)? Bii^âû faire gmnbee opxeffe^
\' ^ tout îmv cfîent Soiïc (Z nimntcptd
^a^iemtfntepat ttme m«fte(?pfotd
£mt couppant fagoj^e/ef mefmciitcnÉ

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a pomtû ÇontMiÇô cupt)iitit que argent aptni
pfufimwmouwrenM^ agranf fo;m«it
^aw firfïii tnm rt wfïw^fw paient

A page from " Les Loups Ravissans," published by Antoine Vérard, Paris, circa. 1500.
Original size. [iS]

"Terence" (1500), ^\'Clitipho" [17] having become " Con-
templacyon," "Chremes," " Pyte," and a figure sometimes called
in " Terence," " Clinia," is reversed and represents now " Hycke
Scorner " himself. Moreover, the admirable aesthetic unity between
type and illustration—nowhere seen to greater advantage than in
the " Malermi" Bible—which prevailed at first and, when it was
undisturbed by hand colouring, was gradually destroyed with the
increasing skill and naturalistic ambitions of the woodcutter and
copper-plate engraver.

What, however, the Renaissance lost is ably pointed out by Paul
Westheim, who prints a page from a " Rationarium Evangelistarum," of

1510 [4], side by side with a page
of a block book, the "Ars
Memorandi" of the beginning of
the fifteenth century. [3. The
subject in both cases is the
"Quarta Mathei Imago." With
the symbolism of the subject we
are here not concerned : the more
notice does the execution of the
design deserve. The woodcutter
of the later publication evidently
intended to improve upon the
earlier original (which looks as if
it were a copy of a much earlier
arch-type). He has indeed done
his utmost to "call a spade a
spade." Drawing, shading, perspective is much better, much " truer
to life," but it has in course of this "improvement" lost every
vestige of spiritual truth and aesthetic significance. No one could
beheve in this tow-headed doll and the asinine ass of the later " artist,"
certainly the artist himself did not, else he would not have had so much
time for externals. Whether anyone could now beheve in the earlier
representation or not, it is manifest that its designer did ; and because
he beheved, he treated every detail of the composition unhampered
by actualities as part of a symbohcally significant design within given
limits. Note the feeble irrelevance of the border line in the later and
the tectonic importance of the heavy border lines in the earlier print.
Incidentally, the later print shows the encroachment of the cutter\'s
or " formschneider\'s " activities on the colourists or brief-malers, the

Christoph de Jegher : " Hercules crushing Envy." Second quarter, XVII. Century.
23ixi3|in. [26]

modelling and shading expressed in the wood lines naturally interfering
with the colour.

That much of the aesthetic value of pure black and white which is
manifest to us was not originally intended is made clear, for instance,
by the following example. One of the best illustrated books published
in Gouda, Holland, in 1486, is " Le Chevalier Délibéré " [?], by Olivier
de la Marche, a premier maître d*hotel to Emperor Maximilian. The
cuts in this book are comparatively large, the handling remarkably free
and the black and white effect of each composition particularly pleasing.
Nevertheless, a record is preserved of the minute instructions as to
composition and colouring given to the artist by the distinguished
author for each single subject. For the one reproduced here the
author prescibes\':

" The scene of this picture shall be a garden, in which there shall be
put a litde table with meat upon it, in the litde wooden platter in the
middle, and two glasses and a water-jug. And at this table shall be
seated the author, dressed in a cloak of crimson satin, trimmed with
small furs, and the said cloak shall be cut away over the sleeves, and
the doublet shall be black, and on his head a hat w;ith a golden image,
and on his side there shall be written in a conspicuous place * The
Author.\' And near by shall be seated the Hermit in his dress, and on
his side he shall have written * Understanding,\' and they shall appear
to be conversing together, and not far from them shall be a litde
novice to serve them in the costume above." Comparison with the
cut shows how closely the illustration follows the prescription, and
how little a " black and white " effect was contemplated.
With the advent of the sixteenth century the woodcut became of a set
purpose more and more " calligraphic " and, as it were, ashamed of
itself. To this rule there is at this early period only one exception.
This is furnished by a remarkable artist who contributed some illus-
trations to a volume entitled " Les Loups Ravissans ^^—fait et compose
par maistre Robert Gobin, prestre maistre es ars. . . The volume was
published about the year 1500. Three-quarters of it is taken up by a
popular advice how ** cognoistre comment éviter vice et mal y on doit et
très vertueux estre.** The " Loups Ravissants " are the devil as a wolf
and his disciples, the Church being the shepherdess and her flock of
sheep, the behevers. The seventeen illustrations for the twelve chapters
of this part of the book are dull and ordinary. The last quarter of the

»From " Le Chevalier DéUbéré" by Olivier de la Marche. Preface by F. Lippman. The Monograph by
the Bibliographical Society, No. 5.

book is a sort of " Totentanz," and describes \'^Comment la mort de
son pouvoir se vante, En accomplantle mal qu\'aux humains fait, The
illustrations of this part, twenty-four in number, are of extraordinary
interest : [ 15, 16] they are neither pictorial, in the sense of the primitive
cut, nor calligraphic, in the sixteenth century sense, nor chalcographie,
in the sense of the sixteenth and seventeenth century cuts which imitate
line engraving. The figure of death is represented in accordance with
the opening line of this part : suis la mort grande dehellaresse**
as a woman-duelHst or fighter-down, not as a skeleton ; the episodes
are pictured with dramatic force. The cutting, however, is the most

remarkable feature ; for the cuts give the impression of having been
drawn with the knife, i.e., actually simultaneously with the cutting, so
that the two operations seem one. It is manifestly all, or nearly all,
knife work, though there is some evidence of the pushed tool also.
The drawing is not faukless, but this defect is amply made up by the
directness, the spontaneity of the cutting and the power and architectural
sense of the design. It is true that the glyptic style of these cuts has a
definite resemblance to blocks used by Antoine Vérard for the illustra-
tion of other books, such as the sumptuous " Thérence en François "
(1515) [17], and the "Livres des Persécutions des Chrestiens" (1507),
but none of these will compare in freedom, in composition and the
handling of the knife, and in the use of black, with the " Grande
debellaresse " cuts. In short, the " Grande debellaresse " illustrations
are the first and for a long time only examples of the creative cut.
What we admire in the more famous woodcuts, the works of Dürer
and his contemporaries, followers and successors, is no longer the
cutting of wood, but the design of the pen, and the skill of the cutter
in preserving it. The aim of the artist becomes naturalistic with an
increasing contempt for the natural limitations of tool and material.
One may, I think, safely assume that if Dürer had continued to trouble
about cutting wood himself, he would very soon have reformed the
entire technique. Of all his work the " Apocalypse," it is said, is the
one which he may have himself cut, and it is to be noted that very
little cross-hatching appears in it, and even that is niore feigned than
actual : the effect being produced by chopping out litde bks of wood
rather than cutting with the knife round the contours of the "lozenges."
It is to be noted too, that Dürer, as well as other designers of the
period, this side of the Alps, makes litde or no decorative use of solid
blacks, and that the white lines, which frequently occur, are carefully
disguised as black lines. An apparent exception is Urs Graf (1487?
to 1530?), the Swiss goldsmith, die-cutter and engraver, whose figures
of " Landsknechte" [20] and a " Family of Satyrs " are often quoted
as early and good examples of white line cutting. They are drawn,
unmistakaWy, in the metal chaser\'s white line manner, but in effect
hardly more than reversed or negative black line drawings. Graf has
put Htde thought into the use of his white lines, which have neither
consistent light values nor any particular colour or decorative signifi-
cance, though one of the " Landsknechte " with a white background
is a much better example of white Une cutting.
The division of labour, which relieved the creative artist of the trouble

that the cutting involved, and on the other hand stimulated the ambi-
tion of the craftsman to perform the difficult task of disguising the
material and the tool, and making his designs resemble now a wash
drawing (Ugo da Carpi) [23], now a pen line drawing (e.g^., Domenico
Campagnola, Niccolo Boldrini after Titian, G.G.N, after Cambiaso),

[24] now a copper engraving (e.^., Virgil Solis, Koek van Alost, the
Venetian engraver of Prescianesi, already mentioned, or numerous
title pages, such as the Breydenbach one [7] and the one of Andreas
Vesalius "de humani corporis fabrica," Basle, 1543), ultimately caused
the decline of the woodcut, considered even as a craft only: it obviously
could no longer compete with the kind of drawing which is germane
to the graver and the metal plate. Interesting as some of the experi-
ments had been, such as for example Domenico delle Greeche\'s (died
1580) gigantic free facsimile cut of Titian\'s " Death of Pharaoh," or
Giuseppe Scolari\'s, who (likewise connected with the Titian school),

[25] invented a forceful white line method of producing tonal effects,
or many years later, Christoph de Jegher\'s (1627 or 1628 to 1652 or
1653) interpretative cuts after Rubens [26], they can, nevertheless, not
be reckoned as works of creative art. This exception, that one must
take to any work of art which is not executed in the material, or with
the tools with which it was planned, will be better appreciated if we
apply it to another branch of art, viz.^ that of sculpture. A marble
statue, when it is essentially a reproduction of a clay or wax model
and done by other hands to boot, is exactly as far removed from
creative art as a woodcut or engraving when it is essentially a repro-
duction of a drawing made on the wood. Works of creative art are in
each case possible, viz,^ in the first case, where the sculptor carves his
own work directly out of the stone, or where the xylographer designs
his cut with the tool. It is the gradual development of this standard of
appraisement, this freeing of the tool and the material from alien fetters
and restrictions which we have set ourselves to investigate. It is in this
sense that the few, but remarkable, woodcuts of an etcher and painter of
Rembrandt\'s school—Jan Lievens, must be mentioned. [27] Although,
no doubt, the underlying drawings were done in pen and ink, Lievens
has not allowed the pen line to do violence to the natural movement of
the hand holding the scrive, the knife, the gouge. Moreover, the artist
has made free use of the beautiful black, which the wood block yields,
in a manner that pays due regard both to its colour and its light values.\'

» Nevertheless it must be pointed out that at all events, in the case of the example here illustrated,

there are in existence earlier states of the print with a far more conspicuous woody quality, proving
that the artist intended to approach an etching-facsimile—in th& finished state here shown.

By the end of the seventeenth century the craft, according to all
authorities, had fallen into disrepute. It is of course true that as Chatto
says\' "At the period of the greatest decline of wood engraving, the
want that was felt was not of working engravers to execute cuts,|but of
talented ardsts to design them." But when he points to the tail piece
as an example of " wood engraving in its lowest state of declension,"
one cannot help noticing how immensely superior it is as a work oi
creative art, albeit unconsciously so, compared with the earher and
later specimens of wood engraving at its supposedly highest points.
The cut is indeed crude, and the group of figures within the wreath
—the principal characters in " Robin Hood\'s Garland," [28] viz.,
"Robin Hood, Litde John, Queen Catherine, the bishop, the curtal
friar (not Tuck) and the beggar "—far from perfect, but the whole
has clarity, decorativeness, and above all character, namely, that
character which is born of simple statement and the frank use of the
tool on its proper material.

In the eighteenth century J. M. Papillon\'s name stands highest, betöre
Bewick, mainly because he imitated with remarkable skill copper-
plate engraving on wood. [29] He was the somewhat grandiloquent
author of a treatise on the craft, by which he attempted to rescue it
from what he necessarily regarded as its decline. But indeed, even the
rough cut from a grocer\'s bill [32] here illustrated has not a litde
merit and when one compares the " refined " style and subject with a
common cut from an English "broadside" used first for a Horrid
Deed" by S.Hodgson, of New Castle, in the year 1799 [33], one
wonders whether the vulgar cut is not essentially a truer form of art
than the refined cuts of the French engraver\'s manufacture. Guts of the
" Horrid Deed " kind were used in connection with executions generally,
the features of the culprit being left black or indistinct, only the accom-
panying text being suitably varied. This cut, however, is of particular
merit and shows Bewick\'s influence, if not hand, for it is an excellent
example of his invention—the white line wood engraving.
Bewick\'s chief merit is that he starts from the wood block itself. [30]
In all the work we had hitherto regarded the craftsman had started
from the assumption that his problem consisted m carving his block
so that it would imitate the black lines of a drawing. Bewick has
nothing to do with the cutting of black lines at all : the black line
with him—not at once : his early work is orthodox and negligible-was
eventually, so to speak, the contour of the white hne, and only in

ijohn Jackson—a Treatise on Wood Engraving—Historical portion by John Chatto.

Jan Lievens : " Portrait of a Cardinal," Middle of the XVII. Century. Original size. [27]

exceptional circumstances actually cut as a black line—for example,^ in
dead branches of trees seen against a white sky. Moreover, Bewick
worked with the graver on the end grain of (hard) box-wood. The
nearest approach to his technique is Giuseppe Scolari\'s, [25] but
Bewick, unlike Scolari, worked not only in white lines, but also in
white planes, and correspondingly also in black planes. Furthermore,
Bewick adopted an old practice of lowering the surface of the wood
before engraving upon it, in all places which he wished to print lightly.
By such means he was able to produce an effect of tone without having
to rely only on the width and quantity of white (or black) lines, as
the earlier woodcutters had to do. This refinement eventually ended
in once more degrading the wood engraving to the status of an
auxiliary craft, because the engravers were tempted to emulate the
tonal qualities of paintings to the detriment of its structural or archi-
tectural stability and force. As a matter of fact, John Bewick, Thomas
Bewick\'s brother seems—perhaps on account of his earUer death—to
have saved his work from this particular danger, but drawn upon it
Jackson\'s disapproval. " His (John\'s) style of engraving," said this
authority, " is not good; for though some of his cuts are extremely
effective from the contrast of light and shade, yet the lines m alnaost
every one are coarse and harsh, and \' laid in,\' to use a technical
expression, in a hard and tasteless manner." [31] Yet if one con^ares
Jackson\'s reproduction of John Bewick\'s cut for " Poems by Gold-
smith and Parnell" with its original, one is immediately struck with
the latter\'s superior glyptic qualitip as against Jackson\'s suave and
sentimental, and characterless tooling. u ^ • x

The comparative ease with which the graver cuts on the end grain of
hard wood is a temptation to the craftsman to refine his work more
and more, and to evolve not only complicated systems of lines, but
also other methods, such as dotting and " rotting " or worrying the
surface of the wood, in order to express tonal, as against hnear, qualities.
There is, of course, no legitimate objection to this provided the
engraver\'s aim remains within the scope of tools and materials. That,
however, was precisely what the craftsman sought to overcome.
Qualities necessitating the employment of a mass of, in themselves,
meaningless lines were used in order to produce the effect of metal
engravings, drawings, water-colour and oil p^ntings.
We had seen that the first complication of the craft was due to the
artist designers who strove to give their forms an ever greater
naturalistic and material character. The immediate result of this ideal

From « Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell." Wood engraving by Thomas Bewick after
J- Johnson\'s design. 1804. Original size. [-30]

was the improvement in the quality of the drawing from the naturalistic
point of view at the expense of clarity of expression. The conflict was
due directly to the rival claims of the (supposedly absolute) essence
and the (accidental) appearance of objects upon the consciousness of
the artist. The second complication arose from the craftsman\'s desire
to impart tone or colouristic qualities to his prints by other means than
the hand, ue., by addition of a tone or colour block or blocks to the
line block. The third compHcation arises from the craftsman\'s desire
to make his block still less expressive of its own nature and to assume
qualities which do not properly belong to it, viz.y that of copper,

So amongst Thomas Bewick\'s pupils and followers, particularly William
Harvey, we find ingenious designs and results which vie successfully
with copper-plate engravings in which the white line is applied with
such finesse that its effect is that of the copper-plate engraver\'s black
hne. The nineteenth centu^ School of Wood Engraving, resulted at
least in part from these beginnings. The only artist at the beginning of
the century, and indeed during its whole course until the nineties,
who applied himself to creative cutting was, with the possible excep-
tion of one other—William Blake. We shall deal with this ^ter having
dealt with the methods of the reproductive or interpretative schools
which flourished during that century.

Opposed to Bewick\'s Tint or IFhite line school of engraving, the
older Facsimile, or black line school, experienced a revival, though
the cutting was done like Bewick\'s, on the end gram of hard wood.
This revival was, as we have seen, due to one of the greatest draughts-
men of any country or age, Adolph Menzel, who more than any other
artist inspired the generation of European illustrators that made the
craft famous. Menzel employed French, English and German crafts-
men, whose sole duty it was to cut his fine pen and ink lines m facsimile.
But Menzel was a stern realist who drew from nature and not a calh-
graphist to whom the pen itself is a source of aesthetic inspiration [37].
There is not a single one amongst the marvellous range of his illustra-
tions, his earhest and superficially calligraphic ones not excepted, m
which one feels any emotion in the lines as such, for that very reason,
his illustrations, wonderfiil as they are in all other respects, are yet
never part of the printed page : they are insertions, interpolations m
the text. Needless to say, they could, m such circumstances, not
pretend to have any xylographic qualities. Menzel, indeed, did his
utmost to force the xylographer into an attitude of slavish obedience.

Published January i, 1804, by William Bulmer, at the
Shaksp<are Printing Office, Cleveland Row.

From " Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell." Wood engraving
designed and engraved by John Bewick. Original size, [31J

If, then, Menzel was " the inspiration of modern illustration," as
Mr. Pennell contended, on the authority of " the artists and engravers
and publishers themselves," it is not surprising that the productions
of the craft as distinct from the original design from the thirties of last
century to the commencement of the present one were aesthetically
considered negligible.

This condemnation must not be misinterpreted. Regarded from
the purely technical point of view, it is precisely the period of extra-
ordinary achievement. Xylographers vied with each other not only in
cutting " facsimile " with painstaking accuracy; they also apphed all
their ingenuity in order to render the most unlikely originals, water-
colours, oil paintings, etchings, pencil and pen sketches, sculpture,
textiles, ceramics, and at last photographs from nature faithfully and
often convincingly in black and white.

Jonnard\'s interpretation of a Millet oil [40], DalziePs rendering of a
Birket Foster water-colour, [39] which we here illustrate, are worthy
examples of wonderful technical achievement at different periods. The
Facsimile cuts of the famous " sixties " were, if we accept the opinions
of their designers, mostly mutilations of the drawings, the more so
because apparently very few of the designers paid any attention to, or
had any knowledge of, the problems which the xylographer had to
overcome. It is more than likely that their very skill caused even
Frederick Sandys, [38] Millais, Leighton, to give their engravers less
xylographically suitable drawings than would have been the case if they
had found themselves in Durer\'s times.

It is interesting to note in this connection how Daumier drew his
earlier illustrations with the manifest desire to simplify the wood
engraver\'s task. His shading attempts to express form by the direction
of the constituent parallel lines; in his middle period the lines are
free pen Unes which the engraver only needed to cut in facsimile.
In his third and last period, Daumier invests his drawings with that
great massive weight which makes his art so memorable. The draw-
ings are no longer done with the pen and the wood engraver has
known how to render their individual quality with surprising success.
To-day, however, the camera, as the Dalziels pointed out, does all this
reproductive work with greater speed and greater accuracy.
As regards speed, the xylographer of last century not only made use
of the camera for the purpose of transferring the design to the wood,
he also practised a division of labour. The illustrations of topical
events, published, by the Illustrated London News, were done

From Adolph Menzel\'s Illustrations for Kugler\'s " History of Frederick the
Great " : " The Death of the King." Cut by Unzelmann, 1842. Original size.

From wood engraving by the Brothers Dalziel, after Birket Foster\'s picture "Cows
Pool"; 1863.

From a wood engraving by Jonnard after J. F. Millet\'s picture « La Tricoteuse " ; 1889. [40]

on composite blocks, each part being handed to a different engraver,
one of whom would perhaps do the clouds and sky, another the
architecture, and a third the figures; or the division might be
purely geometric, each doing a component square. It goes without
saying that the rendering of textures by means of composite and
specially devised tools was brought down to a formula, though to the
end the best of the professional wood engravers deserve credit, and to
be judged by the manner and the skill with which they applied them-
selves to this problem. There are engravings of butterfly wings, of
armour, and Chinese vases which qua wood engravings are every bit
as "artistic" and admirable as the famous etchings of a Jacquemart,
Ai^ as to accuracy there is this to be observed that the hand can stress
points which the eye sees, but which only the mind selects, a thing
that can never be effected by means of the camera, which has no
mind. It is not, therefore, from this point of view that xylography
fails. It is when the professional xylographer attempts aesthetic
achievements which are not based on creative design that he is
doomed to failure, however great and admirable otherwise his skill.
A strikmg proof of this is furnished by the extremely accomplished
and indeed marvellous technique employed by the American wood
engraver Timothy Cole.

Cole belongs to the generation of artists who, steeped in the doctrines
of impressionism, sacrificed everything to tone, with the result, in
Cole\'s case, that his engravings seem to render not so much the
originals he reproduces as the effect of soft and silvery platinotypes with
photographic accuracy. A Duccio di Buoninsegna [41, 41 a] and a
Vermeer van Delft, thus rendered in black and white, by a black
which is not black and a white which is not white, look as if they had
been contemporaries and compatriots of Whisder.
A translation of a painting into the technique of xylography is both
possible and aesthetically justifiable, but the problem should be
approached from an entirely different angle.\'

Reproductive engravings, whether they be of Cole\'s or of Linton\'s
school may be compared with the orchestra iinitations on mechanical
" players "; whilst the aesthetically permissible translation of one
mediuni into another is analogous to the translation of an orchestra
into a piano-score.

1 Professor e. Wurttemberger\'s " Zeichnung, Holzschnitt und lUustration." Basel, loio should be
studied in this connection.

From Timothy Cole\'s wood engraving, after Duccio, in the Duomo, Siena. 1892. [41]

accurate than photography and aesthetically less justifiable than a J. R.
Smith mezzotint, a George Wille line engraving, or a Charles Waltner
etching, in each of which the technique employed makes the most,
not the least, of the material.

The aesthetic objection to all reproductive engraving is, however,
based on the divorce of the original design from the method and
character of the material and the tools with which the engraving is
produced. The wood engraver has to employ a score of tool marks
to render the " quality " of a single stroke of the brush. If he succeeds
in this to an appreciable extent it is a proof of marvellous craftsman-
ship, but has no relation whatever to creative art, which latter is always
a question of original design.

For such reasons one will to-day acknowledge the skill of Urushibara,
the Japanese, who manages to produce an almost exact facsimile of a
Brangwyn water-colour [64] by means of no less than fifty separate
printings, just as one will admire Bangemann\'s facsimile renderings
in xylography of Liebermann\'s pen and ink drawings; or Kruger\'s
colour engravings of the old masters.

But none of these achievements must blind us to the fact that they
are not creative art.

And even when the original design is the craftsman\'s own, as is the
case with some of Urushibara\'s, and many other modern colour
prints based on the Japanese method, creation suffers in course of its
sublimation, because the mind is divided against itself—creation and
execution become two consciously separate processes.

THE FOURTH CHAPTER : CREATIVE DESIGN
IN XYLOGRAPHY: ITS ORIGIN AND FIRST
DEVELOPMENTS

RANTED that the illustrators of the Victorian era,
the Keenes and Sandys, the Dorés and Millais and
Rossettis, the Boyd Houghtons, Du Mauriers and
Birket Fosters e tutti quanti, were great and some-
times prolific designers for wood engraving, it is no

nothing to the art of xylography, which they treated as a purely ancillary
craft and scolded as a cinderella ugly-sister-wise. Even the best of
them, with the exception perhaps of Charles Keene, paid littie enough
attention to truly xylographie design and none of them any to its
glyptic qualities and possibilities. Not a black that was not wantonly
broken, barely a grey that was not produced by cross-hatching, and
hardly a white that was not marred by a " tint " or a meandering
scribble. Had any of these artists ever had to engrave their own designs
they would have quickly reformed the craft and themselves to boot.

But designing was regarded as art and, therefore, a genteel occupation;
engraving was a tradesman\'s business. The only wonder is that the poor
engravers did not lose their minds as well as their eyesight more
frequently. The continuance of this, for Europeans, nefarious practice
of division of labour as between artist and craftsman is the more
remarkable because at least one great artist had, at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, shown a better way : William Blake.
The idea came to William Blake as the result of a spiritual revelation :
the voice of his dead brother Robert gave him the full recipe for the
production of his " Songs of Innocence " by a metal process which
enabled him to print both text and illustrations simultaneously from
an acid-bitten copper-plate.

Here was, indeed, the unity not only of design and execution, but
also of the two with the text, such as it existed in the old block books,
once more established; and the affinity was greater than might appear,
because Blake\'s metal process was a relief process like the woodcut.
Here, then, we have a truly ideal combination : poet and paintp,
printer and " cutter " were one and the same person. It is this desire
for unity in design and execution no doubt which made him later
(in 1821), when he was commissioned by Dr. Thornton to illustrate
an edition of Ambrose PhiUips\' " Imitation of Virgil\'s First Eclogue"
with wood engravings [34], decide to cut his designs himself, with the
sequel that their pubHsher thought it advisable to apologize for result
thus obtained in the following manner :

" The illustrations of this English pastoral are by the famous Blake,
the illustrator of Young\'s " Night Thoughts " and Blair\'s " Grave,"
who designed and engraved them himself. This is mentioned as they
display less of art than genius, and are much admired by some eminent
painters."

To-day we may smile at this somewhat apologetic recommendation,
but we can understand it, and even appreciate its entire relevance and
necessity. What the publisher here calls art is what we of to-day
would call craftsmanship, or technique; what he calls genius is some-
thing he manifestly did not himself comprehend, but the presence of
which he vouched for on the audiority of " some eminent painters."
Technically, that is to say : judged by the standard of Papillon, or
even of Bewick, not to mention Dalziel or Cole, Blake\'s cutting is
negligible and, indeed, of childhke innocence: " They are done," said
Edward Calvert, " as if by a child, several of them careless and
incorrect, yet there is a spirit in them humble enough and of force

Two of William Blake\'s woodcuts for Ambrose Phillips\'
" Imitation of Virgil\'s First Eclogue." Original size. [34]

enough to move simple souls to tears." How then is this genius cogni-
zable ? Comparison with contemporary work will make it clear that
Blake\'s cuts, whether " careless and incorrect" or not, are of the
utmost simplicity. They are almost entirely white line cuts and show
their connection with the block of wood without shame.
Therein hes the affinity of Blake\'s with the craftsmanship of the early
woodcutters. He, like they, had something to express, cared not for
" art" as such, and did not, therefore, trouble to disguise the tool
or the material. With him the " wheel had come full circle." Blake
arrives at the end of one great revolution of the wheel of life, and at
the same time at the commencement of another.
Edward Calvert, a pupil of Blake\'s, is the link that connects the latter
with the older generation of those living artists who, following con-
sciously or unconsciously in Blake\'s footsteps, have revived the craft
in the creative sense. Calvert died as late as 1883—his work litde
known and forgotten, until its exhibition arranged at the British
Museum, in 1891, by Sir Sidney Colvin.

The difference between Calvert\'s attitude towards his art, and on the
one hand Blake\'s, on the other Bewick\'s, is one of mental constitution.
Blake, as his pubHshers truly said, was a genius—Bewick a craftsman
—Calvert a representative of talent. Blake\'s, as the creative artist\'s,
consciousness of his work is related solely to that which he is urged
to express by it from an inner necessity ; Bewick\'s, as the craftsman\'s
consciousness is related mainly, if not entirely, to the manner of expres-
sion. In Jackson\'s book one comes across a sentence which is
illuminating in this respect, though it does not refer to Bewick, but to
Branston. " Mr. Branston, hke many others, did not thmk highly of
the cuts in Bewick\'s fables ; and feeling persuaded that he could
produce something better he employed Mr. Thurston to male several
designs with the intention of publishing a similar work."
Here, then, we have the craftsman, employing the artist whose design
is regarded mainly as a means for the display of craftsm^anship. This
attitude of mind is a common one from which the schools " in art
result. The consciousness of minds like Calvert\'s, partakes of the nature
of both artist and craftsman, and approaches, according to the strength
of the creative or the assimilative urge, more to genius or to handi-
craft as the case may be. • i •
Calvert, a cultured man (which Blake was not, m the ordinary sense
of the word), is a minor lyrical poet turned artist. Consciously affected
by Blake, yet conscious likewise of Bewick\'s craftsmanship, his work

hoWs a position between the two. He produced a series of "Ten
Spiritual Designs," of which six were on wood, two on copper and
two on stone ; yet the actual method of his drawing is almost identical.
His imagination is tender, romantic, refined and charming. Of his
"Christian Ploughing the Last Furrow of Life," [35] George Richmond
spoke as a work of great beauty in the prints, but as drawn upon the
block before it was cut, of superlative beauty. We have then here,
so to speak, " Bewick " trying to become " Blake " through the person
of Calvert, in the same way as we had " Thurston " called upon to
outdo " Bewick " in the person of Branston. Calvert rather than
Blake foreshadows the change of the artist\'s consciousness which is
responsible for the subsequent development of xylography.
That movement which took place at the beginning of the eighteen-
nineties, and which is generally spoken of as a revival of the craft, is,
in point of fact, a re-birth, seeing that its germination is due to a new
spirit. The modern woodcut, dating from that period, is not in essence
the fruit of public demand, like the early single woodcuts of the
fifteenth century, nor of economic necessity, such as the later book
illustrations of the same and the sixteenth centuries, and is not really
even a method of multiplying designs, which by " the Nineties " the
photographic camera was better able to do. The raison d\'etre of the
modern woodcut is due to the free choice of artists drawn to the craft
partly by considerations which, however associated, are fundamentally
aesthetic ; partly by the physical attraction which the material and the
tools of a craft exercise, in any period on every fine craftsman.
The generation which began this re-creation of the woodcut is the
older generation of living artists, many of whom are still practising
this medium of artistic expression. Moreover, the influences which have
modified the design are not to be sought only in the development of
the craft. They lie to a great extent outside. A mere chronological
account of the output during the last thirty years or so would, therefore,
hardly explain the extraordinary differences which are manifest in the
conception and execution of modern xylographie design, differences
which are greater than any previously experienced within a much
larger space of time. It would seem preferable to investigate the main
influences which have determined the changes in the oudook of the
artists who have made the woodcut deliberately a means of artistic
expression.

Bewick\'s principal achievement was the establishment of the black
plane as the basis of his design, which was cut out of this plane by

jr^^Hero\'s description and her love\'s;
The fane of Venus where he moves
His worthy love-suit, and attains;
Whose bliss the wrath of Fates restrains
J For Cupid\'s grace to Mercury:
Which tale the author doth imply.

From Charles Ricketts\' opening page for Marlowe and Chapman\'s " Hero and
Leander," 1894. Original size. [45]

How first beat its new life
in bleak abode
Of virgin rock, strange met-
als for its food,
Towards its last hewn
mould, the bitter rood/
First did it sprout, indeed,
A double wing.

means of a system of white Hnes ; but his particular significance lies in
the fact that his lines were not all lines in the draughtsman\'s sense of
the word, but very frequently white and black planes—^om^ not
quite in the painter\'s sense of light and shade. Herein lies a basic
affinity of the white line cut with impressionistic painting, which also
works in planes from the darks upward to the light, by gradual elimi-
nation of the dark surface, in contradistinction to drawing generally
and the etcher\'s drawing in particular, which is virtually a gradual
elimination of the white surface. There is also an affinity of this method
of design with wood or stone carving—that is to say, a freeing of the
" design " from the material by a series of gradual eliminations. This
pecuharity of the white line design has the beneficial tendency of
stabihzing the composition which can develop only by subtraction
inwards, whereas the black line design has the tendency to grow
beyond control by addition outward and, therefore, to leave things too
much at the mercy of sudden " inspirations." The relevance of this
observation will become clearer presently; for the moment we will
only note that the white line approach to the wood block design is
essentially pictorial, whilst the black fine approach is purely graphic.\'
We may, therefore, expect to find, as we actually do, two different
developments in xylographic design—one which has the pictorial
plane, the other which has the graphic or calHgraphic line as its basis.
In 1887, Manzana Pissarro, a son of Camille\'s, had decorated the
catalogue of his father\'s exhibition with a " Peacock " design, cut
directly in wood with white line excisions. This experiment he
followed up, some three or four years later, with a " Turkey " for a
catalogue of his own exhibition. These designs are virtually flat
wood carvings printed upon paper, and without a brush or a pencil
foundation. He may thus probably claim to be regarded as the first
of the moderns to have used tool and material in this way—but his
achievement was hardly acknowledged.

The year 1891, that had introduced Calvert to the British public,
through the exhibition of his prints at the British Museum, informed
the French of a newly risen woodcutter, Fehx Vallotton, a Swiss, living
in Paris, who was then commencing a long activity with a series of
woodcuts, beginning with a portrait of Verlaine, m a curiously novel,
but uncertain, technique. Verlaine\'s portrait was made up of a series
of black lines, which, however, seem to have been produced by white
line cutting. The superficial effect of the portrait is not unhke a wood

\'I use the word in its original and truer sense, because there is no better to take its place.

engravingy in the reproductive sense, the general effect is decidedly
pictorial. Two years later (1893), we have an excellent likeness of
Schumann cut white out of the black ground—the effect is entirely
pictorial and only close observation of its details shows that its basis
is graphic, [43] but it is the kind of drawing directly due to the impres-
sionist theories of the period. It is only the artist\'s reluctance to allow
the dark ^ir of the composer to merge into the equally dark back-
ground without a line of demarcation which proves him to have been
uncertain in the logic of his design.

The same year in which, along with other interesting cuts of Vallotton\'s,
this Schumann portrait appeared, two young artists in England
cornmenced a long series of woodcut illustrations which showed the
revival of the black line cut, based on delicate pen design—I refer to
Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, who, as the result of eleven
months\' collaboration, produced their first woodcut book " Daphnis and
Chloe." This was illustrated with thirty-seven cuts, of which fifteen
were designed by Charles Shannon, whilst the actual cutting was done
by the two artists working mutually on each other\'s blocks. Both
artists were trained as wood engravers of the old school and, therefore,
well acquainted with the white line, but this book, as well as their
next one, the "Hero and Leander," of 1894, [45] was deliberately
evolved from the " Hypnerotomachia di Poliphilo," not only in the
black Hne method of design, but in the typographical aspect generally.
As book builders, and, indeed, in the quality of the designs, as well
as the cutting, the two Enghsh artists show themselves both technically

and aesthetically superior to their predecessors. The books subse-
quently issued by their "Vale Press," for which Ricketts not only
designed three fonts of type, but also invented and cut in wood
nearly all the borders, frondspieces, most of the illustrations, as well as
end papers, cover papers and bindings, ushered in a new era of book
building generally. Amongst this artist\'s principal woodcut illustra-
tions the following should be mentioned : Six circular cuts for the
EngUsh, and a litde later, five cuts for the Latin Editwn of Apuleius\'
" Cupid and Psyche," ; frontispieces, borders and mitials for Wilham
Blake\'s "Book of Thel" and " Poetical Sketches"; the same for
Milton\'s " Early Poems," Drayton\'s " Nymphidia and Muses
Elyzium," Gray\'s " Spiritual Poems " [46], and lastly ten woodcuts
for "The Parables of the Gospels," these m a freer and more
personal style of black line cutting.

The ideals and ideas which guided the creator ot these book produc-
tions have been adequately explained by Ricketts in his " Defence
of the Revival of Printing."

From a Title-page for " Songs by Ben Jonson," produced by
Lucien Pissarro. Slightly reduced. [49]

in 1889, and this magazine contained not only numbers of original
woodcuts, by other artists, but also xylographic reproductions of
pen designs by Ricketts and Reginald Savage. One is in particular
characteristic of the whole outlook of this " school " ; it is called
\'Centaurs,\' \'*an experiment in line designed by Reginald Savage,
drawn and engraved on the wood by Charles S. Ricketts." It appeared
in the third number of " The Dial " in 1893. It is hardly a good line
drawing and it is difficult to see what was gained by cutting it in
wood, since as a method of reproduction this was no longer necessary
but its ingenious variations on a single theme—scihcet the black line
—not the accidental subject matter " the Centaur " (an " animal "
which, incidentally, haunted the imagination of many artists of his
period), are interesting as pointing to the radical difference between
the primitive designer\'s and the nineteenth century artist\'s mind.
For this is the period of the pen Hne design, which commenced with
Menzel and ended with Aubrey Beardsley, in whose sensitive hand
the linear texture of design was changed from Menzel\'s solid web
of facts to an airy filigree of fancy. The subject interest from this
angle of vision is entirely merged into, if not indeed ousted by, the
interest in the treatment.

Beardsley\'s arrangement of black and white had an enormous mter-
national influence on illustration generally, and the massed black was
particularly attractive to the artists who felt themselves drawn to the

Whether Vallotton\'s subsequent evolution, in which he makes,
increasingly, use of black masses is owing to Beardsley, I do not
know, but the fact is that he employs it with dramatic intensity for the
heightening of effect in subjects of Zolaesque realism, imparting to
them not only a realistic and dramatic appeal, but also a purely
aesthetic one. Compare, e.g., " La Manifestation," " L Execution,"
"Le Suicide," " L\'Averse " [44] with "L\'Absoute" and La Paresse."
The dramatic and ephemeral, in subject, is thus wedded to the
aesthetic and permanent in treatment.

We now come to another aspect of the woodcut of this period, in
which France and England appear once more hnked. In the pages of
"The Dial" there are reproduced nine cuts by Lucien Pissarro.
Pissarro, as a son of one of the great impressionist painters, strikes a
somewhat incongruous note in that particular " galère." The polite

»Mr. Savage has explained to me that the idea was in some way to give the effect of " chiaroscuro "
without having recourse to a second block. I confess I do not understand this.

ingratiating suavity v^hich characterizes the Hne of the EngHsh artists
is replaced by one of robust and rustic simplicity in Pissarro\'s v^oodcuts
of Peasants [50] or country girls (Solitude, Ruth, Orpah and Naomi,
Ruth the Gleaner). The black line is no longer calligraphic, but purely
utihtarian as in a painter\'s sketch; that is to say, it helps to give a
three-dimensional illusion to the two-dimensional plane of the print.
On the other hand, a cut such as " Le petit chaperon rouge " or the
white deer from " St. JuUen L\'Hospitallier" [51] is calligraphic and
English enough to have had Walter Crane for its designer, though the
cutting—a mixture of black and white line—gives it a quality which
Crane, who did not cut, did not employ. Lucien Pissarro was driven
from France by his admiration for the style of Charles Keene, one of
the fev\\^ English artists of the time who himself understood the craft
for which his designs were made. But Keene\'s manner was not at
all to the liking of the French taste—the Impressionists excepted, and
so Lucien sought refuge in this country where he established his own,
i.e., the Eragny " Press. Lucien\'s aims differed from those of the
Vale press mainly in the combination of a fuller colour scale with the
text and illustrations [49]. The French artist, trained in the school of
his father\'s irnpressionism, soon hit upon the idea of mixing white
with his printing colours so that the printed book page preserved an
evenness of tone values upon which the impressionist painters laid
much emphasis. Lucien\'s colour-interpretations of his father\'s designs

in " La Charrue d\'Erable " represent extraordinary feats of economy
in means and fullness in effect, whilst the beautiful " Livre de Jade "
and "L\'Histoire de Soliman-Ben Daoud...," and particularly the
opening pages of the latter, are, as examples of typographical illumina-
tion, unsurpassed.

Another metamorphosis of Impressionism is represented by Auguste
Lepère\'s xylography.

Lepère started as a wood engraver of the old school and as such
achieved some remarkable feats of tone and texture engraving, as for
example in his " L\'abbreuvoir à l\'île St. Louis " [52] or his " Sortie du
Théâtre du Châtelet." When, however, he took up woodcutting with
the knife, he produced black and white and colour prints in which
pen and brush drawing is reproduced with remarkable fidelity.
" Le coupeur des bouts de cigars," " Le Paysagiste " or " La Fin de
Journée " in which the same applies to a tinted pen drawing. None
of Lepère\'s work has, however, real glyptic qualities [53] ; the
design is wholely independent of the material, and regarded purely as
designs they are often lacking in balance and concentration. He was
happier and more consistent in his etching.

We return once more to " The Dial " because it contains also the
work of an artist who has developed the Calvert tradition of engraving
in a modern sense: T. Sturge Moore. Both as a poet and as an
engraver of wood this artist treads his own secluded paths. True, there
are amongst his woodcut designs like " The Death of the Dragon,"
which show him in sympathy with Ricketts\' and Savage\'s^ " experi-
ments in line " ; others again like the treatment of the " Unicorn
Press " device show his interest in the early Italian manner. Sturge
Moore\'s conception of art and its function in life is exalted, his technique
far from facile, his drawing even not always good. His wood engravings,
wrought with much glyptic subtlety, therefore do not yield their full
charm or significance at the first glance ; when once, however, the
mind has attuned itself to Moore\'s xylographie knguage, it will
enjoy his variations of mood from the religious ("Go wash ") to
the humorous (" Centaurs conversing " and " Centaurs\' Wedding "
[55] ), from the classic ("Pan as an Island" [54] ) to the Words-
worthian worship of nature, and the imagination displayed in his
book plates. ...

The pictorial rather than the purely graphic vision characterizes the
work of an English artist who has had a considerable influence, less
perhaps on the woodcut than on the evolution of design in general :

William Nicholson. His series of Twelve Portraits, aniongst which a
capital likeness of Queen Victoria, just verging on caricature, created
quite a popular stir, so general was the appreciation of the novelty as
which the " woodcut " was regarded. This appreciation was main-
tained for his "Almanac of Twelve Sports," his "Alphabet," his
" London Types," and led, in 1902, to another series of twelve por-
traits, amongst which the sly and " slim " looking Li-Hung Chang,
of " Boxer " fame, is an extraordinary bit of shrewd observation, and
" Sada Yacco," the Japanese actress, [56] by reason of the ingenious
bamboo screen background, a particularly good example of design.
These woodcuts, though several of them appeared in book form and
with a specially heavy form of type, were indeed principally decora-
tions. Their pictorial unity was further enhanced by a second (litho-
graphic) buff-coloured tone and by touches of other positive colours,
applied either by hand or by lithography. Curiously enough the
treatment sometimes, and in spite of all embelhshments, tended
towards the photographic, owing to a difficulty with which every wood
designer has had to contend, ever since the Renaisspce began to set
store by representational accuracy : the manipulation of the black,
which in part does duty as a colour value, is in part also a light value.
Nicholson\'s bold black masses represent a compromise, and as a
general rule an exceptionally happy one ; it is only occasionally
that the black when it is, too frankly, a light-value, lends the com-
position a photographic appearance. Nevertheless, regarded as
individual and independent works, [57] and contributions to the art of
decoration and the graphic arts in general, his prints occupy a place
in the front rank. The original source of Nicholson s xylographie
inspiration, it should be noted, is to be found in the elder CrawhalPs
whimsical " forgeries " of old chapbooks with which^ he delighted
the hterary world in the early eighties. Such things as Old ffrendes
wyth new faces," or " Chapbook Chaplets," owe their whole con-
ception to delightful but purely literary and associative ideas ; aesthetic
considerations entered hardly, if at all.

Drawing their original inspiration from these same sources, Gordon
Craig\'s woodcuts, and typography too, display more carefully-
considered aesthetic intentions than their protot^e. Gordon Craig is
the " father-in-aesthetics " of Lovat Fraser, whose famous " Polly "
seems to have walked on to the "Lyric " stage, straight from Craw-
hall\'s chapbook " A True Relation of Mrs. Veal to Mrs. Bargrave."
I mention this here apparently irrelevant fact (Lovat Fraser did not

cut his type ornaments and book illustrations in wood), because
it helps our orientation. Craig\'s art, like his disciple\'s, is not only
theatrical in virtue of its immediate association—compare his four
cuts for Hugo von Hofmannsthal\'s "Der Weisse Faecher"—but in
its entire complexion. Craig\'s ideal is neither the essence of things,
their abstract and permanent idea (as the Greeks endeavoured to see
it), nor even the appearance of things as modified by the transient
factors of accident (as the Impressionists endeavoured to see them);
his is a world of feigned actuality—like the actor\'s. It is presumably
this fact which makes his woodcutting so intensely interesting. He
does not translate drawings into wood ; he is not hampered by classic,
gothic, renaissance or rçalistic and romantic ideals of art—or technique.
As a consequence he is the first to use the xylographic tools in order
to " stage " xylographic effects. One will find in his technique all
imaginable variations of cutting : black line, white line, black and
white masses, dotted texture, combinations of grey tones produced by
the breaking of black Hnes with white lines, so that one gets the effect
almost of two printings (compare " d\'Artagnan\'s Man " in the second
volume of his magazine "The Page," 1899). All the devices which
the commercial tone engraver used are, as it were, extracted, enlarged
and promoted from the insignificant rôles of tonal servants to the
principal actors in his designs. Craig has cut hundreds of blocks,
and it is characteristic of him that he bestows equal care on small
detail of theatrical properties (compare the cutting of the design for
a headdress in the same number of " The Page ") as on the most
important ones (compare the " Rainbow " from the Weisse Faecher).
In addition to experimenting with the manner of cutting, Craig has
invoked the aid of heavy type, coarse and tinted paper, together with
touches of positive colour applied by hand. There is no greater contrast
imaginable than that of William Blake\'s and Gordon Craig\'s outlook
and yet there is something of the child in each. Their work is not
serious in Bewick\'s or in Lepère\'s sense ; hence both puzzled their
contemporaries, Blake\'s publisher excusing his childHkeness with a
lack of art ; and the " Studio Magazine," of the day, opining that
the cuts of "The Page" "by the naïveté of their technique disarm
criticism." But there is this fundamental similarity between them ;
both believe: Blake in the reality of his figments, Craig in the
fictitiousness of his realities.\'

» Owing to the Artist\'s objection to the faithfulness of the line block and the Writer\'s objection to the
unfaithfulness of the half-tone process, the illustrations of Craig\'s works have had to be omitted.

Before bringing this survey of the Pioneer era to a close let us briefly
survey once more the position the v^oodcut had reached in England at
about this time. In December, 1898, " The first exhibition of original
wood engraving " was held in this country, viz,, at the Dutch Gallery,
in Brook Street. The contributors included mainly the contributors to
"The Dial," Ricketts, Ch. Shannon, Moore, Savage, Lucien Pissarro,
and—as the only outsiders—Nicholson and Jean François Millet ; the
contribution of the latter being in all probability one of^ the only five
out of eight that were engraved as well as designed by him, in a style
of pen-drawing. The period then marks a definite stage in the develop-
ment of the woodcut. The designation " original wood engraving,"
by which the contributors to this exhibition sought to distinguish
their work from other specimens of xylography, plainly shows that
the artists were anxious to establish a clear-cut distinction between
the wood engraving of the common press and their own. What is
not so clear, however, is their view of the nature of this difference.
Ricketts and Shannon, we had seen, drew their own designs on the
wood and engraved them in facsimile. On the other hand, Ricketts
engraved a design of other artists, LegrosV and Savage\'s to wit.
Incidentally, we may mention here that amongst all the engravings
of his unusually accomphshed pen designs, and he executed at that
time a great many illustrations for the Essex House Press, Savage\'s
" Behemoth," which appeared in "The Dial," is undoubtedly the
best, both as a pen design and as a reproduction of wood engraving.
The question then is whether the fact that an artist engraves his own
design is of sufficient importance to estabhsh the resulting wood print
original " engraving: as for example in the more recent, but

manifestly Ricketts-inspired typographical decorations designed by
F. W. Sargant. Might not an author\'s manuscript with equal
justification be regarded as an " original" production ? Quite as
misleading is the word "original" in connection with wood
engraving, unless the engraving modifies the original design in vital
respects: a mere "stiffening" of lines, however, would not constitute a
vital modification. In examining the work of the artists so far mentioned,
with the possible exception of Sturge Moore, we notice several degrees
of modification. Ricketts\', Shannon\'s and Savage\'s admitted very litde.
It is true, of course, that Ricketts in some of his engravings, for
instance in his tide page for "The Spiritual Poems of Gray," [46]
introduced some decorative white line engraving which could only con-
veniently be designed in and not on wood ; nevertheless, on the whole

the cutting is " facsimile " even though the artist changed the design
in details on the wood as the cutting progressed. If there is any point
in deciding the priority of a really original cut a litde landscape tail
piece in white line by H. P. Home, printed in the " Century Guild
Hobby Horse," of 1883, is an earlier and truer form of original wood
engraving than any. It has, so far as I can see, no aesthetic ancestors,
no historical pedigree, it does not imitate, develop or improve upon
^y earlier method and it is difficult to see what other medium could
have originated it. Otherwise, however, it is of very litde value or
importance.

No, the immediate reasons for the English revival were purely associa-
tive. If Ricketts and his group improved and developed the Italian
manner of woodcutting, Morris and his assistants Hooper, Sleigh,
Gaskin, Gere, were inspired by the Germanic style, Burne Jones
forming a " Keltic " link between the former aristocratic and the latter
guild-democratic camps. Even such a remarkably large-sized cut
as William Strang\'s " Plough "—it measured 5 ft. by 6 ft. and was
composed of nine blocks 24 in. by 20 in.—was, if not in dimensions,
certainly in design, Holbein-inspired, and the artist is said to have had
some assistance from Robert Bryden in the cutting. Strang\'s " Doings
of Death," a series of Chiaroscuro prints, were cut partly by Sleigh
and partly by Bryden. The latter xylographer, however, deserves
recognition as the author of a series of woodcut portraits published by
Dents, in 1899. They represented the literary giants of the period, e.g.,
Tennyson and Browning, Stevenson, Tolstoy and Ibsen. They were,
in their time, brave and bold experiments in frank cutting, but seem,
compared with later work, restrained and slighdy disguised translations
of photographs into xylography.

Originality was then, in any true sense, hardly the main characteristic
of any of these artists. Much more truly " original " was the work of
two other pioneers of the period, one of them English, the other Dutch :
Sydney Lee and W. O. J. Nieuwenkamp.

W. O. J. Nieuwenkamp\'s views of his native country [5 8] are, if, as he
says, inspired by Dürer, yet done in a peculiar linear^technique entirely
his own, which, however, in such prints as his "Wave," show a
distinctly Japanese source of inspiration. Attracted to the craft by the
interest aroused in the Japanese woodcut, mainly owing to the Gon-
courts\' " L\'Art Japonais au XVIIP Siècle," which c^e out between
1891 and 1896, other European artists began experimenting in the
Japanese manner. Amongst these was Sydney Lee, who became one of
Mr. Morley Fletcher\'s, the Englishpioneer of this method, first disciples.
It is, however, not in his colour prints done in this manner that Sydney
Lee stands out as a truly original artist. His black and white is, in this
regard much more significant. In particular, such prints of his wHch
were done in an undisguised glyptic white li^ have, m my opinion,
more claim to be regarded as important. " The Limestone Rock,"
produced, according to Mr. Salaman\'s list, between 1904 and 1905 and
hailed by that authority as an " example of landscape interpretation
in the language of wood engraving comparable with fine landscape
painting in the modern conception with its search for structural

expression," is mainly interesting on account of the artist\'s ingenious
manipulation of textures,^ So also his large print [59], measuring 30 in.
by 22 in., of " The Ravine" is remarkable as a piece of soft wood
(sycamore) cutting with the knife. But the real " Sydney Lee" is to
be seen in such prints as "The Windmill," "The Gatehouse" and
" The Cottage Doorway " [60]; it is in such examples of xylography
that originality in execution, if not necessarily in design or conception,
is demonstrated. Aesthetically, Sydney Lee\'s prints are not as attractive
as Nieuwenkamp\'s, with whose work they nevertheless have a super-
ficial affinity, owing to the even distribution of black and white or
light and shade values, which are in both cases diffused and not massed.
With these two names we may fairly bring the survey of the pioneer
era, so far as black and white in the European manner is concerned,
to a close. Before tracing the further development of "black and
white" xylography it is necessary to find and assign a place to the
much better known and much more popular woodcut in colours.

THE FIFTH CHAPTER: IN WHICH A PLACE
IS ASSIGNED TO THE WOODCUT PRINTED IN
SEVERAL COLOURS

N its earliest intention the "black and white"
formed, as we had seen, only the basis or " key "
of a design of which colour was intended to be an
integral part. The woodcut began merely as a
dpice for the speedy and economical production of
pictures, or at least picture substitutes. That this
should be so is rather disturbing to our present-

against our sensibility. The colour, which was in the early cuts
applied by hand, nearly always pardy obliterated or otherwise marred
the effect of the drawing, and in book illustration broke the
homogeneity of the typographical text and the illustration.
Colour, nevertheless, rather than the linear design, was the thing that
was mainly desired and prized ; nor is this prefepnce really remark-
able since colour is the emotional, design the intellectual, element.
The attraction and appeal of colour is immediate and physiological, not
only peculiar to " the purest and most thoughtful minds," as Ruskin
thought, but common to bird, beast, as well as man. The appeal of
design which has to grow, both individually and racially speaking, out
of time into understanding is slower, less forcible, but more insistent
and more lasting. Design or drawing is, therefore, the higher quality of

From Charles Shannon\'s Chiaroscuro print: " The Porch." 5J in. diam. of printed surface.

the pictorial arts. Thus from the very fact that even in the oldest known
woodcuts, discovered by Sir Aurel Stein, in Turkestari, the colour is
applied sparingly, we must conclude, even without other evidence, that
these cuts no longer represent a primitive phase of civilization, which
latter, as we begin to realize more and more, is not to be regarded as a
steady progress in every direction and at every moment, but as a
succession of tidal waves now bearing this, now another, argosy of
culture on its crests.

Not so much Altdorffer\'s ambitiously five-coloured print of the
" Beautiful Virgin of Ratisbon," but rather Cranach\'s and Burg-
kmair\'s more limited and restrained achievements in colour-printing
were aesthetically a step forward, because the colours were intended
to heighten, by the addition of gold, silver, bluish grey and
neutral tints, the aesthetic qualities of the cut. But there was no
attempt at realism in the colouring of the "Beautiful Virgin,"
prints of which occur in differing colour schemes. Jobst de Negker,
Burgkmair\'s printer, was further on the right fines with his brick
red-tone plate and gilded armour of the Emperor Maximihan\'s por-
trait, although the gilding is as a species of high-light " heightening "
suspiciously realistic. In his print of " Death the Strangler" the
key block is, apparently, broken up and only does part duty for
the deepest darks, linear design being continued in the half-
tones by another lighter coloured block, with the result that the
tonal values of these epher " Chiaroscuro " print anticipations are
inferior to Ugo da Carpi\'s results achieved by the same process and
which da Carpi registered as his own with the Signoria of Venice four
years later (1516). Had the Chiaroscuro dispensed with the line block
it might have developed into the Chinese method of producing colour
prints, which has no contour or key block; as it is, it may have inspired
the Japanese, who may possibly have seen some of these Italian
prints, in which moreover there was frequently a bold pen-line
contour. The aim of these Chiaroscuro prints in Renaisspce, hands,
however, denoted a desire for greater realistic and illusional rather
than decorative values. They, therefore, often resemble monochrome
paintings of bas-reliefs, a category of subject that Mantegna began and
the French decorators of the eighteenth century made popular. The
aim then was to create an illusion of plastic actuality. The term
" heightened " with white, apphed to drawings and denoting the
touches of " high-lights," is applicable likewise to Chiaroscuro prints,
in which the effect is produced by removal of the surface from the tone

block in the spaces where the light, Le,, the paper itself, shows in the
print. By "heightening" the design a corresponding illusion of
" depth " is produced, and it is this illusion of the third dimension
which the " West," in diametrical opposition to the " East," cherished.
There is a Chiaroscuro print by Ugo da Carpi [23] of the " Descent
from the Cross " after Raphael, which, for triangularity of composition
and plasticity of modelling, would have, and perhaps has, delighted
the eye of Cézanne. In most cases, however, " Chiaroscuro " has
neither the force of black and wMte nor the attractiveness and decora-
tive value of the full palette. It is, indeed, a bastard process begotten
out of light and colour values that are there nearly always in conflict.
In modern times, Charles Shannon, with his series of "Twelve
Months " and seasons, has produced results of greater aesthetic value,
by reason of their finer, less illusional and more decorative treatment—
they were intended for the decoration of china plates [61]—and
greater restraint in handling.

Much more complicated and exceedingly efficient, though somewhat
uninspired work, has been done in recent years by Gusman and J.
Beltrand, and others, in France, and in Italy, Gino Barbieri, one of Italy\'s
foremost traditional xylographers, has published some work of this
kind printed in the magazine Eroica, which shows in design affinities
in style with Greiner and Klinger, and other German draughtsmen.
The earlier efforts of producing woodcuts in full colour were in
Europe less successful than the Chiaroscuro prints and need here no
mention, with one or two exceptions, and only because they displayed
experimentally a new quality which the Japanese developed inde-
pendently and with far better results.

J. B. Jackson attempted, in what he described as a " novissime
pcogitatum opus," to reproduce some Italian architectural landscapes
in colour (1742), and in order to give the architecture concretely
tactile values he went to the length of carving its sculptural figures,
and other parts of masonry, in such a manner on the block that the
print yielded under pressure a has relief-like impression, of such
depth (or from the obverse : height), as to cast shadows and reflect
hghts. [29B] John Skippe, a Httie later, seems to have had similar
ideals in view in his " Leda and the Swan." The logical evolution
of print-making with such ideals leads to the " bas-relief" photographs
which enjoyed, some twenty years ago, a spell of popularity.
It is the merit of Eastern art to have weaned the European mind from
such ideals of material realism and from such a conception of aesthetics.
To Eastern conceptions, therefore, we must turn, not only in order to
appreciate the modern European colour print, but also much of modern
" black and white."

Curiously enough the Japanese colour printing, which was invented
in China, began simultaneously with the development of the European
colour print in the eighteenth century. The difference in conception,
however, was fundamental. To the Oriental the painted picture was a
reality in itself. To the Occidental mind it is an illusion of actuality

that they dare not give them eyes lest the animal should fly from the
wall, no one had seen in " nature," and the tortures of hell which
they painted so convincingly that the very sight of the painting made
the spectators " sweat with fear,"\' appealed of necessity only through
the imagination, which indeed is the channel through which the
pictorial emotions are generally reached. But the Renaissance
exchanged emotional for intellectual appeals, personal vision for optic
truth, emotional beauty for an aesthetic philosophic substitute.
Imagination was reared laboriously in Hbraries — Cimabue\'s
"Madonna" was still an appeal; Botticelli\'s "Venus" already
an argument, Velasquez\' a demonstration of pictorial technique.
The West strives for three dimensional values, and seems to rest
content only when it has represented the objects of its emotions until
they look as if they could be weighed at the King\'s weigh-house or
in a butcher\'s balance.

All such quahties are absent from Oriental art—even from its sculpture.
A Buddha, m stone or in bronze, is not a realistic representation
—but a poem; the sohd material rises and falls hke a wave in the ocean
of space, a thought in the sea of potentiality slowly taking shape and
sinking softly into the silence of nirvana.

We have then to temper our mind to a different harmony if we would
understand, however imperfectly, the significance of Eastern art
generally and the Japanese woodcut in particular. The perspective,
both the optical and the spiritual one, differs. Unlike the Western
painter, the Eastern artist looks down upon his picture from above,
and since to him the picture space is a reality, and not merely the
vertical pretext for an illusion of " Nature," it is alive from top to
bottom, from side to side, from corner to corner. The objects that
he represents cast no shadows, have no hght and shade, since they
are representations of ideas and not imitations of nature : as ideas
they are real enough, but only the paper, the colours, the lines and the
surfaces are actual, and it is with these actualities that the Japanese
artist deals. From the earhest (seventeenth century) illustrated books,
in which it is as doubtful as it is in early European woodcuts whether
they were actually printed from wood or not, perhaps rather from
metal or even brick, down to Hokusai and Hiroshige, who lived as
late as 1858, we see the Japanese designer conceiving his picture
surface as a vital unit, in which spacing, lines, colours and masses have

1 See numerous examples of such " reaUsm " quoted by Herbert A. Giles in his " Introduction to the

an aesthetic life, not, to be sure, apart from the subject significance of
the picture, but of a wider and more general nature. Were this not so
we should hardly be able to derive as much pleasure as we do, even from
the Japanese woodcut, although its subject matter is, as a rule, less
difficult to understand than the paintings in which even apparently
simple subjects such as landscapes, flowers and animals have symbolic
significance and poetic allusions, that are hardly translatable into
Western conceptions.

What appeals to our eyes is the pattern of the Japanese print, and it
is probably no mere coincidence that the creator of the Japanese
woodcut, Moronobu (1638-1714), was a designer of textile patterns,
the son of a father who was an embroiderer and of a grandfather who
was a dyer. Moreover, Moronobu ended a gay life as a monk. This
would seem to be a symboHc epitome of the forces that go to make
the beauty of the Japanese print; at its best it is the expression of a
mind sensitive above all, to rhythmic lines and the harmonic colours
of the universe, and creating a " symphony " that includes for all its
gaiety a note of renunciation.

Classic art in Europe despised all patterned drapery and saw the
highest beauty only in naked human forms. The Japanese represent
the nude seldom, and when they do so it is hardly ever its dignity
that furnishes the theme of the representation. On the other hand,
most of their figures are so enveloped in patterned draperies as to
leave only the head exposed ; even hands and feet are often concealed
As a consequence many prints that have for their subject only a single
object—a wave, a mountain top, a figure, present a serene or sombre
pattern to the eye, a picture moreover in which the lines of the drawing
seem continuations of the calligraphic inscriptions without which no
Japanese picture is really complete. These contour lines alone are, by
reason of their stylistic rather than naturalistic significance, capable of
making the most exquisite designs, in a manner still possible in the
early European design, but which there the growing naturalism of
the Renaissance gradually and completely destroyed. One need only
compare the treatment of clouds and water in the Japanese and early
German woodcuts to see how nearly the Eastern symbolic conception
once agreed with that of the West. As regards the technical quality of
the line, we find that it is both in the East as it was in Europe, a facsi-
mile cut and, therefore, essentially reproductive: only the Japanese
use a brush in lieu of a pen. Moreover, they employed, since Tanaka
Masunobu in the middle of the eighteenth century, the white line

cut, to be distinguished from the much older " negative " rubbings
taken from engraved stones and of Chinese invention. As the Japanese
derived their culture and with it their manner of writing, and so also
of drawing, from China, so they also learnt the art of printing in several
colours from their greater neighbours. There are beautiful Chinese
colour prints of the seventeenth century, printed in many colours
and without any black or outhne drawing, but they are, we learn,
reproductions of pictures rather than original invendons. In the forties
of the eighteenth century Okumura Masanobu is said to have invented
the art of printing in more than one colour and beni (saffron pink)
and soruko (grass green) were added to the black ; until then the
colours had been applied by hand. Printing with an unhmited
number of different colours dates from the year 1765, and of this
full-blown colour print Harunobu is the leading master. He it was
who introduced the beautiful harmonies of secondary and tertiary
colours (for instance, olive, pink, grey, salmon pink, dark green,
orange and yellow) ; he, too, invented the black background, the
pictorial lusciousness of which some of our younger academicians
have only recently discovered; and he finally added "blind"
printing {i.e,, a pattern impressed on the paper in inverted relief,
but without colour) as a further aesthetic allurement to his
representations of beautiful women.

This Harunobu School of the woodcut, with its exuberant chromatic
scale, was followed by the School of Shun-sho, which, though more
reticent in colour, first introduced gold leaf and mica powder as new
means of physical attraction to the prints. Popular and fashionable
actors and half-actresses, as well as beautiful women of the Yoshiwara,
formed the subject matter of these woodcuts.

The head and culmination of this XVIII. Century School was the
pupil of Kyonaga, Utamaro, whose prints did more than any other\'s
to make the Japanese woodcut known and prized in Europe. By a
curious coincidence, Utamaro flourished at about the same period
as Bewick, his " Ehon momochidori\'s," or Book of Birds, being
)ubHshed in 1789, Bewick\'s " British Birds " coming out eight years
ater. But if Bewick was mainly an engraver, with a mind dominated
)y the associative values of a subject, Utamaro was entirely an artist
to whom sea shells, insects and landscapes were as aesthetically
interesting as the doings of the Yoshiwara.

Since it is not our purpose to give an historic account of the Japanese
woodcut, we will only mention Toyokunis\' name, as that of the

founder of a great eclecdc school of woodcut ardsts, who adopted
Kyonaga\'s and Shun-sho\'s and Utamaro\'s styles, and thus became
one of the most celebrated masters of the Ukiyo-e School, which
corresponds in matter, though not in jmanner, to our realisdc and
impressionistic schools of painting.

But the greatest of all Shun-sho\'s pupils is that wonderful eccentric old
man Hokusai, who was born in 1760 and died in 1849, the last of the
great Japanese woodcutters, regarded as a plebeian and vulgar realist
m the eyes of his compatriots, a calumny which his "GreatWave"
alone, if nothing else, would contradict. " So universal indeed is the
achievement of Hokusai," said Sir Charles Holmes nearly twenty-five
years ago now, "that the painter who can learn nothing from a careful
study of his prints must either be unfit for his trade or a greater genius
than any the world has hitherto known." But what was his particular
significance? There is only one word to express it, and that is :
vision. It was not what he saw, not beautiful women, not popular
actors, not indeed any associative matter that made his pictures of
every-day life, of wind and water, snow and rain, gods or ghosts,
beautiful or interesting; it was his way of seeing, his way of arranging

what he saw on his wood block [62], and his way of selecting the lines
and the colours of his vision so that you should see what he meant
you to see.

It is because his subjects are, for the most part, so near to our own
experience, depend so litde on acquaintance with their associative
matter, that his work and that of his follower, Hiroshige, demonstrates
to European eyes more clearly than that of other Orientals the lesson
imphed in all Oriental art and once also in that of the West, namely,
that the foundation of the visual arts is VISION, not optics, spirit,
not matter. I have dealt with the history of the Japanese colour print
rather more fully t^n I intended because it is based on this
important difference in vision.

The enthusiasm raised by the appearance of the Hokusais and Uta-
maros and Oriental art generally in Europe, and fanned by European
aesthetics, such as the Goncourts, into the sacrificial flame of a veritable
cult, has had important and unforeseen consequences for Western art
in general, and for the woodcut in particular. The Japanese manner
of designing in map-like spaces and printing from the plank by
rubbing with the " baren " or a substitute for this " pad," by means
of which flat tones of one or—by superimposition of several blocks—
of many colours are obtained, became general. Coming as it did,
when advanced and experimentally inclined artists were filled with
impressionist light theories, we find the Japanese manner running in
harness with impressionism. The Western school of colour-xylography,
in so far as it is founded on the practices of the fin de siecle, presents
therefore, a mixture of Eastern and Western elements. Emil Orlik
went to Japan in the early nineties in order to learn the " tricks of
the trade " ; but so far as I know the most important trick is not
practised or recqrnmended by the European professors of the craft :
viz., a strict division of labour between designer, cutter and printer.
On the other hand, the Japanese method ;has been carefully studied
with a view to exploitation in conjunction with Western scientific
processes, and in order to perfect what Mr. Morley Fletcher calls " the
wonderful and excellent work that is produced to-day by machinery."
Mr. Morley Fletcher, in conjunction with Mr. J. D. Batten, is the
pioneer of the Japonesque colour print in England. Mr. Allen E.
Seaby [63a] is their colleague and coadjutor. The British, as well as
the Continental artists, have all produced admirable prints without,
with partial, or, as Mr. William Giles, with exclusive employment
of metal plates. Other artists of the multiple colour print are, in

England, Mrs. Austen Brown, Miss Ethel Kirkpatrick, Miss Edith
Richards and Miss Mabel Royds, whose work [63 c] deserves special
mention because it combines with the Oriental technique a very
European, original and personal sense of colour and composition.
Further, there are to be named, J. E. Piatt, Hall Thorpe, E. A.
Verpilleux and the late Charles Mackie [63]: the latter pursuing aims
which are imitative of other media, with quite singular success, the
former using the press, instead of the hand, for the production of
his prints.

It is not, however, my purpose here to discuss the technical merit of
laborious processes, more particularly as I disagree fundamentally
with such a statement as this made by Mr. Fletcher :
" The best of all the wonderful and excellent work that is produced
to-day by machinery is that which bears evidence in itself of its deriva-
tion from arts under the pure conditions of classic craftsmanship, and
shows the influence of their study."

Our machine-made work is so bad fundamentally and radically
because it bears this very evidence. The aesthetic value in machine-
made work is in the exact proportion of its dissimilarity to hand-
wrought work ; the machine-made thing should not look as if it were
made by hand, nor the hand-made thing as if it had been made by
machinery. The popular standards of to-day imply the ve^ reverse ;
the hand is praised for mechanical virtues and the machine for the
" artistic " qualities of its productions.

For such reasons I am as greatly impressed with the ingenuity and
assiduity displayed in many modern colour " processes," including
wood and metal cuts, as I am unconvinced of their aesthetic importance.
The more ingenious, exact and complicated the " process " the greater
the curb it puts on the force and spontaneity of creative expression—
so long as the aim is imitative of hand-made qualities. The creative
artist who will use the machine in lieu of his hand for the purpose of
creative design has not yet arrived.

The great activity which commenced at the turn of this century in
colour woodcut has borne no fruit of any considerable aesthetic value :
most of these things are no more then superficially pleasing and
decorative from the aesthetic, though often highly ingenious from the
technical point of view.

This also holds good not only of Baxter\'s, but other coloured hard
wood engraving methods. Some of the best work of this kind are the

Fr©m the woodcut in colour by Charles H. Mackie : " The Doge\'s Palace, Venice." X2i| in. [63]

engravings by Albert Kruger, after old masters such as Holbein and
Signorelli ; but they are purely reproductive and, therefore, only of
technical interest. Excellent reproductive v^ork on soft wood in the
Japanese manner is being done by a native of that country, Urushibara,
m London. His reproductions of Brangwyn\'s water-colours [64] and
of his own designs, necessitating numberless printings, are admirable
but for Europeans constitutionally " inimitable "—that is to say: not
to be imitated.

Although the Japanese manner in conjunction with impressionistic
design has been practised throughout Europe, its xylographie results
have been less significant than their influence upon the artist\'s con-
ception of design. Amongst the best Continental work as interesting
in design and cutting as they are in printing are the landscapes and
interiors [65] produced by Fräulein Margarethe Geibel, of Weimar
Her interiors of the Goethe Haus and the Grandducal Palace are
quite remarkable. They seem to be done with a minimum of
effort and a maximum of effect which yet is neither reproductive
nor Japonpque. On the other hand, such colour prints as the "Vues
de Paris," by Léon Bonfils, hover between European and Eastern
conceptions. They are designed in fine on hard wood, like his
black-and-white cuts, but with the addition of flat Japanese colour
planes. In the example here illustrated [65B] one can trace the linear
convention of contours of Western tradition, and the pictorial
draughtsmanship of the Impressionists, the former in the treatment
of the architecture generally, the latter in the tonal treatment of the
quays and their reflections. Side by side with these European
methods we find a superficially Japonesque composition and the flat
decorative colour in sky and water and in the green of the trees • but
here certain flicks of high light betray the European mind which
aims at plastic relief.

All this is the effect of the new freedom which the modern artists
have gained, compared with their tradition-bound forbears, but which
carries with it obligations that are not yet clearly recognized and
admitted.

From Urushibara\'s woodcut in colour, after Brangwyn\'s water-colour: "The Devil\'s Bridge." 1^^x20 in.

From the woodcut in colour by M. Geibel: " Mansard Room, Grethe Haus, Weimar." g^Xn in. [65]

From J. B. Jackson\'s woodcut in colour : " View of Roman Ruins after Marco Ricci." i6i x 23 in.

THE SIXTH CHAPTER: INTRODUCING THE
PATHFINDERS OF THE NEW FREEDOM FROM
THE FETTERS OF EXHAUSTED TRADITIONS

O far-reaching, so radical indeed is the change in
outlook that has gradually come over art since the
last hundred years that there are many, not only
among the public, but among the artists themselves,
who are sdll unable to see its justification, still less
its drift. The change, however, has nevertheless
been gradual, and artists who have themselves con-
tributed their share to bringing it about may be
found on the side of the scoffers even to-day. In the circumstances, it
seems to me advisable to illustrate the nature of the change with one of
its earhest, undoubted, and yet litde recognized phenomena, even
though I would appear to be digressing and have to make an excursion
into another medium.

Ever since the early Renaissance the artist\'s aim had been to create
an illusion of nature, or in other words, to make his natural objects
—animal, vegetable and mineral—as imitative and convincing as
possible, even when this involved the transformation of a Madonna
into a Venus, or the degradation of a Christ into an Adonis. The method
by which such metamorphoses were effected was based on " nature
study" modified by classical formulae. That the artist\'s composition
was regulated by considerations which had no reference to the subject
matter of his " illusional representation " was only recognized by the
great masters themselves whom the followers copied. The public
knew nothing of this and continued to judge a work of art firstly by
the subject in general, and secondly by its conception of " beauty "
in details. The more scientifically accurate representation became, that

is to say the more illusional accuracy was desired, the less attention
was given to the fact that pictorial composition is in itself a contra-
diction of illusion. Nature cannot be composed because it is not static ;
a work of art must be composed because it must be static—Le.» self-
contained.\'

Composition in art means a re-ordering of objects as they are found in
nature—it involves a disturbance of their natural order. Representa-
tions of natural facts wWch appear in a work of art are, therefore,
always subject to conditions which are not those of nature, A work
of art is then quite definitely not an accurate representation, copy or
imitation of nature.

An illustration will make this more clear. When Whistler affixed
his " Butterfly " signature to |his canvases, he was doing a very
remarkable thing, a thing that not only conflicted with the conscious
or subconscious art theories of that time, but strangely enough with
the artist\'s own.

In Whisder\'s theory, as indeed in that of the majority, the picture-
frame is a " window " or a doorway, opening on to an illusion of a
space behind it. The spectator, according to this theory, shared by
Ruskin, looks into the depths of the illusionary scene before his eyes,
as it were through the canvas. In other words, the picture surface is
regarded as invisible. In spite of his metaphorical use of language by
which he poetically termed his pictures " symphonies" and " arrange-
ments," Whisder became so logical and uncompromising a materialist
and realist that he ceased to paint anything from imagination except
—his " butterfly " signature, and it is this which indicates that his
aesthetic instinct was superior to his logic. Whistler\'s butterfly signature
has nothing to do with his " subjects," nor is it in any way connected
with illusional requirements, but it is a very essential part of his
composition. It is clear, therefore, that the artist never actually looked
through the surface of the canvas, but on the contrary very carefully
at it, because he put his signature where there was nothing amiss with
the illusion, but something missing on the actuality of space, i,e., the
canvas. Whisder\'s butterfly was, on his canvases (not so truly on the
margin of his etchings), an intruder from Japan. His pictorial mono-
gram, affixed as it was to the picture plane, has more kinship with
the "vase" sign of a Shun-sho, than with the " cartellino " one

»Even the Time Arts—Music and Poetry—are " static " in the sense that a " piece " of music or of poetry
is a condition of sounds that cannot be disturbed without destroying the work of art, which is
perceived by us as such because of the condition it puts our mind in, making it static in relation to the
time of the outside world.

encounters on Venetian paintings or the " trade mark " tablet with
Diirer\'s monogram seen on his prints. Whisder\'s enthusiasm for
Japanese composition led him more and more away from European
composition into a contradictory Japonesque decorativeness, exern-
phfied by raised or double horizons, or all but blank spaces and quite
un-European marginal interests. Nevertheless, Whisder\'s " conceits "
serve as an early and significant milestone on the road which art was
to take. So long as we condnue to look in the Western manner at
pictures as substitutes of nature, art is at best like a vegetarian banquet
with its " mock-turkey " and nut meat " sausages " and ginger-wine,
a içzsX—faute de mieux.

To judge a picture, not as a substitute for, or as an illusion of, something
else, but as an actuality and a reahty, this conception of the function of
art would probably never have arisen in the West but for the arrival
of the Japanese colour prints. In these prints the subject or meaning
was, to us, obscured, nature strangely " distorted," but the aesthetic
qualifies for these very reasons all the more obvious.
The arrival of the Japanese colour print marks the introduction of the
thin end of the ever-widening wedge that is being driven between the
representational and the aesthetic significance of art.
The breach opened the more readily as Impressionism, that is to say,
the arrest of the fleeting moment, was an aim that held both linear
contour and subject significance in slight esteem.
It will be noticed that extremes began to meet : the flat all over
vertical composition and the recessional horizontal perspective found
their amalgamation in Whisder, their culmination in Cézanne, who
endeavoured to give Impressionism a firm structure and organization
in the composition of vertical aspect and horizontal perspective.
However the honours be divided between such things as decorative-
ness, soUdity, representational and abstract truth, the greatest and most
important gain to art is the knowledge that a work of art is a reality
and not a substitute for, or an imitation of. Nature. One can legitimately
dispute about the value of the many new " isms " that have, with
mushroom energy, sprung from this knowledge, so long as one
realizes that a work of art can be judged, if at all, only by the relation
of its parts to its own whole, and of the whole to one\'s own feeUngs,
intelUgence and experience, but not by any external and objective facts.
Neither Whisder nor Cézanne made use of the wood block as a
means of putting their views of art to the test of black and white.
The wood engravings of Whistler\'s drawings have litde xylographie

value ; much less in fact than Rossetti\'s, Millais\', Leighton\'s and
Sandys\' designs. That is only natural, since Whisder v^as too feminine
a draughtsman ; but one wonders that Cézanne was not tempted to
try his virile and all too heavy hand at a craft which lends itself
to bold adventures in form and the quintessence of colours : black
and white. The new path was, however, opened by a finder now
closely associated with this " primitive."

At about the time when the English Ricketts and Shannon were
seeking an escape from academic dullness, impressionistic instability
and the commercial sordidness of life in general by a flight into
fifteenth century Italy : and when the Czech, Emil Orhk, from
similar motives sought to wrest the secret of the Japanese colour print
from its makers by a visit to Japan, a strange half-European, prompted
by similar discontent, fled to the South seas, hoping there to heal the
fissures of his soul amongst gentle savages. This paradoxical quest led,
as it was bound to do, to personal failure, but it helped to give to
Western art a fresh outlook and a new direction.
Gauguin deliberately set himself against tradition. " In art," he said,
" there are only revolutionists or plagiarists," a profoundly mistaken
notion, since revolutions in art are always gradual, the origins obscure
and not to be traced to individuals. Raphael, Dmer and Rembrandt
are each a culmination—an end as well as a beginning, and neither
the one nor the other in an absolute sense.

The spirit which drove Gauguin to the South seas, Orhk to Japan and
Ricketts to the Quattrocento, was one and the same seeking its hbera-
tion by different means. Exotic and " revolutionary " as Gauguin\'s
work looks, it imphes by its very form and nature that against which
it protests. Gauguin possessed, as he well knew himself, a rare instinct
for beauty, and it is this instinct which makes his work acceptable and
partly comprehensible to us. But the fundamentalthe incurable
fissure where there should be wholeness, passion v^here there should
be love, tempest v^here there should be calm, will keep his work
in the category of significant attempt rather than perfect achievement.
He will be regarded by future historians with Cezpne and others, as
one of the primitives of the new vision in art. A curious hght is thrown
on his immediate failure to make his supposedly " primitive " art
consonant with the really primitive mind, by the manner in which
a number of his wood blocks were found years after his death in
Tahiti. It appears that the Czecho-Slovak Minister of War, Stefanik,\'
made the acquaintance of Gauguin\'s native wife in Tahiti, whither
Stefanik had gone in his capacity of astronomer in order to watch an
eclipse of the sun. This acquaintance led to the discovery of Gauguin
blocks which the woman and her family had preserved out of a regard
for the useful rather than the beautiful: the wood was in fact used to
repair a pig-trough and a garden fence. These blocks were no doubt
cut in his house, which contained this motto : Te Faruru, in polite
French : " Id on fait Vamour,\'\' Sic vos non vobis meltificates apes !
How much indeed depends on the material supphed by the artist\'s
exotic environment itself, rather than on his " revolutionary " spirit,
is reahzable if we compare his Breton with his Tahiti subjects.
Possibly the artist may have developed, and his instinct for beauty
may have received the stimulus it required, but there is no doubt that
these Tahitian cuts are aesthetically more satisfying. Gauguin\'s use of
a colour block,\' e.g,, orange in " Te Faruru " and " Te Maruru," a fiery
red in " Te Alua," is sensuously exciting, but even the severe black
and white becomes a thing of sensuous beauty, which the spectator
realizes in a superficial manner : really to understand Gauguin one
must read his sto^ " Noa Noa," shortly to be issued by his friend,
Daniel de Monfreid, in its entirety. It contains in its manuscript,
besides drawings, water-colours; also a number of woodcuts.

\' It appears that there are woodcuts in colour in existence which were not signed by Gauguin, and
which his son expressly declines to recognize as authentic.

From a woodcut by Paul Gauguin : " Mahna no varua ino," one of a series of ten woodcuts entitled \'\' Noa-Noa.\'\' 8 x 14 in.

From a woodcut by Paul Gauguin : "L\'Univers est crée," one of a series of ten woodcuts entitled " Noa-Noa." 8X H in.

Most people will see in his cuts only grotesque designs and savage
idiosyncrasies. Nevertheless, it is the freedom and mastery with which
the ardst uses both tool and material [67, 68]\' that makes them truly
remarkable. By mastery is here not implied a skill acquired by
apprenticeship and long practice, but rather a natural gift of instinctive
knowledge, a sheer will to make tool and material yield him what he
wanted, irrespective of conventions. With Gauguin it is never a case
of incapacity in execution. His cuts, therefore, are of intense interest
technically: he uses white line on the " plank he scrapes ; he makes
play with the natural grain of the wood, but without borrowing
methods or effects from Japan. In Gauguin\'s method of cutting there
is infinitely more "art" or inventive craftsmanship, though not as
much " gemus " as there is in Blake\'s; but in both cases it means
that craftsmanship is the obedient servant of expression.
Whether Edvard Munch [69], some three or four years later, was
directly mfluenced by Gauguin, I cannot say, but his work starded at
least the Continental world as much as the Frenchman\'s. Munch\'s, at
the time incomprehensible, pictorial utterance caused a sensation on
the Continent, where it was repudiated violently even by the advanced
painters who had become ƒmpressionists, and it ultimately caused in
Germany the " Secession," a society of the more revolutionary artists,
out of which eventually a great part of expressionistic art was to develop.
Like Gauguin, Munch was an individualist. The things he represents
in his paintings, his lithographs and his woodcuts are his personal
reactions against life. Whereas impressionism taught the artist to
efface himself, to react as it were purely mechanically and objectively
against the manifestations of light and the modifications of colour.
Munch, like Gauguin, on the contrary, subjected the visual forms of
the world entirely to his emotional reactions. So far the parallel with
Gauguin is complete. But whereas the Frenchman\'s message was a
Rousseau-like protest against civilization, Munch\'s was an Ibsenesque
evaluation; he, like Ibsen, remains throughout a modern European,
an analyst of the European\'s " psyche." As a consequence Munch\'s
art is not decorative, which Gauguin—in spite of his attempted explora-
tion of the native\'s soul—is above all. With the Norwegian, implied,
associative values count more than aesthetic values. So, for example,
an apparently simple representation of a bedroom turns out to be a
scene in a death chamber [70] ; the hkeness of a woman seated on

lExact information as to the artist\'s woodcuts has proved difficult to obtain, and though it is now on
the way it will be too late for inclusion in these pages.

the tragedy that is visible only through the inner eye.
In his woodcuts we find Norwegian equivalents to Gauguin\'s " Te
Faruru " such as "The Kiss," a subject that "intrigued" him with
several versions in etching and painting : " Man and Woman,"
"Jealousy," " Melancoha.\'] Often he repeats in woodcut what he has
expressed in another medium, but always modified in composition
and design to meet the altered conditions. He uses two methods.
In one he allows the wood as such to " speak " in the flat Japanese
manner, so that the grain of the wood forms an intentional part in the
design, whilst the figures are simplified to almost symbolic simphcity.
These cuts he also prints in several simple colours. In his black and
white woodcuts, however, the gouge chips away the wood after the
manner of the primitives, with this difference, that impressionism and
emphasis on light values has taught him to design white on black;
like Gauguin\'s, Munch\'s approach to the woodcut is no longer
" calhgraphic " or translative as with most of the work we have
hitherto considered, but entirely direct, the tool itself fashioning hke
Gauguin\'s the design in the cutting; hke Gauguin\'s, too, it subor-
dinates representational values entirely to the artist\'s requirements.
The hand that executes is controlled consciously by the inner eye;
I say consciously, because unconsciously it is always the inner eye
that is in control, though it has taken man untold centuries to become
conscious of this truth.

It was Blake who estabhshed this duahty of vision and Gauguin and
Munch who first confirmed it; therein lies their importance, for in
the truly modern woodcut it is tool and material which together
pronounce the message the artist has to convey, but which they neither
" interpret," " translate," nor even primarily multiply.
We arrive thus at the craft of woodcutting as an autonomous art.

THE SEVENTH CHAPTER: DEALING WITH THE
PRESENT CONSERVATIVE LINEAR TREATMENT
OF THE DESIGN

AUGUIN and Munch established the ardst\'s right
to make use of the wood block for the purpose of
aesthetic expression in any manner he might think
conducive to his ends. Xylography thus quite definitely
ceased to be merely a means for the reproduction or

This right, I repeat, is not, as yet, generally recognized. The majority
of the public have no interest in xylography or, for that matter, in any
other form of aesthetic expression as such; they still look above all
for an imitation of " nature." Even amongst the artists there are still
a great number who consciously or unconsciously demand of xylo-
graphy graphic and chalcographic rather thm xylographic qualities.
They think in lines and in terms of imitation, i.e., of a design originated
by pen or pencil, or even by brush, rather than by the material and
the cutting tool. " Modern" aesthetic ideas and theories have,

nevertheless, influenced some of these " traditionahsts," so that the Hne
of demarcation is not always clearly definable, and one cannot speak in
absolute terms of creative and reproductive craftsmen. The case of
Auguste Lepere is an interesting one in point. This craftsman\'s earHer
tone engravings, though they suggested reproductions of water-colour
and od paintings, were, in fact, technically more original than his later
cuts, which are really more or less compHcated facsimiles of drawings.
So also his compatriots and part contemporaries, such as P. E. CoHn,
Pierre Gusman [71], Vibert, Perrichon, and several more of the
professional and highly skiUed craftsmen can hardly be said to be
CTeative xylographers, even when they essay independent expression.
Both Gusman and Colin resort to a method of striation which is a
survival of the metal engraver\'s technique. The basis of Vibert\'s work
is the pen and ink drawing, whilst there are instructive studies
of trees [72] by Gabriel Belot which are, in essentials, not different
from the old woodcutter\'s "G.G.N." facsimile pen drawing
108

One of Lucien Pissarro\'s brothers, Paul Emile, practises various
manners, most of them, like the one here illustrated [731, likev^^ise
based on the pen hne, but of late he is attempting to give his cuts a
more properly xylographic aspect. Another brother of Lucien\'s, and
Paul Emile\'s senior, Ludovic Rodo, is distinguished by his keen
sense of humour which causes his clever and facile work, " woodier "
in execution than in design, to display a strongly associative interest.
The " Duke of Marlborough " [74] is a satirical comment on a speech
made by the present Duke as reported, so the artist tells me, in one of
the daily papers during the " Great War." The other cut is a French
rendering of that typically English institution " le fiffoclock" [75].
In same cases the pen line basis of the woodcut is obvious; in others
there seems often plain evidence of the directly cut design.
Appearances in this respect are often deceptive. Emile Bernard, for
instance, has a number of excellent illustrative cuts to his credit, but
their xylographic bona fides is not clear. His illustrations to

" Chansons de France " [76] and Villon\'s Ballads are endowed, by a
system of short hatchings, with a quality which looks like the natural
method of the old cutter, but is, nevertheless, here not a technical
characteristic, but an artificial and aesthetic conceit. The evolution
of this technique into one of thoroughly glyptic appearance is displayed
in his three illustrations for a sonnet—" Le Depart," by Jean Dorsal.\'
In these cuts one can see the reed-pen design progressively disappearing
in each successive subject under the attack of the graver, the third cut
being strongly suggestive of the wooden material and the cutting tool
—which latter appears in the first illustration as a self-effacing slave of
the reed-pen line. If I am correctly informed, the technique, however,
is due entirely to the cutter who, despite appearances, is not Monsieur
Bernard.

The fact that this separation of designing and cutting is possible, much
more than the difference of identity between cutter and designer, marks
cuts and engrpings of this kind off from the truly creative modern
work. Into this category of uncreative design we must place the able
cuts of the Rouquet family, Auguste, Achille and Jeanne, which appear
to be founded on ordinary pen drawings, just as Gabriel Belot\'s tree
study and Bernard\'s illustration were founded on reed or broad-nibbed
pen drawings.

In England, Miss Vivien Gribble has made an attempt in the page
decorations [77] for the "Sixe Idillia " edition, published by
Duckworths, to conventionalize the black line so that it assumes an
almost inflexible character presumed to be in keeping with the hard-
wood block. Apart from the typographical problem upon which I will
touch presently. Miss Cribble\'s formula seems to me too rigid; in her
" Rabbits in the Corn," \' the formula is combined with the " white "
line and with a much better aesthetic sense. But the black line, which
stands for colour, and the white line, which stands for light, are seen
to be at variance in her cut " Milking." \'

In this contradiction of means, however, the English artist is in good
company. Carlègle, the Swiss xylographer, though a much more
experienced draughtsman, employs like her a technique the foundation
of which is the draughtsman\'s black line, and like her he uses it for
" classic " compositions. But to his black line figures he adds white
line " staffage." Carlègle is so accomplished an artist, so inventive and
delightful in his compositions, that only the sensitive eye discovers in

his illustrations an occasional clash between the white and the black
Hne forces. Amongst the books illustrated by him I mention the
following : " La fille d\'Auberge Copa" after Vergil, " Les plus johes
roses de l\'Anthologie Grecque," [78] " Les amours pastorales de
Daphnis et Chloe " [79]. This latter title recalls the earlier " Daphnis
et Chloe" illustrations by Shannon and Ricketts, and offers interesting
points for comparison. The earlier work is much more Hteral, literary
and caUigraphic and forms much more successfully an integral part
of the printed page, whereas Carlègle\'s designs, with their greater
plastic and pictorial quafities, must be regarded as decorative adjuncts
to the text.

Artists who use a great deal of black line in conjunction with white
line and additional colour are two very able collaborators, Maximilian
Vox and his wife "Marie Ariel," who sometimes cuts her husband\'s
designs. Their illustrations in a serial pubhcation : " Le Jardin
de Candide," embracing amongst others, the " Fragments d\'une
traduction nouvel d\'Hérodote," Montesquieu\'s " Dialogue de Sylla
et Eucarte," "Le Comte Pacha de Berneval" and in "Les
Marguérites sont effeuillées " [80] show, in spite of the somewhat
hard and unglyptic quality of the black line in skilful combination
with colours, much originaUty of design.

Another Parisian artist who makes extensive use of the black fine,
but whose designs are by reason of their cubistic or rather geometric
formula [81, 82] both more "modern" and more organically part of
the printed page, is Paul Vera. Vera\'s typographical decorations have
just the open quality, the right weight and Hnear character which
makes them properly the caUigraphic counterpart of the letter type.
We touch here upon a very important question which deserves ven-
tilation at this point, vi%. : the function and suitabihty of the woodcut
for the illustration of modern books.

The particular mechanical advantage of the " cut " is, of course, the
possibihty of printing it together with the text ; whereas the copper
and steel engravings and fithographs have to be printed separately.
This homogeneity does not, however, in itself produce a unity. One
may see this if one studies such an excellent wood engraving as that of
Menzel\'s illustrations for the " History of Frederick the Great" [37].
Here the connection between text and illustration is purely associative\'
OT literary, but not aesthetic. \'

The modern " book beautiful " is a distinctly English creation.
Before, in the early " Nineties," the " Kelmscott," the " Vale " the

* Essex House " and the (Anglo-French) " Eragny " presses were
estabhshed, the illustradons were habitually inserted, or introduced,
into the text with which they had no formal connection at all. They
were generally " vignetted," an absurd misnomer, since the original
"vignettes" were of course very firmly designed ornamental borders
of vine—symboli<^l of " Faith "—which framed the pages of illumina-
ted manuscripts. The very nature of these misnamed vignettes, a cloudy
dissolution of the design into the white of the page, militated against
any firm structural connection with the printed text. This nearly
always ugly manner of inserting illustrations had become increasingly
popular from the seventeenth century onwards.

1 T T* • ft ^^ m ^ ^^S Ricketts, though prompted by a senti-
mental, Victorian Oh for the touch of a vanished hand " feeling,
gave the printed page a unity and architectural compactness which, as
a conscious aesthetic effort, was unprecedented.
These reformers found it necessary to re-introduce or redesign special
old forms of type, some of it, however, like Ricketts\' Kings\' type,
not specially attractive, legible or homogeneous in form. Pissarro
added the further device of printing his illustrations in a colour-scde
that would tone with the colour weight of the page. The " Beaumont
Press " has recently followed these ideas up by a delightful edition of
Goldoni\'s " The Goodhumoured Ladies " illustrated by Ethelbert
White, whose, in themselves excellent, woodcuts however only
preserve the unity of the page because they are not printed in black.
Craig and Nicholson, who were not afraid of heavy blacks in the cut,
counter weighted these by a very black letter.

building of a book page, in so far as it is meant to be an aesthetic
and not a merely technical enterprise, illustration and text should be
considered as part of a single unit, is a fact by no means generally
appreciated. When one for example glances through " L\'Image," of
the nineties, and through " Le Nouvel Imagier," of 1914 to 1920,
one is struck with the inferiority of conception, even in the case of the
best French woodcutters in this particular respect. The very tide page
of "Le Nouvel Imagier," by Lepte, is a purely literal illustration
with no decorative qualities ; the lettering, both in design and spacing
is--sans phrase—bad. As regards the specimens of book " making,"
only very few of the examples given can be said to have succeeded.
Amongst these exceptions are Laboureur\'s " Deux Dialogues des
Dieux de Lucien," [83] in the first number; F. Simeon\'s " Le Vin,"

by Vion d\'Alibrey, in the second,
and the already mentioned Emile
Bernard in the third number.
The failure is, however, not sur-
prising considering the special
problem " Le Nouvel Imagier "
set out to solve. " Chaque artiste
charge d\'orner un texte\'* it ex-
plained, " a done decide du choix
des caractères selon le style de ses
bois,** This is rnodern individual-
ism defeating itself. Under the
conditions here given the type existed already before the illustrations
were made, consequently, the only rational thing would have been to
choose the character of the illustration in accordance with an already
existing font, and not vice versa.

Since, however, other than purely aesthetic considerations govern the
design of fonts, and since in any case the fonts are cut in metal, there
seems to be no valid reason why the woodcut should, in our days, be
used in conjunction with the type. A page on which the illustration is
a calligraphic continuation of the calligraphic, though metal-cut,
character is the only one aesthetically justifiable, and such illustrations
can, as a rule, be produced by the pen and reproduced by the camera
more faithfully and more economically.

The woodcut as a modern form of book-illustration is—one reluctantly
concludes—a mere sentimentality, unless the artist finds in the tech-
nique itself a more aesthetic—compare Vera [81, 82]—or a more
potent—compare Masereel [179] of whom more later—means of
expression.

This brings us to another point one has to consider in this connection :
the associative relation of the style of design with the text.
Intellectual artists such as, for ex-
ample, Ricketts, tend to substitute
associative emotions for aesthetic
emotions : it is because they regard
the Renaissance (or any other
period or place) as a "charmed
time in the development of man"
that they attempt " to evolve what
one might imagine as possible in

one charmed moment or place." If one examines such specimens of
typographical design and decoration as Gray\'s " Spiritual Poems "
[46] or The World at Auction," or even the very first book, " Hero
and Leander " [45] with an unbiassed mind one becomes aware that
one s pleasure springs almost entirely from associative thoughts. As
^signs they do not hang " together in linear or in mass rhythms.
However excellent m details and in technical qualities, and in that
respect the " Spiritual Poems " are quite remarkable, the unit is only
realizable by an intellectual\' but not by a direct aesthetic emotion.

," Gusman ornaments " Textes Classiques
Anciens with a classic vase " motif," obviously because he regards
the Greek vase as such as classic; just as he regards his design of
figures as classic because they are nude or half draped.
This too is a legacy of the Renaissance which confuses in an increasing
de^ee accuracy and literal with aesthetic truth. It is not facts such
as Greek vases or draped figures which ensure classicity, but the spirit
m which such or other things are designed.

If Gusman\'s cuts fail from this point of view, there are other more
^le and oripnal artists—I am not speaking here of craftsmanship
Gusman is the doyen of

professional wood engravers in France—
whose work can yet not be reckoned amongst the truly modern.
There is, for example, some Itahan work printed in the " Eroica " which
lin^ up with the Vale press and the Kelmscott group in style. Adolfo
de Karolis, an otherwise independent classicist, with a style of engraving
m the technique of Scolari, has illustrated d\'Annunzio\'s " Figlio di
Jorio " with cuts that might have come from the Morris circle [85, 86].
Francesco Nonni, another xylographer associated with " Eroica," shows
strong English affinities in such cuts as his " Euridiche," " Vere "
and particularly in " II Pino," [87] which shows certain linear conven-
tions, reminiscent of Sturge Moore. Antonio Moroni shares the same
Ideen Kreis." Ettore di Giorgio\'s white line cutting of " The
Annunication " [88] seems to show the ItaHan Renaissance influence
after its passage through England. Our point, however, is not that these
influences are real; even if they had nothing to do with England the spirit
that has created them is not independent: it leans on extrinsic association
for support. A proof of this may be seen for example in a set of orna-
mpts for a Russian magazine "Energhia," designed by Emilio MantelH
evidently in an attempt to create in the Russian manner. Mantelli was
a very versatile xylographer who cultivated many different styles.

» An intellectual emotion is sometimes an aesthetic emotion at one or two removes
116

In the same way in which Mantelli designed his cuts when occasion
demanded in an archaisdcally Russian style, Jean Lebedefï, a Russian,
living in Paris, adapts his manner to whatever style the text may require.
So he has illustrated a "King Lear" and a "Hamlet," "The
Stories of Poushkine " and " A Life of the Martyrs " by Georges
Duhamel, in varying stylisdc conventions. On the others hand, he
also cuts still-life and views in the modern manner. His convention
IS, nevertheless, fundamentally graphic, and his style, at least in the
aforementioned book illustrations, associative rather than freely creative.
Louis Jou, a Spaniard living in Paris, O. Eeckmann and Anthony de
Witt, both Netherlanders, have all done, in the Flemish manner,
excellent archaistic work. \'

The same also applies to the work of a Polish artist living in Warsaw,
Wladislaw Skoczylas, only that he, instead of the black line, employs
often after the manner of the Renaissance Italian Scolari, the white line.
Skoczylas, an excellent draughtsman, has executed ten independent
woodcuts on the subject of the Polish "Robin Hood" called
Janosik.\' [89] They are full of what will be recognized as the " Polish
National Spirit." It may or may not be a genuine expression of
" National " art, it is any way done very ably. We, however, get
Skoczylas\' real metal in a fine head of a Polish peasant [90], which is
modelled with great force and engraved with consummate skill.
Skoczylas, the Pole, is in his technique as conservative as the Italian,
Gino Barbieri, of whose virile work " Eroica " gives many examples ;
it is only the subject matter that makes such things " modern."
More really national are cuts by Sonia Levitzka, who lives in Paris.
They too, are either delicately archaic or naturalistic, but done entirely
with the knife on soft wood. She is less interesting in her archaic
illustrations than in her capital illustrations for Gogol\'s "Les Veillées
du Hameau" [91]- Other books illustrated by her include "Les
Coffres des Joyaux " and " Le Livre des Saintes paroles et des bons
faits de notre Saint Roi Louis."

This artist, however, by reason of her pictorial and expressionistic
qualities (she experiments with "portmanteau" cuts symbolizing
complete union of two or more figures), hardly belongs to the category
we have been reviewing here, who are distinguished by traditional
and associative discipline of the elements of their design.
We, will, therefore, in the next chapter, consider work that is based
on other principles than linear conventions and literary association.

^ Dix bois originaux et inédits dessinés et gravés par W. S. Warsaw, 1920.
118

THE EIGHTH CHAPTER: THE PICTORIAL DESIGN
IN WHICH THE LITERARY ASSOCIATION IS
SUBORDINATE

T first sight, impressionism would seem an
impossible theory to apply to a medium that
deals so clearly with lines and so decisively with
black and white only. Impressionism produced
"form" only by manipulation of light values:
it eschewed line, it abhorred sharp edges.
England was, as regards drawing—from Row-
landson to Beardsley at all events—the home
. of the calligraphic contour; France that of

classic and impressionistic draughtsmanship. This may account for the
fact that the impressionistic kind of woodcut which flourished, and still
flourishes to some extent, further East on the Continent, has few
representatives in England. French, German and Austrian, Dutch
and Scandinavian artists developed a style of cutting which either
gave in black and white masses the effect of something like bright
sunlight, or they introduced atmospheric half-tone effects by means of
additional flat-colour blocks in the Japanese method.
Much of this work of the first decade of this century, clever as it was,
lacks to our modern eye both cohesion and interest. It would, however,\'
not be fair to overlook here the claims of recognition of German
artists like the veteran Wilhelm Laage, A. Haueisen, P. Dahlen,

H. Schroedter, Hans Frank, Karl Brendel, Karl Moll, and in particular
Walter Klemm, of whom we shall have occasion to speak again
In England, naturahstic work has not developed along such Hnes\'
though in almost every other country this semi-impressionistic woodcut
has Its representation. What after all divides the artists of to-day
more than frontiers is the manner in which they represent natural
forms and accordingly we will deal here with those artists first who
though unfettered by linear convention, yet regard nature primarily\'
if not as a task-mistress, at all events as " she who must be obeyed " •
whilst those to whom nature is an impersonal storehouse or treasury
from which forms and colours may be legitimately abstracted shall be
dealt with in the next chapter. \'

Amongst the foremost living artists, and in certain respects perhaps
the foremost, is Frank Brangwyn, who has taken up the woodcut onlv
since the beginning of the great war, when a serious illness kept him
120

from doing the more physically strenuous
work that has made his name famous in
both hemispheres. Reckoned by his years,
Brangwyn belongs to the older generation
and to that sphere of influence to which both
Gordon Craig and Nicholson belong—the
concatenadon is via James Pryde and
Melville. The affinities express themselves
neither in subject nor in technique, but in
certain similarities of composition and bold-
ness. Brangwyn informs me that he did
a considerable amount oi wood engraving
in the orthodox manner in his early days,
but I have seen no examples of it and so
cannot judge of its qualities. Certain it is that his later cutting has no
relation whatever with orthodox work or with that of the artists just
mentioned. His style in his best and most characterisdc cuts is a
short nervous stabbing of the wood with the graver, almost analogous
to the short stabbing touches of his brush on the huge canvases
which carry his mural paintings. It is a style which is entirely his
own. The design is in white line, roughly indicated, before the
cutting, with chalk, but almost completely drawn in the cutting itself.
His finest cut in this style is the "Via Dolorosa" [92], a sort of
"J\'accuse " inspired by Brangwyn\'s general outlook upon life, and
the "Fair Wind" [93] printed in the now defunct "Form" and
also, but exceedingly badly,\' in that otherwise noble ItaHan effort
" L\'Eroica," the pioneer magazine of the Itahan woodcut, which
we have already referred to more than once. Another good woodcut
showing Brangwyn\'s glyptic style is " The Exodus," printed in Mr.
Shaw Sparrow\'s " Prints and Drawings by Frank Brangwyn"
Of his smaller work the eight full page cuts for the Poems by
Verhaeren, pubhshed by Pelletan Helleu, of Paris, are done in a, for
him, unusually delicate manner. The " Modern Woodcutter " series
contains several excellent examples, sometinies like " Sheep Shearing "
[94] and " The Harvest," insignificant in dimension, but replete with
meaning. Unfortunately, Brangwyn is far from pedantic in the
handUng of his own reputation. Cuts associated with his name are not
always cut by him, and occasionally he will get an engraver to put in

» The Collector may find occasionally good signed proofs of many of Brangwyn\'s cuts, but they were
never formally published or recorded.

a tone on a block that is otherwise of his own cutting, as in the
Verhaeren book ; the illustrations for a book on "Belgium," pubhshed
by Kegan Paul, were cut in wood very ably by H. G. Webb and
C. W. Moore. Without much trouble a htde experience will, however,
enable one to distinguish between Brangwyn\'s best work and the
numerous other cuts—generally in facsimile of brush drawings—
which, even when cut by him are rarely so good or so important as
those I have singled out. Brangwyn\'s temperament is entirely opposed
to craftsmanship as an end in itself : he is, consequently, the despair
of minds who can only respond to materially demonstrable facts such
as those represented by orthodox methods of engraving and printing:
to him, therefore, the woodcut is sometimes a personal means of
expression, in which case it is instinct with the quahties of carved
wood ; but at other times it is to him merely a means of reproducing
a drawing which he will as Hef hand over to a professional wood—or
even process—engraver. That in his personal and best work the result
should be of unrivalled excellence is due solely to the fact that he,
unlike most present-day artists, is a natural craftsman, whilst precisely
the most interesting work of the younger generation tends to be too
" sickhed o\'er with the pale cast of thought." His approach to the
woodcut is, however, that of the painter; hence on the one hand the
method of cutting white on black, on the other hand of using an

This kind of cutting must not be confused with the lavishness of
incision on which the tone engraver\'s technique is based ; nor does
it bear any resemblance to Sturge Moore\'s manipulation of the tools,
which is more subtle, if less rnasterful, than Brangwyn\'s. Brangwyn\'s
cutting is wood carving, and is rnore closely related to the attitude of
the sculptor than to that of the line draughtsman. His position as a
xylographie artist is, therefore, nearer to Gauguin\'s, who was also a
carver of wood, and of Munch\'s than to the work of their orthodox
opponents. That this should be so is not so strange as might seem,
seeing that the impressionist Brangwyn began—^with his "Buccaneers"
of 1893—to rebel against the same doctrines that drove the impres-
sionist Frenchman and the impressionist Norwegian into other
methods of opposition.

Greatly influenced by his admiration for Brangwyn\'s art is the work
of his assistant, L. H. Bradshaw [88b], and also of the Belgian, R. A.
Masui Gastrique. Masui Gastrique pubhshed here in London a
series of fifty-five large size woodcuts illustrating " La Légende de
Thyl Uylenspiegel." The cutting is done with considerable verve

and the designs show a curious combinadon of Brangwynisms and
Flemish " taste." But the influence of the Enghsh ardst is in this case,
as in most others known to me, baneful. Brangwyn is a powerful
natural force, whose aesthetic intuition, rather than intellectual control,
protects his creative instincts from disaster. Less forceful talents who
copy his manner and mannerisms fail precisely to that extent : his
" clothes " are too big for them, and hinder their freedom of move-
ment. Masui Castrique\'s design is constantly tripped up by a conflict
between the black line of the pen and the black mass of the brush-
technique, so that one often misses the significance of his considerable
literary imagination.

Since we have touched upon Thyl Uylenspiegel and Belgian art, the
work of another Belgian, Albert Jean Delstanche, may here be noted.
Delstanche has published\' a series of illustrations for Charles de
Coster\'s " Tyl Ulenspiegel " and " The litde Towns of Flanders."
In both cases I find the drawings sound and interesting in a tradi-
tional sense and the cutting is highly expert, but from our point of

view, without relevance, since it is almost entirely reproductive in the
sense of the " facsimile cut."

Linked partly with the old reproductive line engraver\'s attitude towards
the craft, partly with certain modern theories of design, is the work of
one of the very best EngHsh xylographers, Gwendolen Raverat.
Mrs. Raverat, the wife of Jacques Raverat, the French painter, and
daughter of Sir George Darwin, is an intensely English artist. I do
not think that the merit of her work can be fully realized by anyone
who is not intimately acquainted with English thought and feeling.
The English character is proverbially reserved, and although a lot of
nonsense is talked about the Englishman\'s lack of sentimentality,
there is this foundation for such views that the English compared with
most other peoples are not demonstrative; which, appHed to Mrs.
Raverat, simply means that there is a good deal more in her work than
is apparent on the surface.

Gv^endolen Raverat began to use the wood block for the purpose of
giving expression to her aesthetic sense some eighteen years ago, and
one of her first cuts, " The Knight of the Burning Pesde," is apiece
of wood chopping such as one would expect from a talented English
boy : it is cut on soft wood with a knife. " The Cobbled Yard,"
another early woodcut, leaves no doubt as to the femininity of its
author, but it has masculine independence of expression, and a clearly
indicated will to obtain a perfect control over her medium. This control
the artist has achieved, and it is this which makes her merit unusual
as a woman\'s and outstanding as an artist\'s. At first she was attracted
by figure subjects, usually with an associative meaning, as, for instance,
in " The Quarrel " and in the excellent white line cut " The Gypsies,"
where the preponderance of the black masses is naturally accounted
for as a Hght value, the scene being a camp fire by night time. Here
her unusual strength is shown, however, not by the ancient tour de
force oi lighting, but by the capital execution of details, such as the
drawing of hands and feet and the treatment of drapery. Similarly
excellent and characteristic is her litde illustration for the " Ballad of
Clerk Saunders." In the year 1912 she comes under the influence of
Eric Gill, and in such subjects as " The Visitation," " The Creation
of Light" and the " Pieta," of which she painted a large version in
oil, her treatment becomes somewhat affected and Byzantine. The
engraved!line is less obviously "woody," but for that reasonfan
excellent disciplinary exercise for the cutter\'s hand. Mrs. Raverat has
engraved a large number of figure subjects, using the white line on

hard wood with great skill (" The Nativity," " Margaret\'s Ghost "),
with fine imagination (" Sir Thomas Browne," the " neighbour unto
the grave " [95]) and without the affectation of Byzantinisms. Some
of the most remarkable work is, however, a series of landscapes
which at first sight remind one of the style of the professional wood
engravers of the seventies or eighties. It is here, however, that her
EngHsh reserve shows itself. The subjects themselves are entirely
commonplace; there is no romantic frippery and trimming; no
" beautiful " scenery. Here are some of her tides : " The Edge of
the Wood," "Autumn Morning," "November Day," "Full Moon,"
" Poplars in France." The tides are just and entirely indicative of
the subjects, but it is the skill with which the artist has expressed
the sentiment that causes admiration. The blocks are for the most
)art quite diminutive, scarcely exceeding four or five square inches,
)ut the amount of emotional values she manages to express within this
narrow compass is truly remarkable. In a litde block called " The
Moor " there is enough matter to fill a page of descriptive writing.
These little engraved blocks are things that depend entirely on them-
selves, they are not decorations for a book page; in fact they have
none of those qualities which are called decorative. This is perhaps
the reason that the artist has exchanged this method of engraving

landscapes for an-
other in which the
incisions are not
nearly so fine and so
numerous; indeed,
bold silhouetdng of
black masses gives a
quality which is at
once more decora-
tive, more luminous
and more obviously
woody" (e.g.,
Sheep by a River,"
"The Duck Pond"
[96]). ^ ^
Amongst the latest
cuts are bold soft
wood blocks of still
more decorative na-
ture ("The Bathers,"
"Boys Dancing"),
but these are not
perhaps as successful
as her earlier figure
and landscape en-
gravings on hard
wood, nor as her
more recent blocks
partly on soft wood ("The Mountain Road," "The Bridge"),
partly on hard wood (" David, Old " [97] and " Le Jeu de Boules "
and the " Bowl Players," in which latter she has realized a more
forceful expression of three-dimensional composition).
I have dwelt at some length on this artist\'s cuts, not only because it
is so entirely sound technically and sane mentally, yielding its beauty
nevertheless only to the sensitive, but because in Gwendolen Raverat\'s
work intellectual values hold a careful balance to the emotional
elements: it thus becomes in its different phases a useful indicator of
the various lines along which modern xylographers have developed
their medium.

JT , , ,---, =»------, \'\'--.---«^»-\'-I\'-lM.-liJ.lCll.lV.»^ VVi 111 1H.X work

enables the beginner to obtain the nght focus when examining other
manifestations of modern xylographie aims and conceptions.
The work of Mrs. Raverat\'s sister-in-law should here not be passed
over without notice. Mrs. Dpwin first instructed her in the use of
the tools and there are certain affinities in the treatment of subject
matter which clearly show the influence of her teaching. Mrs
Darwin\'s " Sister and Brother " is decorative in a pleasant and verv
simple manner and " The Bath " [98] well designed and well cut
In certain respects akin to Mrs. Raverat\'s landscape engraving, in
others nearer Sydney Lee\'s manner of handling the material, is the

work of J. F. Greenwood. Greenwood uses exclusively the white
line. His views of his native Yorkshire are cut not only with a firm
feeling for " local colour " but also with a good sense of composition.
Of his engravings, "The Dale Road," "Cove Lane" [loo] and
" The Tinker," as well as the imaginative " Richmond," are amongst
the best things he has so far engraved, though his sHghtly sentimental
but quite imaginative " Poplars " and " John Atherton\'s Mill" [99]
appeal perhaps to a wider pubhc.

Good naturalistic work is done particularly in this country. We can
here only single out Noel and P. Kerr Rooke, MiUicent Jackson,
Margaret Pilkington, C. A. Wilkinson, G. Soper and W. E. Robins;
the technique of the two latter, however, is a proof that they are more
versed in a different medium, viz., etching. Muirhead Bone\'s young
son, Stephen, also practises a very accomplished technique of engraving
[loi] v^hich is, nevertheless, more careful and often more elaborate
than economical and striking, and not nearly so interesting as the
comparative failures of his latest attempts at direct cutting.

Work of a related quality, aiming at naturalistic effect at a small
expenditure of imagination is, for that reason, probably plentiful in all
European countries. Representative craftsmen of this kind are ^ s
in America, J. J. Lankes [102] and Tod Lindenmuth[ 103], whilst the
veteran P. Rusicka\'s technique v^ould hnk him rather with the wood
engravers of the eighties but for the fact that such prints as his
Brooklyn Bridge " [104], reveal, apart from Japanese influences of
composition, an independent and personal technique in the treatment
of the water. Another American, C. O. Woodbury, also a hardwood
^graver, interests from the point of view of content or subject matter
His tree studies, inspired, curiously enough, by our very English
Burnham Beeches " [105], are endowed with a personality which
makes these hoary ancients appear Hke souls in purgatory. Unfortu-
nately, Woodbury\'s technique, accomphshed as it is, falls short in the
matter both of design and of truly creative tooling.

Care and elaboradon of detail is, as one repeatedly experiences, not a
quality that makes for creative expression. It, therefore, happens that
work which is perhaps not of the highest order possesses, nevertheless,
a greater interest. Such, for instance, is the case with the cuts by
the American, Birger Sandzen [io6], whose amusing atmospheric
formula for cutting, like the orthodox etching formula of his master
Zorn, tends to become too niechanical. More varied are the formulae
for atmospheric effects practised by the Frenchman G. Zevort. Better
work is done by the latter\'s compatriots, Paul Emile Pissarro,
Chalandre, Rouquet, P. E. Colin and many others. Actually,
however, Zevort\'s technique is more venturesome. The problem he
seems to ^ve set himself is that of the treatment of skies and clouds
and the light effects for which they are responsible. He does not
shrink from the employment of means that would appear to be the
least likely. His technique is based on the pen line, that is to say,

its foundation is the black line, but whilst he keeps his execution of
the landscape both graphic and impressionisdc, his treatment of
sky and cloud forms is unorthodox and at first thought unjustifiable.
Sometimes a few scrawls or parallels of "pen line" will suffice to
indicate cloud and sky [107]; at other times, the lines take the shape
of a black mesh [108]; at yet other times he resorts to the old
" manière criblée " [ 109] and dots his sky with a mass of regular white
spots. Often enough his experiment does not succeed ; but when, as
in the examples illustrated, it does succeed, the effect is both luminous
and more convincing than one would expect it to be.
Another French artist whose graphic experiments in the treatment of
sky, water and smoke effects are exceedingly interesting is Louis
Moreau, known to Enghsh readers through the reproductions of his
cuts in the magazine " Form." In a Riviera landscape, " Nice," he

has employed a hard and almost geometrical linear device w^ith which
he renders light effects in sky and water nevertheless in a manner that
is convincing : it is the burning sky and the soft oily water of a
Mediterranean evening. Even more interesting because anti-glyptic is
a river landscape of his [no]. Here he has woven a wiry linear
pattern out of water- and smoke-shapes which has little to do with
wood as a medium, but is interesting for its own sake and curiously
effective.

We have called this sort of thing and-glyptic because it does violence
to the natural use of the xylographie tools, or rather to the natural
movement of the hand on the wood.

The reverse is true of a large number of modern wood and linoleum
cuts in which the design is produced by the simplest strokes or pushes
of the gouge, based on the methods of irnpressionistic brush work.
Examples of this kind of soft wood cutdng are plentiful in every
country, except in England. Jack Roberts, an Englishman living in

a woodcut by Dr. Emma Bormann : " The Gallery of the Opera House, Vienna." 53 x 22| in. [i 13]

Paris, has done a series of views of Paris in this manner [i 11]. And
quite recently an American, Henry Glintenkamp, has produced a
series of Mexican and Spanish views [112] cut in this manner in
linoleum. On the continent snow landscapes which present the artist
with a "black and white" design, so to speak, "cut and dried," are
frequent subjects for this kind of coarse cutting. Thtsnow necessitates
the removal of a great deal of wood surface and the accidental relief,
cut by the tool in the wood and visible often in the impressed print,
has given the ardsts opportunity to exploit the accidents. We mention
amongst "cunning" snow cutters Karl Moll, in Germany, and Olaf
Willums, m Norway. The latter manages to give his " snow " dehcate
half-tones which are actually merely the shadows cast by the raised
surfaces of the print. In the Japanese " stone-prints " the " relief "
which the medium almost invites is exploited with a different effect ;
the whites being raised above the black backgrounds.
Japanese methods of printing in flat maplike masses have inspired
much of European xylography, sometimes with very pleasing results.
I mention amongst the best of this kind, snow landscapes by the
German, Fräulein von Frede, the Dane, H. C. Barenheldt, and the
Swede, Else Bjorkman, the Belgian, André Garpander, and so
alrnost ad infinitum.

It is impossible here to do the subject justice ; each country seems to
bring forth a sufficient number of artists capable of producing good
naturalistic woodcuts with the help of two or more printings in
colour : and their merit is the greater the less they resemble Japanese
prints or European colour reproductions.

If Ingres said that the line is the probity of painting, so it should be
understood that the black and white is the probity of the woodcut.
It is this change from Ingres\' hne to the impressionistic drawing iii
planes which characterizes the modern manner. A transition may be
146

studied to advantage in such a cut as ManteUi\'s " II Bevitore" [h2a].
It began manifestly as a drawing in Ingres\' sense, i.e,, with black
contour line and shading, as shown, e.g., by the treatment of the face
and the nose in parUcular. But as the ardst was working with a coarse
cutter, the Hnes were thick, the shading instead of being produced by
black lines tended to become black planes; contour and shade Hnes
interchange their functions—in the bottle it is difficult to say whether
the contour is black or white ; in the window frame one of the Hnes is
a contour, the other is partly contour, partly shadow plane losing
itself in the colour value of the landscape background, where again a
roof and three windows are outHned in white, which thus ceases to be
a light value. One could condnue to analyse this point and to show how
black and white, instead of being as in Ingres\' and aU academic art
a strictly rigid and immutable convention, have, in the modern artists\'
handling, a protean variety of functions and tending to disappear into
planes (compare, for example, especially many portrait cuts in the
manner of Vallotton, such as have been done by Baudier and GaUien
[144], in France, Sahlen in Sweden, Hummel, Wurttemberger in
Germany, and many others).

It is this that makes the naturahstic subjects of the Austrian xylographer,
Dr. Emma Bormann, so admirable. This artist dehghts in ren-
dermg townscapes, interiors of theatres and concert rooms, or litde
incidents in the life of her stricken city, Vienna. She works with the
grain on soft wood or linoleum white on black with short nervous
digs which render lines only by a succession of white dots. The
method of drawing is manifestly based on impressionist principles,
her black and white being always used as light and tone values, the
colour often being added, sparingly, by hand. One of the best cuts
is a view of the Vienna Opera House [i 13], in which the countering
of whites and blacks produces not only tone, but also a delightful
parkle of light. In another, and technically more audacious print,
"Szenen Umbau " [114], the artist has attempted a broader manner
of cutting than generally characterizes her composition. A woodcut
of hers: "the Funeral of the murdered sociaHst, Dr. Kautsky, in
Munich," is printed with an additional tone block. The print is some-
what confused, probably intentionally so, for the confusion, together
with the angry acute angles of the red flags which pierce the surface
at many points, adds psychologically to the truth of the subject.
Dr. Bormann excels, indeed, not only in the handhng of crowds, as
the Circus scene here reproduced [115] may help to prove, she

handles even architectural details in a cleverly synthetic manner [116]
which makes one overlook the absence of the Architect\'s " stand-by "
the ruler-drawn Hne. The treatment of the sky in the view of Trau
should be compared with Zevort\'s [107, 108, 109].
There is on the surface no connection between Dr. Bormann\'s method
of cutting and that of the French illustrator, Hermann Paul. Never-
theless, Hermann Paul\'s striking manner is, Hke the Viennese artist\'s,
directly due to impressionistic reahsm. The greatest difference between
the two is the nature of the incision, or rather excision—but with both
black and white are mainly Hght values, though the Frenchman uses
them quite definitely for decorative purposes. His manner of handhng
black is, strictly speaking, not suitable for book illustration, nor has it
the usual French or classic elegance. He is, as a matter of fact a pure

Gothic, as the choice of works illustrated by him proves. There are
the twenty compositions for " Le Doctrinal des Preux " ; a " Danse
Macabre"[117]; the " Chansons de France," and above all, the out-
standing congruoupess of his Rabelais illustrations [nS]. Hermann
Paul has humour in the composition and wit in the cutting. Nothing
is done that the simple tool cannot conveniently do, and it is astonish-
ing what it can do in his hand : the design is exclusively the tool\'s
and not the pen\'s or the pencil\'s.

If we compare with the excellent Hermann Paul the accomplished
work of the Spaniard, Louis Jou, we notice at once the difference
between the former artist, who thinks in the terms of his medium,
and the latter, who thinks in the terms of another. Both of them are,
so far as representation goes, naturalistic, but whereas Hermann
Paul\'s xylographic manner is the result of drawing with the tool, Jou\'s
is the result of making the tool translate a picture into a preconceived

formula of xylography. Jou\'s technique is much more complicated,
and though perfectly legitimate, less spontaneous, as his series of
religious subjects done in the "gothic " manner and with chiaroscuro
tone bear out. He has, however, one—in xylography—excessively rare
quality, he gets the effect of full colour into his black and white [119]
to a greater extent than almost any artist hitherto considered.
A woodcutter whose cutting is not divorced from the designing by
one remove, and who, therefore, resembles Hermann Paul rather
than Louis Jou in technique, is the Dutchman, L. O. Wenckebach.
This artist has a distinguished series of independent woodcuts to his
credit, in which he has arranged his design in broad black and white
masses without half-tones on the impressionistic (Hght value) principle.
His themes are usually taken from popular legend (Tyll Uylenspiegel j
or the Bible. Nothing could be better than his versions of " The Good
Samaritan," particularly the one in which the ass is shown with its
head raised [120] . There are many other subjects done in the simplest
152

From a woodcut by L. O. Wenckebach: "Christ driving out the Money Changers." Il£x9in. [i2i]

black and white manner, but most striking is perhaps his " Christ
driving the money changers out of the Temple" [121]. Here the
dominating figure of Christ expels the offenders by a gesture which
translates itself aesthetically into lines of tremendous centrifugal force.
Compared with Wenckebach\'s handling of the tool, that of Walter
Klemm, Germany\'s best naturalistic xylographer, whom we have
already mentioned, is more accomplished. Beginning with highly
finished and extremely competent realistic subjects, IQemm\'s design
gradually broadened out into black and white impressionism [122], not
156

From a woodcut by Walter Klemm : One of the illustrations for " Don Quixote." gf x8| in. [123]

unlike Dr. Bormann\'s in treatment. His portfolio of " Don Quixote "
illustrations contains brilliant examples of direct designing in wood.
In the earlier work there was much representational accuracy, great
skill, and in certain cuts imagination in the hterary sense, but the
light and colour values fought each other in black and white. In the
" Don Quixote " illustrations Klemm has definitely accepted black
and white as light values and he handles his tools with an extraordinary
economy, force and subdety. His " Don Quixote " illustrations are
pure forceful reahsm without any "decorative" trimming [123] The

variety of expression, the subtlety of simplification and the luminosity
of his black and v^hite are w^holely admirable.
The apparent modernism of Klemm\'s illustrations for Flaubert\'s
"St. Julien I\'Hospitallier " [124] is explained by the artist as an
attempted archaicism. One cannot, hov^ever, help feeling that so stern
a naturalist and realist would not have ventured so far without the
ubiquitous influence of more advanced theories. Compare for style
of cutting the modernist\'s Jean Marchand\'s cut [125].
A different temperament, a different technique and inasmuch as the
purpose is changed from the single independent print to the illustration
for the printed page, is shown in the work of Gabriel Daragnès, the
French xylographer whom we mention at the end of this chapter
because his work presents a sort of resumé of the possibilities in a
method of design that is wilUng to adopt any means of expression
compatible with adherence to naturalistic representation, whether in
linear or mass composition, whether white on black or black on white.
Daragnès has illustrated Oscar Wilde\'s \'\' Ballad of Reading Gaol ";
Gerard de Nerval\'s " Main Enchantée " ; Goethe\'s " Faust." He is,
I think, seen at his best in a series of illustrations for Paul Claudel\'s
" Protee." He shows here a sense of colour as well as beautiful drafts-
manship in execution ; he has humour and invention and an elegance

which makes Klemm\'s cutting look unpolished [126, 127]. The
opposite illustration is the headpiece to Act II. of " Protée " : "Le
Satyre Majeur à Torchestra " :

But in such illustrations as his frontispiece to " Le Corbeau," Poe\'s
"Raven," we see that he too, like the Laboureur, is forsaking simple
naturahsni m favour of post-impressionistic—using the word in its
chronological sense—composition.

From a woodcut by Daragnès : One of the illustrations for Claudcls\' " Protée "
(Le Satyre Majeur). x 5 in. [126]

THE NINTH CHAPTER: A SHORT ONE, PRE-
PARING THE GROUND FOR THE CHANGE THAT
HAS COME OVER THE ARTIST\'S ATTITUDE
TOWARDS NATURE

WENTY-FIVE years ago, Labourcur, whose
woodcuts now belong entirely to the modern move-
ment in art, was already seen to struggle with the
problem of combining impressionistic light values
with a firm decorative composition. His print of
the Luxembourg Gardens [127®]» published in
"L\'Image," showed ostensibly orily a couple of
" bonnes " with their charges in the famous gardens.
The technique was a strong coarse black and white, suggesting sun-
light in a loose impressionistic manner; but the play he made with
the round children\'s hats, and the caps and ribbons of the nurses,
in contrast to the confused mass of the trees, shows clearly how
conscious he was of the necessity of aesthetic structure in design.
A decorative border pattern, in the same number, made up of abstract
pattern—not traditional ornament—gives further proof of his early
searching for more purely aesthetic values.

It is with the growth of the new conception of design out of impres-
sionism that we are more especially here concerned; and for this
purpose the work of the Venetian Guido Marussig, furnishes particu-
arly useful material. Marussig published in the "Eroica," of 1912, a
woodcut entided: " Pah striati e ippocastani fioriti " Striped poles
and blooming horse chestnut" [128]. The subject was taken from a
common Venetian sight, but what interested the artist was the colour
pattern made by the poles and the " candles " of the chestnut trees. In
another very similar cut, " Palazzi illuminati," the blacks and whites
are partly light and partly colour values, but the effect in both cases is
that of a flat black and white colour pattern.

In England, Robert Gibbings has taken this kind of naturalistic
pattern weaving a step further. He began by purely naturalistic land-
scape designing with white hnes, but the w^ took him to the South
and the East, and the cubic Oriental houses impelled him to build up
cubic patterns in black and white in which these two " colours "
function not only as colour andhghts but also as distinctly plastic, i.e.,
three dimensional values [129]. One can see by comparison of
Gibbings\' with Marussig\'s manner how much less sentimental and

more intellectual impressionism had become. Impressionism, however,
it still is au fond, for when we see Gibbings applying his method to
slighdy different subjects, such as " Dubhn in Snow," or " Cornwall,"
the so-called " cubism " resolves itself into a pattern of shadows and
lights without contours or half-tones. The ardst next essayed the same
method with the human figure seen undraped against a bare rock of
the sea-shore. The darks or blacks of this cut represent the shadows,
the lights, contourless and mostly undefined, are the blank spaces of
the paper. There is a conflict between the light and colour values
which, coupled with the naturalistic foundation of the design detracts

from its success. In his portrait of William Walcot [130], Gibbings\'
method, helped by the dark masses of hair, beard and clothes, and the
absence of a difficult background, shows itself to greater advantage.
Somewhat similar means have been employed by C. W. R. Nevinson
in the cut here illustrated [131]; though the design has been influenced
by the artist\'s cubistic studies—Nevinson is one of our pre-war
"Futurist" revolutionaries—the composition is, nevertheless, so
realistic that an underexposed snapshot might have served as its founda-
tion. Xylographically, Nevinson\'s cutting shows greater regard for
the mediuni than Gibbings\', whose sharp edges suggest, if anything,
scissor designed black paper silhouettes. Gibbings, however, loves
definiteness, i.e,, a sweeping clear-cut contour for its own sake.
It will be seen then, that designs like Nevinson\'s and Gibbings\'j
however simplified and " abstract " in appearance, are fundamentally
representational and naturalistic, but their disciplining of contours
shows the drift away from nature as a task mistress.

From a woodcut by Alberto Caligiani: One of the " Visioni di Montagnana." 6J x6J in.

From a woodcut by Robert Gibbings : " Portrait of William
Walcot." ufxsiin. j-jj^j

THE TENTH CHAPTER: FREE AND CREATIVE
DESIGN AND THE DRIFT AWAY FROM IMITATION
OF NATURE

F there is a definite pardng of the ways between the old
and the new orientation in art it may be recognized—
superficially—by a modification of " drawing," which
goes, as pointed out, beyond mere elimination

elaboration
ment " of
distorted and unnatural.
As repeatedly urged in these pages
public are still under the impression
that the artist\'s principal task consists
in painting or drawing things as they
are and preferably "beautiful" things.
Language being a very unreliable
means of conveying thought with any
degree of precision this greater number
are completely mystified when they
hear certain modern pictures which
appear to them utterly unlike "nature"
described as even more real^ than
" old-fashioned " ones. It is said, for
instance, that Cézanne aimed at the
reality behind the appearance of

things. This is, however, not strictly true: no human intellect can get at
the reality of any object; so that in that respect the conservatives and
the revolutionaries are equally wide of their mark. The only reality
we know is in ourselves and the Delphic " know thyself " still remains
a counsel of perfection. All that artists have ever been able to do is
to represent things, not as they really are, but as the artists see them.
The whole meaning and mystery of art lies cradled in that one litde
conception: seeing—hoih. as a mechanico-optical and a psycho-mental
function. All modifications, deviations, distortions and abstractions of
and from nature by art, incompetence excepted, are due to different
ways of seeing.

That the artist of whatever school, epoch or environment of necessity
always modifies the data of nature in his design would be more obvious
than it is if mankind relied only on the message which the outer eye
receives and conveys to the inner mental nerve centre objectively.
The " image," however, which reaches this centre is instantly received
170

by ever alert " associations " which crowd around it like a throng of
touts and traders round a ship arriving in an Oriental port. What
finally happens to the image when it has landed will depend uldmately
on the persuasive power of aforesaid associations and the nature of the
individuals " bent, or m Freudian terminology, " complex."
So long as the individual ardst creates, not, to be sure, in accordance
with his opdc vision, but in obedience to expectant associations, and so
long ^ these associations are shared by the majority of his public,
no difficulty arises, and his expression, his message, is understood by
all. A change of associations or a different direction taken by them
owing to some new cause will bring about a change in conceptions,
which m art means a change in style.

The differences that make the change in the design of to-day are, there-
fore, due to a c^nge of associations which the artists have made, but
which the public do not—as yet—generally share. The modern artist
has learnt to look upon the work of art as an autonomous thing which
must obey the laws of art rather than the laws of outside "nature." It is
^ course not independent of life, or nature, but a manifestation of both.
Ihis autonomy ot art, involving as it does a deviation from " nature "
and, therefore, causing the present-day public so much difficulty has,
nevertheless, long been accepted by them, not only without a murmur
m disapproval, but on the contrary with the greatest appreciation.
Traditional ornament, for example, is always a modification and dis-
tortion of " nature " unless it is an altogether unnatural, i.e., a geomet-
rical device ; and caricature is still the dehght of the broadest strata
of the public. It will be seen, therefore, that even the most hide-bound
are wilhng to accept wildly improbable representations of " nature "
without deniur and even with applause, provided their perception is
accompanied by suitable associations.

Now caricature is a perfectly rational and legitimate approach to the
tendencies of modern art. Caricature, if it has any claim to art at all,
is a design loaded " with an excess of meaning, of character. It over-
emphasizes the appearance of things—generally human beings—and
invests them with a truth that would otherwise be concealed behind
the surface ; so much so, that a good caricature is more like a person
than a photograph, to say nothing of paintings of the common order.
It is clear, therefore, that an artist may load his design in accordance
with the particular character he wishes to stress. The amusing wood-
cuts of the Italian, Gino Sensani—another of the artists associated with

the magazine " Eroica \' —will, in all probability, be accepted as almost
normal if " ufi po ficeTccite e volute " designs verging on caricature
perhaps, but not unnatural [132]. So likewise the work of one of his
colleagues, Alberto Galigiani, would be accepted as good examples of
direct woodcutting with an intentional caricature inflection. Whilst,
however, no one would accuse Guido Marussig or Robert Gibbings of
haying caricatured their representations of Italian, Greek or Maltese
cities, Galigiani\'s "Visioni di Montagnana " [133] are in the nature of
caricatures ; the exaggerations and even distortions are here due to a
literary and sentimental conception of art which seeks for the human
relation, for human moods in the landscape.

A comparison of Charles Ginner\'s woodcuts with these proves that he
has a very different conception of art and one that many misunderstand
[134, 135]- In Ginner\'s cuts the design is loaded in respect of flat
pattern: they are fine vertical compositions with no illusion of depth ;
they have the quality of an embroidery, a lace-like patterning, that
has no sentimentd associations and in their hand-coloured form are
seen to be purely flat decorations.

If we now look at a design in three colours by Edward Wadsworth,
and learn that it represents a Greek town, " Riponelli," we conclude
that the design is loaded cubically [136]. That is to say, the artist, dis-
missing all sentimental associations from his mind, has used the cubic
aspect of the church and houses of this town in order to produce a
cubic "in and out\'\' pattern intended to entertain the eye. In other
woodcuts of this artist—the earher ones as a matter of fact, such as
" In dry dock " and " Minesweepers" [137]—there is no actual dis-
tortion ; they are flat, but as realistic as Gibbings\', the difference being
that Wadsworth selected his natural facts and has built up his design,
not on the data of external nature, but on the internal problem of
design : in other words, in Gibbings\' case the advancing and receding
lines, the black and white shapes are selected on a representational
schedule : in Wadsworth\'s case the same elements come up for
selection for their own sakes, that is : because they are capable of
being shaped into black and white patterns ; if they also happen to
signify actual things, such as ships, funnels, docks, that is merely
incidental, but not essential. A further step is taken by Wadsworth
in his view of " Tarmacs" [138]. In this cut, wWch has for its subject
a Black Country " slagheap," geometrical has given way to emotional
abstraction; the landscape is seen not so much as what it looks like,
but as what it feels like. How closely, nevertheless, natural and

From Edward Wadsworth\'s woodcut in three colours :
"Riponelli." Slightly reduced. [136]

aesthetic selection, that is, optic sight and aesthetic feeling, are mutudly
related a comparison of this cut with a more freely representative
rendering of the " Ravin de la Caillette," a chiaroscuro print by Henri
Marret, reproduced in the " Studio " special number, will show : it
would take very little to convert this picture of another kind of slagheap
into a Wadsworthian conception. Amongst the fourteen woodcuts of
Wadsworth\'s, pubhshed in the " Modern Woodcutter " series, there
is a still-life composition with a cactus for its principal rhythm [139];
in such designs quite as much as in his landscapes " he depends," to
quote from Mr. Arnold Bennett\'s preface to the Artists\' Black Country
Exhibition Catalogue, " on his central vitalizing emotion, ^nd he
allows no extrinsic facts (which facts none knows more intimately
than he) to interfere with the expression of the emotion. His courage
in this respect may disconcert the timid. And a good thing too 1 "
Though the " Five Town novehst\'s " eniotional exclamation seems a
little out of place in connection with so simple a matter as the discon-
certing of the already timid he is justified in laying stress on the fact

that " extrinsic facts," or what we would call associative ideas, are
not the criteria of aesthetic achievement, which depends on the shapes
rather than the content of things. In reference to our still-life subject
this means that Wadsworth has, unlike Disertori, the Italian artist,
whose window motif is here reproduced [140], no sentimental attach-
ment to the plant, the window or the table, but only to the rhythmic
pattern of black and white he can build up with the aid of such
" extrinsic facts " into a picture with a composition in a vertical (two

dimensional) and horizontal (three dimensional) sense. This still life
clearly points to Wadsworth\'s artistic pedigree ; it is like niost modern
art of post-impressionistic complexion—of Parisian origin. I say
advisedly Parisian, because it is not French m any national sense,
being in fact, like most " modern" art, the result of international
confluences which have their basin in Paris.

The principal innovation, so far as our western conception of design
is concerned, caused by this Parisian " pool" is the conscious estab-
lishment of the picture-plane as an aesthetic reality—that is to say,

its destruction as the basis of ati illusion of nature, real or pretended.
The lines and planes, the shapes of colour and the third-dimensional
illusion of depth are combined—as in Wadsworth\'s cactus picture—
into an organic whole, which must be judged as an aesthetic unit rather
than as a copy of representation of nature. Instead of regarding the
frame of a painting or the mount of a print as an opening into an
178

illusion, these things become merely the delimitation or borders of an
aesthetic design. The importance of the distinction lies in the fact that
natural perspective, as well as representational accuracy and arbitrary
standards of " beauty," have, in the " modern " conception of art,
definitely ceased to be criteria of " truth."

According to this conception each artist determines his own hnes and
curves, ue., establishes his own standard for each work he creates,
and so\'may legitimately be criticised only if he falls short of his own
standard impHed in his work. This means, in other words, that an
artist who sets out for a realistic " copy " of nature may be judged on
the basis of representational accuracy, whilst another whose object is
the design of a decorative pattern, cannot be taken to task if he tails
in representational accuracy, nor should a third one be derided it he
make mincemeat of accuracy and hash of decoration, provided he
establishes some other definite order m hts work of art-which is in
itself essentially order. This liberty throws ^at once greater responsi-
bility on the artist and the necessity of collaboration on the spectator,
a voluntary necessity, of course, since there can be no compulsion
in the relationship of artist and public. The practice and the appre-
ciation of art thus becomes a much more adventurous thing than

it used to be. If the " genius " of the artist stands or falls by his practice,
the judgment upon it stands or falls by the spectator\'s own capacity ;
there is no other court.

It will be gathered from this that modernity in art depends not so
much on craftsmanship as such, but as a means of expressing the
design and intention of the artist. From the purely xylographic point
of view, however, neither Wadsworth nor other English artists\' work
of similar tendencies stands very high because the material—the wood
—is not essential to its expression.

Wadsworth is associated with the Wyndham Lewis group of
intellectual artists, a group that is influenced by Picasso, and so forms
a later development of the earlier Parisian school of post-impres-
sionists, whose first aposde and missionary in England is Roger Fry.
Roger Fry\'s art is sensible, in the old-fashioned sense of the word,
rather than intellectual; his litde book of " Twelve Woodcuts " seems
to me unequal m merit; but the cut here illustrated [141] is remark-
able as a suggestion of three-dimensional composition. Other xylo-
graphers associated with his school are Duncan Grant, Claude Wolfe,
Vanessa Bell, Roald Kristian—a Swede, and imitator of bushmen\'s
or prehistoric mannerisms—and MacKnight Kauffer, an American-
Londoner. There is a htde cut of Vanessa BelPs entitled " Kew
Gardens "[142], a coarse, black line cut which illustrates the tendency
of a great deal of this kind of design to become picture puzzles.
" Cherchez les femmes " would be a good tide for this ostensibly
horticultural cut, which is, nevertheless, a " promenade " of two ladies.
The puzzling n^tmt of this method of design is accounted for by the
fact that the " vitalizing emotion" is not, as in traditional art, the content,
but the data it supplies for the designer, who combines, in this case,
horticultural and anthropological elements into an open though
carefully constructed organization of forms. One could, nevertheless,
point out traditionally designed cuts, such as several of Sturge Moore\'s
—" Love in the Wood "—in which the " content " is perhaps even
more puzzlingly concealed, because there is no obvious " pattern "

MacKnight Kauffer\'s often reproduced woodcut " Flight" [143], uki-
mately enlarged as a design and used as a hoarding poster, shows
structural aims reduced to their geometrical basis. "Flight" represents
the rapid winged movement of birds, and though uninteresting as a
specimen of xylography, offers a useful diagrammatic illustration of
modern tendencies. The eye, as it looks at this cut, is conipelled to
perform a journey along the lines and planes of the print; the move-
ment thus executed by the eye alone for the purpose of enjoying
"art" is not unlike the movement of the whole body on a water-

SEed foX pu^^^^^^ of enjoying life," The ana 0^ goes even
Further, for whilst art in which the " subject matter " is the main
purpose may be compared with a railway journey undertaken for the
purpose of reaching a destination, that modern art, wbch stresses
design, may be compared with the rectilinear 9r cumlinear move-
ment of " chute " or switchback journey, which is undertaken merely
for the sake of sensation and leads to no outside destination.

Woodcuts of these Parisian types, with inflections towards the en^o-
tional or the mtellectual, are produced by all cutters, of X^er
nattondity, who W come under the indirect influence of Cézanne
and his posthumous "School." The interest in such work consists
techmcaUy in the fact that they avoid xylographic tours deflceft^
^e nearly all designs wbch, for pleasure or convenience; have beS

^ .antithesis to him, an artist who manifesdy produces with
considerable difiiculty and delights in technical yîLS, ^GallJib
184

From J. E. Laboureur\'s woodcut illustration for a Series: "Images de l\'arrière.»
SAxSin.

Galanis is a Greek painter, living in Paris, who has devoted much of
his time to xylography, out of which medium he has got a quahty
pecuhar to himself. His " vitalizing emotions " leave me as a rule
entirely cold : what is interesting is purely and simply the form in
which he embodies them. Galanis\' landscapes, still-hfes and figures,
though not distorted like Laboureur\'s [146A] or the Parisian Fleming
Vlaminck\'s, or the German Feininger\'s cuts [h^], are engraved on
hard wood mainly for the pleasure of using tool and material. If one
is not deeply moved by the ardst\'s subject, one can, nevertheless, not
withhold one\'s admiration for the way in which he invests these designs
with xylographic quahties. Beginning with the professional trade xylo-
grapher\'s composite tint tool he worked at first rather aniatprishly m a
white line manner, so that one is never quite certain of the light and
shade values which appear to be, though they are not, actually inverted,
as in a negative. In an album, "Quatre Gravures,\'; published m 1919,
we, however, get interesting still-life compositions in which the
artist, without in any way disguising his means, makes ^ the eye
enjoy not only its perambulations amongst white and black shapes
in all their gradations of greyness, but also the " tactile values
of different textures. In a still more recent development he exchanges
tone for line cutting, and his headpieces and tailpieces have a
curious "Regency"-like bluffness, which many will find effective.
Works illustrated by him include " Voyage musical au pays du passe,\'^
by Romain Rolland (Paris, Edouard Jeysot), " Deuil dp Primeres
(Paris, Grès) and readers of the French magazine L anaour de
l\'art," from which these details are taken (Sept., 1921), will be famihar
with his typographic ornaments [h?], which are virtually still-lne
compositions of such objects as the eighteenth-century house and book

intellectual abstraction
having made way to niore
naturalistic representation,
which gives, nevertheless,
an impression of old-
fashionedness [148].
One of the leaders of the
decorative xylography
[149] is, this time, a real
Frenchman, Raoul Dufy,

whose hght and fluid touch as a water-colour painter and designer for
tptiles, would hardly lead one to expect the virile qualities displayed in
the set of cuts illustrating the pleasures of peace, hunting, fishing,
dancing and—need one say it—" Panaour." The exhibition of this
latter subject in England, I have reason to know, nearly led to
a conflict with the " authorities," perhaps rightly. I will not express
any judgment, except to point out that Dufy had certainly offended
against the English formula in which such subjects may be presented to
the English public without offence. Dufy had given his composition
^ aesthetic cachet instead of a mincing or sentimental " cachette^
The whole series was, at all events, i5ormed with a sound sense
of decorative values, both in line and mass, in arrangement and
balance, a sense which gave the prints too an old-fashioned
appearance. Other cuts of his are " La Comtesse de Ponthie"
188

and "Le bestmire ou le cortège d\'Orphée" (Paris Editions de la
Sirene) with iGuillaume Appolinaire\'s delightful rhymes. Dufy\'s
sense of humour and inexhaustible inventiveness as a maker of
patterns is m the latter amusingly displayed [150].
Another French xylographer who has a keen sense of decorativc
composition IS Morin-Jean. In his naturahstic manner the uniformity
of his line pves an effect of weakness instead of the manifestly aimed-
at feeling of strength. In his abstract still-life, reproduced in the Belgian
belecti^, he lacks Galanis\' finesse ; but the pattern of such a cut
as his Urphee has, in its somewhat Persian manner, a strong and
pleasing appeal to the eye [151].

The diree examples of Morin-Jean\'s just cited illustrate the somewhat
distracting mfluence to which the modern experimental artist is con-
stantly subjected. Technical quality which intrigued (a hateful but
use^l word) the older generation has, generally speaking, ceased
to have any meaning for him. The younger generation of ardsts are
pre-enainendy intellectual designers, or metaphysical analysts, who
stand in relation to nature not so much as awed worshippers as
inquisitive experimenters with a scientific turn of mind But it is

From a woodcut in colour by Edgard Tijtgat from " Caroussels et Baracques." 6x8 in.

easier for the scientist to make nature yield
him what he seeks than for the artist to exert
a similar mastery. The scientist after all can
rely on logic to help him, but ultimately,
and in the last resort, the artist has to conie
back willy-nilly to feeling. Much of this
modern work then should be regarded as a
light-hearted struggle against heayy odds,
or, if you like, as bold ventures into for-
bidden regions. The Guardian Angel of Eden
must have been Napoleon Bonaparte\'s first
incarnation, if indeed one may speak of an
Angel as incarnate. He at all events
personifies that law of the Code Napoleon
which says : " La recherche de la paternite
est interdite.\'" Contraventions against this law are a sure source
of trouble, especially when the research leads close to the
gates of " The First Cause." The human mind, however, is lured to
this hopeless research as a migratory bird to the lamps of a lighthouse.
So the ardst venturers have pursued knowledge, have dug down to
the " primitive minds of the savage and the child, or have sent up
balloons of observation into the regions of the transcendental absolute.
The efforts of children have been taken and discussed very seriously.
Almost, we were led to believe, that such work as that of the Viennese
children under Professor Cisek, or of the EngHsh children at the
Weybridge Vdlage Hall school were better " art " than Raphael\'s
"School of Athens," or Titian\'s "Sacred and Profane Love." That
children imitate their elders, that they have in them a subconscious
legacy of " imitation," that, therefore, children from the moment
that they are conscious of drawing and modelling, of painting and
building at all are different from their elders is a fallacy : they are
lower down the ladder. They often rush in and snatch the palm where
their elders fear to tread, because they, like the valiant V.C.\'s, know
so little of the game. Hence children\'s work, howeyer interesting
psychologically, physiologically, or whateyer other application of logic
there may be, are never works of conscious art, and should not be
admired or even encouraged in that sense. That, however, is not to
say that the adult artist may not learn from them : learn, in the main,
to remember what long and generally false teaching had caused him
to forget, viz., that one must feel before one can create.

One cannot, however, advocate the conscious adoption of the infantile
view point by an adult. Such an adoption seems to have taken place
in the outlook of the Fleming, Edgard Tijtgat. I very much doubt,
however, that this woodcutter is, objectively, conscious of his posidon
at all; I rather think that he takes his art as seriously as a child does.
He does not know that he is not a " grown up " ardst; if he did,
he would not take such endless trouble and pains with his work,
going to the length of not only cutting and printing the pictures, but
also the text of his books. Judging, I admit, by deduction only, I
conclude that he is very serious about his art, not as a " stunt,"
nor as an experiment in aesthetics, but purely and simply as a
means of expressing things he has very much at heart : the love
of children (" Le petit chaperon rouge" [152], " Le lendemain de
St. Nicholas "), the memory of a friend (" Quelques images de la
vie d\'un artiste : a mon ami Richard Wouters "). These things are
examples of genuine expression which have just a litde touch of

that quality called by Blake\'s pubHshers " genius." But it is his sense
of colour [153] rather than his design, which is weak, and his drawing,
which is weaker, that helps, in the jargon of the stage, to " get it over
over the footlights."

Tijtgat\'s art then is not a consciously self-analytic catharsis—such as—
to me at all events—much of continental expressionistic art seems to
be ; neither is it hke the interesting cuts of the French artist, André
Derain [154],.a veteran revolutionary, ardstically decorative. The
latter\'s illustrations for " L\'Enchanteur Pourrissant" have a genuine
decorative value, inspired as they are by Gauguinesquely " savage "
prototypes, a value one can enjoy like Raoul Dufy\'s even v^ithout
enquiry into their meaning. I should maintain the same of some
monochrome and colour prints of Max Weber, the American wood-
cutter evidently inspired by Derain. Weber has a fine sense of colour
values and sometimes of a deeper quality, a calm and strange dignity
.^55» 156]. An artist whose work seems to have litde meaning, apart
rom the considerable decorative value of his design, is Franz Marc, a
follower of Kandinsky, quoted as one of Germany\'s most representative

artists. Hans Baldung Grien^ " Horses " seem to have inspired Marc
in the direction of seeking inspiration in the animal rather than the
human relation. Marc, however, is " pre-war " and dead. The war
artists—I do not mean the illustrators of the preliminary catastrophe,
but those who most clearly demonstrate its disintegrating and more
catastrophic influence—are men who have sought wood and linoleum
in order to give expression in a cathartic sense to their feelings—I
mention, out of a host of others, Nolde [157], Pechstein, Schmidt
Rotluff, Christian Rohlfs [158], E. C. Kirchner, Josef Ebers and
Heinrich Campendonck. Their work appears to me in a rising sc^e
pathogical. Campendonck\'s retirement upon his innermost ego—as he
imagines—gives birth to strange fancies [159]. These inen are interest-
ing in respect of the manner in which they have made the black surface
of the wood block tell the " disturbances created m their mind by
the world of to-day. Regarded as reflections of the times they live in,
or as psychic adventures, these German prints are significant; as
works of art they seem rather more convincing than kindred produc-
tions of other countries, such as Belgium for example, who have a
somewhat similar excuse. Cuts represented in Selection, a Belgian
" Chronique de la Vie Artistique," by Jozef Cantre, Jean Colette.

Fritz van den Berghe, Louis Decoeur and several others, seem only
pardonable if regarded as means of reUef to the ardst.
I have the same feeling in regard to the less abnormal American work,
such as Louis Bouche\'s, or the sHghtly more decorative B. Gussow\'s, of
New York. The mere cutting of white out of black, even the arranging
of a more or less pleasing pattern is not in itself to the spectator a
sufficient reason for the existence of such works of art—whatever it
may be to the artist. The Australian, Horace Brodzky [159^]» Gaudier
Brzecka\'s friend, seems to have saner intentions. However, I am not
able to follow expressionism in all its facets; but I admit that
my eyes may be blind, my mind closed to its significance, and
admit it the more willingly as the following story, which I have
no reason to doubt, confirms the possibility of a " method in their
madness." Professor Landsberger, in his " Impressionismus and
Expressionismus,"\'tells how Karin MichaeHs, the novehst, called
on Oscar Kokoschka, the leading German exponent of expressionism,
and himself an able writer. Karin Michaelis saw m his studio the por-
trait of a young girl with a face that looked as if it were speckled with
spots of coal dust. (One can imagine the sort of thing it must have
been.) This curious " rash " the artist accounted for by telling his

questioner that the model was so absent-minded that her face appeared
to him like that This extraordinary vision was, subsequently, explained
or confirmed by the fact that the girl lost her reason, though no one
suspected such a possibility at the time.

I only repeat the story because it may help to explain the weird " com-
plexion " of this kind of condnental " expressionism " of which we
find fainter reflections in the " States." In the " States," however, we
have also interesting examples of xylography which show a perfectly
healthy desire of the artist to create a kind of personal " kosmos," a
closely knit order created out of natural elements, but in accordance
with the artist\'s own consciousness. There is, it is true, something
in the nature of a " tide " which establishes a literary association, but
the subject is, nevertheless, only to be comprehended as a design.
The artists who most appeal to me in this respect are William Zorach
and his wife Marguerite. William Zorach\'s compositions" are broad
white on black designs, in which representational simplification is
counterbalanced by a decorative interplay of black and white shapes
200

what similar aims are pursued by
[164], whilst the same artist\'s
"OdaHsques" [ 165 ] is full of move-
ment, but either too realistic or
not realistic enough to be con-
vincing. Another American,
C. Bertram Hartmann for in-
stance, succeeds in his carefully
considered, but somewhat geo-
metrically designed, cuts precisely
because his more abstract forms
do not challenge unnecessary
comparisons with " nature." His
" Girl on Horseback" [166] is a
swinging arrangement of flat pat-
tern reminiscent of Greek vase
painting strangely conjoined with
modern cubism, which is even
more pronounced in the, to me
less satisfactory, cut of " Man and
Horse."

His "Pool" [161],his
" Province Town"
[160], his " Sailing,"
and above all his
"Figures in a Land-
scape" [162], are all
courageous adventures
in creative design.
Marguerite Zorach\'s
" Province Town
Players" [163], though
not quite as well com-
posed as her husband\'s
work, is not seen at
its best in the repro-
duction, which has
lost its half-tone along
the contours. Some-
Walt Kuhn in his " Fecundity "

and primitive or childlike, whatever their significance othemise,
there is however, at least this to be said : they state facts without
circumlocution—in the fewest possible lines—there is not one line
that could be left out without making the^ omission immediately
obvious. If we compare, for example, such a specimen of wood
engraving as done in the famous " sixties as M. A. Wilhams\'
representation of "Sidney\'s Tree\'* [167], not with on^e of the ex-
pressionisdc line cuts of die Continent, but with such a very mtld

form of modern simplificadon as Philip Hagreen\'s "Wind" [168],
we notice at once that in Hagreen\'s cut each mark of the tool has
more significance than a dozen in WilHams\' minute rendering of
nature: Wilhams supplies an inventory in sendmental prose; Hagreen
gives us, as it were, a few lines of sensible poetry.
If, on the other hand, it is imagined that the Victorian engravers did
not know their job, technically, and that by the mere fact of designing
wWte on black with the tool itself the woodcut becomes " truly
original," that is a grave mistake. The set of woodcuts recently done
by Lionel Lindsay apparently in this belief are, especially considering
the circumstances in which they came about in far away Australia,
commendable enough, but their technique cannot be compared for
quality with the work done by the professional wood engravers of the
Victorian age.

By pushing Hagreen\'s technique of simpHfication still further, and by
lowering the quahty of experience to the level of Matisse\'s " Five Year
Old," \' or by even letting it go entirely into the subconscious, one gets
the kind of " expressionism " just referred to in German or Belgian
examples.

On the other hand, by raising the quality of experience from conscious
optic impression to conscious mental expression, and by pushing the
technique up the scale until it responds to the quality of mental experience
(not the objective optic experience of the impressionists), we get the
kind of landscape the brotfiers Pa.ul and John Nash express in wood.
Paul Nash has quite recently published a little book of seven woodcuts
called " 7 Places," which are the best of this kind of ego-centric art
so far done in England. Each of the seven places is acconipanied by a
little prose-poem written by the artist and intended to illustrate the
print. I am not sure that they are very successful, either as literary or
illustrative efforts ; it is in any case extremely doubtful whether words
can explain pictures, whilst pictures that explam words thereby cease
to belong to the category of creative expression. Apart from the text
the cuts are beautiful examples of imaginative design. Such a print as

^The impressionists aimed at the optic level of a cow ; Matisse, at the mental vision of a five-year-old
child—that is, at all events, an " advance."

" Black Poplars" [169],for instance,has both chromatic and plastic,
ï.e., two and three dimensional invention. In a still later cut, and in
some respects better cut, " Dyke by the Road" [170], Paul Nash is
experimenting with a rather different glyptic manner and a com-
position that is stronger in spadal recession. All this kind of art is in
the nature of experiment, of aesthetic adventure, and this one feels by
the manner in which it deals with the human figure. Here its tentative-
ness is manifest. For whilst it pretends to disdnguish between aesthetic
and associative emotion, or between aesthetic sensibility and literary
sentimentality, the very theme of such a cut as Nash\'s " Way into the
Wood," and the very treatment of his figures generally indicate not
only the close connection between the two forms of sensing, but also
the artist\'s manifest difficulty in finding a satisfactory formula for
the "transfiguration" of the human figure, corresponding to his
transfiguration of nature.

John Nash has perhaps not the same intellectual force and independence
of spirit as his brother Paul, but there is more sensitiveness and a more

vital glyptic quality in his cutting [173]. A comparison between Paul\'s
" Winter Wood " and John\'s "Wood Interior" [171] will explain
both the similarities and the differences between their work better than
words. John gets more cubic weight with his design and into the actual
quality of his excisions. Comparison between Brangwyn\'s [94] and
John Nash\'s [172] " Sheep Shearing" cuts and Norman Janes\' " Sheep
Barn in Surrey" [174] will divulge different shades of glypdc vitality.
Amongst the artists of the younger generation in England who have
turned more resolutely to simpler ideals and whose style,^ moreover,
is hailed as distinctly English is Ethelbert White. English enough
his style is if we mean by that a certain frank simplicity and stiffness
and precision ; yet it could never have come about but for the reaction
which set in during the first decade of this century against pictorial

impressionism and literary aesthedcism. InteresUng as White\'s earher
cuts may be as regards simplification and designed cutting, he is
beginning to show his real metal not so much in the pleasant earlier
illustrations of Fish Stalls, of Punch and Judy Shows, English Horse-
men [175] and English Landscapes, but in his last cut "The Old
Barn " [176]. This is a litde masterpiece of engraving: it is designed
in wood : it is engraved without worrying the material, every cut is
clean, sound and carefully premeditated. It is less " sohd," but more
naturalistic than Paul Nash\'s work—it is simpler; it has a greater
glyptic quaUty and an individual atmosphere of brdliant light.
In all these " expressionistic " woodcuts the usual objects, though
distorted, or simplified, grouped, divided and reassembled m a new
aesthetic order, are still recognizable. In strictly cubistic art, to which
they owe their existence, the objects themselves are dissected, but so
far as I am aware, there are no truly cubistic and, therefore, abstract
designs in xylography, and as may be found in drawing, paindng and

sculpture. If pch highly intellectual and objective performances have
not been designed in v^ood, though some of Gallien\'s come near it,
abstraction on a strictly emotional and subjective basis has been
practised by an artist and writer whose theories are part of the
substructure of modern experimental art. This artist, Wassili Kan-
dmsky, a Russian Pole who has lived in Germany most of his life,
has written a great deal about his oudook. He is the defender of
intuition; of the subconscious. He beheves that there are " spiritual
harmonies" to which the artist by eliminating intellectual control can
give utterance. He believes in a pictorial art as unrepresentational as
music, and he has sublimated his faith in paintings and woodcuts,
which are as little \'naturalistic" and representational as Picasso\'s
cubistic syntheses of form, but from the very opposite causes. Picasso\'s
cubism is entirely logical; Kandinsky\'s is purely emotional [177,
177A], albeit decked with a panoply of literary and semi-scientific
explanation. His colour sense, both in theory and practice, is keen ;
his sense of form apparently lacking. In his black and white wood-
cuts, however, he uses the two opposites with considerable decorative
effect. What exactly the forms represent or symbolize is quite
uncertain [17?] ; nevertheless, the designs have the quality of visions
as one experiences in the half-consciousness of dreams and vainly
seeks to recall on awakening. Kandinsky\'s woodcuts, and for that
matter his painted " compositions," mark the attempt of man to
reach his inner life and to turn it inside out, just as cubism marks
the attempt to see his environment, to comprehend it, by turning
it concentrically outside in, the centre being the individual In so far
as actual objects of vision are deprived in both processes of recogniz-
able representation and their disjecta membra fail to unite once more
in the spectator\'s mind, both attempts constitute of necessity a failure.
But these " polar expeditions " by which man has tried to explore
the nature of his own polarity, though failures in themselves, have yet
had positive results. The greatest of these so far as art is concerned is
the conviction that the artist is not vis-à-vis but part and parcel of
" nature," and that therefore it can neither be his task to imitate
her, in Leonardo\'s, nor to " correct her defects and blemishes " in
Reynolds\' sense. He uses her. If there be any question of imitation
and correction it is ultimately one of " re-producing " and correcting
his own self.

HE new orientation of humanity averted from the
past is towards the future ; and the new freedom of
art means its emancipation from the tyranny of
tradition. The Rome of Michael Angelo has ceased
with the Venice of Titian, or the Athens of Phidias,
to hold the last word in art. Egypt and Crete have
opened their lips ; China, Japan and Mexico,
Bushman and Stoneman have spoken, infants have
stammered, and we have understood the significance of their forms,
if not all the meaning of their contents. That indeed has been our
failing : an inordinate interest in form with a progressive weakening
of content : an intellectual exercise of the mind. Kandinsky tried to
get at the content without intellectual surveillance : and those who
have followed him have created works which are not far removed
from the work of minds that have irretrievably lost the power of
surveillance—lunatics. So the present generation turns its attention
once more to the expression of contents of greater import than hay-
stacks in a mist, or apples on a crumpled napkin.
Perhaps the best example, and in any case the only one known to me,
in which artisdc form is made to cover literary expression is the work
of the Fleming, Frans Masereel.

Even a casual glance at his woodcuts will show that his design has
been strongly influenced by French cubisdc theories. Nevertheless,
he is a true son of the country that produced a Peter Brugehel and a
Jerome Bosch. He uses the medium in order to illustrate contem-
porary ideas, his own life, his own thought, his own environment.

Moreover, he does this in the very Flemishly frank manner of the
earher artists. He says exactly what he thinks and with remarkable
aptness finds convincing images for every thought. These images
are enshrined in small cuts devoid of half-tones, done rapidly and
following one another along a continuous thread. No text accompanies
his story, which is told in multiple composition\' with subdety and
humour,\'and wit that is at times bitter and tragic. To Masereel,
indeed, the woodcut is what the manuscript page is to the writer,
and, in consequence of the technique he uses, it ^probably does not take
him much more time to cut a novel m wood than it would take a
writer to put it into words : only that the artist can express what the

1 Bv "multiple composition" I mean an ideological composition which dispenses with natural perspective
and unites in one and the same design images of passing thoughts in the order of their mental rather
than optical importance—after the manner of Dürer and the earlier artiste. ^ Only that, thanks to
modern aesthetic experiments, the composition as such preserves an immediately optic unity.

writer cannot express, so that the analogy is not perfect of course.
In "Le Soleil," [^79] a book of sixty-seven cuts, dedicated to his wife,
we are made to follow a dream of the artist signifying in the truly
Freudian manner an analysis of unfulfilled desires. We see the ardst
asleep at his desk; his spirit takes flight, quite in the manner of
primitive Christian art as a diminutive replica of its owner, out of the
window. The street crowd, however, mistakes the spirit for the body
which falls into the street. He rises, takes to his heels through the town,
out of It, pointing to the sun. Seeking refuge from his pursuers he darts

the adventures of a spirit seeking the light,
and the adventures, that is to say his desires,
take him to the Church, where he mistakes
the nimbus for the sun, drag him down
through drinking dens and brothels to prison
and to fairs, to tree tops and corn fields, to
the ocean, to ship and masthead, whence he
falls into the depths of the sea, encounters an
octopus, a mermaid, climbs a lighthouse,

thus he falls on to his own desk, surprises
himself as he realizes that he has awakened
from a dream—the dream of the spirit seek-
ing freedom.

intended to tell of the manner in which it is done a litde more fully
than may be deducible from a few detached illustrations.
This IS only one book of sixty-seven cuts. " Mon livre d\'heures "
contains, however, one hundred and sixty-seven. Another such
novel is his "Histoire sans paroles." In addition to such
books he has illustrated numerous others. Fifty-seven cuts illustrate
Verhaeren\'s poems, twenty-five " L\'Hotel-dieu," by P. J. Jouve,
thirty-two Romain Rolland\'s "Liberté," twenty-seven "Le Bien
Commun," by R. Arcos, who is the pubHsher of the " Editions du
Sablier, m which all these things have appeared.
Let me in conclusion quote M. P. J. Jouve : \'

" Une * Passion \' dans le cadre contemporain, une suite
sur l\'Eternel Féminin, et des fantaisies des \' diableries \' et

hallucinations modernes, scènes de la revolution ou de la Bourse,
du journal ou de la pègre, qui étonnent, suffoquent presque et
parfois inquiètent par leur intensité ; Masereel ne s\'arrête pas
à ; il a de plus grands rêves. Ce constructeur de livres pourrait

The distance we have travelled since Ricketts in the "Nineties"
revived the " Original Wood Engraving " for book illustration, could
not be better shown than by comparison of the English artist\'s delicate
aestheticism and the Fleming\'s robust topicality ; Ricketts\' calligraphy,
detached and painstaking, Masereel\'s shorthand, passionate and abrupt.
Where here is the relevance of aesthetic standards ? Or, should we
not perhaps say : are aesthetic standards ever real, ever even possible :
is it not always at bottom Life we must measure ; and that being so,

Reproduction of four pages of the picture-story "Le Sokil " by Frans Masereel.
II

who could doubt that there is more LIFE in Masereel ? " II a pour
lui," continues M. Jouve, " son extraordinaire volonté modeste qui
est celle d\'un artisan de cathédrales."

"Artisan de Cathédrales "—here we are reminded of that instinctive
feeling which naturally exalts the modest artisan working anonymously
in the service of a spiritual idea above the artist solving consciously
and name-proud an egocentric problem of aesthetics.
Masereel may stand as a symbol of the old wine entering new bottles :
for he is one of those to whom art is not an empty vessel to be admired
for its shape : rather would he prize it for its contents.
And this is true of an increasing number of modern artists. This
reaching out for " the Sun " and the clothing of " the Passion " in a
modern garb comes now with greater force, with greater insistance
and also with greater contempt for surface beauty. " To look upon
things for the sake of their external beauty is to be corrupt in spirit "
says one of these artists with Biblical bitterness,

Dogmatic Churches and more or less estabhshed Creeds, as kinds of
transcendental cradles and spiritual crèches, are looming once more
large m the consciousness of humanity because it is—for the moment
—baffled by its own apparent impotence. Man has lost faith in himself,
and m the True God within: so he turns either cynically from " all
the creeds

and counts himself no more than a blown leaf"
as the poet, F. S. Flint does in a fine frenzy of scepsis ; or, on the
contrary, seeks balm and protection in some external, established
form of " Faith."

It is, then, hardly surprising that a number of woodcutters have had
recourse to the Bible, which gives back what we bring to it in a
form made beautiful by its language and association, and topical
by its accounts of the everlasting conflict between the individual and
the herd.

The troubled conscience of thinking humanity has found its reflection
also in the humble craft of woodcutting. What, however, makes this
reflection interesting is the great variety in which, owing to the aesthetic
currents and cross-currents of our times the subject finds expression, and
the varying depth of feeling and earnestness which it makes manifest

We find, for example, in Brangwyn\'s " Via Dolorosa" [92], an indict-
ment of common humanity rather unjustly, I think, symbohzed by a
purely " working class " environment. This woodcut is, nevertheless,
the best of all this artist\'s cuts. Brangwyn\'s strength as an artist lies
in the fact that he works on the spur of emotions and applies his
intellect to the practical problems these set him.
The reverse is the case in Eric Gill\'s work. Gill is a craftsman with
intellectual theories of life and art, a mind that has embraced catholicism
with his intellect where in Brangwyn it is an inborn emotional complex.
We find, therefore, in Gill\'s design, an ineradicable self-consciousness,
a sense of personal value and importance which were objectionable
but for the fact that the artist never spares himself ; the slightest thing
he does is executed with meticulous care and with an intellectual nicety
that divides his art by a world\'s width from Brangwyn\'s. Whatever
emotions he may possess they have passed as it were through a narrow

purging flame of intellectual white-heat before they reach the material
in which he happens to be working. I say narrow flame, because his
intellectual capacity seems keen rather than broad. As a xylographer
he shows no sign of sympathy with the material ; his engraving is
done with perfect precision and control on hard wood with a sharp tool
and might with equal aesthetic result be done in metal ; indeed some
of his prints, such as the " Christ driving out the money changers,"
look almost like a rubbing from a Church brass. The style of his
design outwardly associated, now with Byzantine rigour, anon with
sensuous freedom and cut in the simplest and nakedest of white lines
with extraordinary skill and Euclidian precision, is aesthetically
unimpeachable. Gill\'s conception of the function of his art is that it
should furnish the intellectual substructure for the emotional or religious
requirements of the spectator.

Hence his " Stations of the Cross," " Crucifixions," " Nativities," are
ingenious variations of their different themes, beautifully composed,
firmly designed and carefully printed, but intellectual abstractions,
black and Byzantine on a white surface : his lights are dark, his
darks the light of nature. He produces, as it were, the negative which,
in his intention, shall imprint itself positively upon the mind of the
spectator, whom, however, he leaves the task of filling in the details
of expression and modelling—ad libitum,

From a woodcut by Christopher Perkins : From a series
of illustrations for the New Testament. 6x6|in. [l86]

Gill\'s relation to his craft, or rather to his public—made more com-
phcated by occasional excursions into what one may perhaps describe
as a mystic kind of sensuality—is one of sentimental intellectualism.
" It is, of course, impossible to stem the tide of commercial degradation
until Poverty, Chastity and Obedience take the place of Riches,
Pleasure and * Laissez faire \'," he says in the introduction to a pamphlet
on wood engraving by R. J. Beedham. It is the obverse of the darkest
ages : the reverse of which was " of course " " Riches, Pleasure and
\'Laissez faire\'" in the hands and minds of those to whom the poor,
the chaste and the obedient were slavishly and superstitiously subject/
The case oiP other English artists of the younger generation, such as
Stanley Spencer, F. M. Medworth and Ethelbert White, all of whom
have engraved religious subjects in wood, is not so clear. Their cuts
—and their paintings for that matter—are exercises in design more
certainly than expressions of religious feeling. Rather niore con-
vincing in this respect are some rehgious and symbolical subjects
engraved by Horace Gerrard. Gerrard is a highly skilled technician,

lUnfortunately, I am unable to illustrate Gill\'s work, because he objects to what he calls the " pseudo-
facsimile " of the photographic line block, whilst my aesthetic conscience wiU not ^low me to mar
the significance of his work by the half-tone process, which tends to reduce both black and wMte
to grey, a deterioration to which, nevertheless, the artist would not appear to object.

whose zoological and medical wood engravings vie in competence with
the work of the old professional reproductive engraver. His
translations of Central American sculpture into the xylographic form of a
black and white pattern are in an aesthetic sense even more interesting
as demanding a creative technique [i8o]. The BibHcal subject, here
reproduced representing "TheMarriage of Rebecca"[i81], is proof
of an original view point. The combination of the white contours of
the figures in the foreground and the treatment of the foHage and
landscape, with the massed white line of the principal group and the
bold gouging of the sky are distinctly personal elements of design.
Gerrard\'s work is full of great promise not yet quite fulfilled, because
he has set himself a most difficuh problem—the exploitation of the
white contour line as Hght-colour and pattern bearer.
We have seen the difficulty of the white contour design in Urs Graf\'s
sixteenth-century cuts. A number of modern artists have set themselves
similar problems. Amongst these Gordon Craig\'s recent theatrical
figures, cut in bold white lines on soft wood, deserve first mention.
Craig is an artist to his fingertips. These white line cuts, " Ophelia,"
" Hamlet and Daemon," " Old Gobbo," and others, though their
white is often a shadow and their black a light, are " geistreich " in
conception and executed not only with great skill but with that nice
economy of effort which distinguishes the master from the labourer
and the \'prentice.

They are, however, not " contour line cuts " in the strict sense.
How difficult the proper use of the white contour really is may be

gathered by comparing the usual work of a versatile and accomplished
xylographer, the late Emilio Mantelli, with a white contour print of his
called " Fond ignorante" [182]. Here the literary and literal style of
designing gives clear evidence of its inherent weakness. In the literary
sense full of meaning, it offers, to the eye, from the aesthetic point of
view, two ill-placed white streaks in a meaningless black parallelo-
gram. We notice a white streak in a black square first, also in a
white contour print by Marcia Lane Foster [183], but not only is it
aesthedcally better placed, the ardst has also seen to it that by subde
massing and increase the white lines near the broad streak explain the
latter as a source of light and lead the eye gently all over the square
surface which is then found to be agreeably articulated. Miss Foster\'s
black ground series of wood engravings [184], of which these illustra-
tions are the simplest and best, are aesthetically superior to the realistic
black and white half-tone cut by which she was represented in the
" Contemporary Enghsh Woodcuts."

A near neighbour of hers in this same publication was Eric Daglish,
whose bold studies are more ambitious white line cuts, but suffer,
in spite of their general abiUty, from a too uncertain balance of the
black and white masses. A frank experiment in white line is Chris-
topher Perkins\' design for a plate [185] : severely intellectual, it is
more satisfactory to the eye than some of this " coming " artist\'s white
line landscape cuts. But Perkins too is turning towards the expression
of religious subject matter [186], which also underlies the briUiant, but
intellectual, exercise represented by F. M. Medworth\'s somewhat
displeasing "Mother and Child" [187]. Less intellectually venture-
some, but more finished white line essays are F. M. Medworth\'s
animal [187®] studies in which the lines have to do duty as texture-,
Hght- and colour-values. A " white line " experiment has been tried in
a litde " Pierrot" series by Alice D. Laughlin, an American artist and

pupil of J. J. Murphy, whose interesting work we shall presently have
to discuss. Miss Laughlin uses, in the little "Pierrot [i88] series, of
which an example is here reproduced, her graver with great skill and
an almost stenographic economy of line to express a maximum of
emotion with a minimum of means. Such things are, however, htde
tours de force that are curiosides rather than works of art. Her more
elaborate, less sentimental and Murphy-inspired cuts prove, indeed,
that she has less to say than these miniatures might lead one to expect.
More disciplined and indeed expressive is Cecile Buller s (Mrs. J. J.
Murphy) work, which we may here note because it too is influenced
strongly by the same master. Her "Jugglers" [189] is quite re-
markable for the sense of motion in the rhythm of the bouncing balls.
Returning once more to the white contour line : a compatriot of theirs,
Henry Fitch Taylor, has made extremely simple, but decor^ive and
effective use of this line in a number of linoleum cuts [190]. They are
printed in orange and brown tints so that the weight of colour does
not kill the white lines, which are "few and far between," but, never-
theless, so firmly and organically connected that they
aesthetic compositions of a pronounced sculpturesque quality ; 1 aylor
is, as one would suspect, a sculptor of acknowledged merit and these
prints of his have, in spite of incongruous Gaugumesque Tahiti-ism,
considerable aesthetic value. The mention of Gaugum links another
American, George Biddle, to this group ; his Tahitian cuts [190a] are
bold black and white patterns which show Gauguin s mfluence not
only in choice of subject, but also in a certain savage style.
Amongst English artists, Rupert Lee, when he does not allow his
whimsicality to have the better of him, as in wooden tigers and

the weird "Rider on a Bull" [1912], which is derived from the
accidental shape of a bit of scrap-iron, rises in his " Spider Monkeys,"
[191] to considerable aesthetic achievement. Robert Young, a pro-
tagonist of the modern movement in America, has found in the form
of a nigger\'s black body [192] inspiration for a white on black
design which has fundamentally no more "content" than Lee\'s
"Spider Monkeys," from which it differs mainly in a less brilliant
invention of composition, and in the nature of the cutting, which in
Lee\'s case was done on hard wood with a graver. That nigger bodies
—not, be it observed, " Uncle Tom "-like souls—that monkeys and
scrap-iron, could inspire the artists of to-day is a further proof of the
distance which separates us from the art of the day before yesterday.
Nevertheless, even the most experimental and coldly intellectual of
them are dissatisfied.

For the younger generation, however, the transition from form as
the " vitalizing emotion," to content, i.e., from the shape of the botde

to the bouquet of the wine is, after decades of abstinence, a new and
irksome probleni. Some, hke the American, Rockwell Kent, have,
after experimentnig in other directions, taken the step by boldly
adopting both subject and treatment from an admired prototype—in
this case, Blake [ 193]. A far more independent attempt to stress content,
and to pour the old spirit of the Gospel into a new " botde " has been
recently made by the American wood engraver, J. J. A. Murphy. This
is somewhat surprising, so far as this particular artist is concerned,
seeing that his experiments in xylography are otherwise manifestly
prompted by form rather than content [194]. J- J. Murphy was for
some time an assistant to Frank Brangwyn; but returning to the
States he became one of the pioneers of the woodcut as a substitute
for the process block in advertising. His poster for the American
Navy and some commercial advertisements particularly show a
Brangwynesque virility and also formulae of composition favoured
by the Enghsh artist. After trying picturesque naturalistic design.
Murphy adopted a linear convention which was at first not much more
than the professional engraver\'s " tint" line technique many times
enlarged. In his present phase Murphy—still favouring parallel white
lines for the purpose of expressing plastic and chromatic values, tends

to curtail them and apply them in square formations. It is true that by
such means he gets more light and colour, and altogether three-
dimensional values into his prints than any other xylographer knov^n to
me ; but his formula is too insistent. His earher naturalistic work, such
as for example a cut reproduced in the American magazine "The Play
Boy," and representing a soldier going " over the top," was in many
respects inferior to his new manner, but it attacked problems which
the new technique seems to me to evade rather than to solve.
As a Catholic, it is Murphy\'s ambition to produce one hundred
different versions of the Nativity, of which he has so far completed
eleven and of which the second is the best. When we get this artist on
a religious subject we know, even if we had no other means of doing
so, that he is sincere : utmost sincerity and franknps is implicit m
his technique. We also know, from his other work, that he will—after
the manner of Eric Gill—treat his rehgious subjects on an intelle^ual
plane, aiming consciously at simplicity of means. In contrast to Gill
however, the American has a great sense of colour, and the Nativity
just mentioned, and a great many others, are remarkable for this
particular quality of its black and white. Much time, thought, skill
and painstaking care have been brought to bear on the execution of the

little white line pgravings representing the fourteen Stations of the
Cross [195] which, to do them justice, should be seen in their
entirety. The tragedy unfolds itself, in spite of the gnat-Hke propor-
tions, with perfect clearness, the figures move and are moved by
the emotions they visualize, and the landscape changes its mood in
synipathy with these. Anyone who follows this " Passion " from
station to station with dihgence, will understand it intellectually
and will appreciate it aesthetically as much as his remarkable cut
232

A woodcut by J. J. A. Murphy : From a series : " The Way
of the Cross." 3x3! in. [195]

From a woodcut by Gustav Wolf : " The Third Day of Creation," one of a scries illustrating " The
Book of Genesis." 7jx5|in. [l97]

piled "Shadowed Faces" [196], perhaps not quite as much in fact,
because bhadowed Faces " is in respect of colour, form, and par-
ticularly its three dimensional composition, as well as in the technical
means by which these are created, an aesthetically better thing.
This praise, howper, contains by implication also a criticism: it

has intellectually more to say than emotionally.
He feels, m common with many " modern " artists, his art as a
problem rather than as a medium, ue,, a means to an end outside
" art," or to use a simile already employed, a switchback ride rather
than a train journey.

And this is not surprising. America has not suffered like Europe,
and in Europe again it is the countries which have lost the war and
suffered most materially and spiritually who are experiencing most
emotion in the choice and treatment of their subjects.
It is the Austrian and German artists who lose themselves in vague
cosmic dreams and apocalyptic ecstasies.


■ • . . f

	■ ./





	■ -l.\'.

Perhaps the most serious of these is Gustav Wolf, to whom the woodcut,
as indeed every form of drawing, is not representation or imitation of
" nature " nor decoration in the ordinary sense—but the making of
signs and symbols of what he regards as the ultimate realities. The
page illustrating the third day of Creation from his " Illustration for
the Book of Genesis " [197] will give an indication of his qualides.
Another artist who moves in a similar world of transcendental ideas
is an Austrian woman, E. Schlangenhausen. The tides of her sets of
woodcuts are a sufficient indication of her aims. There are, amongst
others, "The Words of Christ" [198], "The Days of Creation,"
" The Longing for the Sun," " The Ways of the Stars," " The Eye of
God." Such subjects spring from other than purely aesthetic emotions,
though the artist shows that her forms of expression are connected
with the school of Continental, ue,, ultimately Parisian theories of art.
Her " Wild Horses " and " The Deer " [199] link her more imme-
diately with Franz Marc\'s animal worship, but she gives to such themes
a strongly sentimental cast. Her manner of printing with an excess of
oil in her ink and thus producing an over-tone is a device much
favoured abroad. Far from sentimental, but sombre and even, at times,
gruesome, are the peculiar black line cuts of the German wood-
sculptor, Ernst Barlach, whose heavy, though expressive, sculpture
would hardly lead one to expect the effective, but really calligraphic,
convention which he uses in xylography.

When, however, we come to technical means employed for the
expression in woodcut of passionate feeling, the extraordinary work
of Josef Weiss, of Munich, is far and away the most remarkable.
He, too, has cut a series of Bible illustrations, amongst them the
"Apocalypse" and " Genesis." Our illustrations [200,201] will explain
the quality of his imagination and technique better than words—
both deserve careful study. Weiss is not yet thirty, is entirely self-
taught and deliberately closes his eyes against any influences, whether
from the old or the modern Masters. His talent is so pronounced that
his achievement may conceivably remain unhurt by a form of prejudice
which smacks a litde of fear. A little more knowledge of orthodox
draughtsmanship would, it seems to nae, not hurt him. On the other
hand, his obvious sincerity and the white-heat of his emotions raises
his work, despite its faults [200], to higher levels. In the "Four
Trumpets" [201] his way of handling the wood, lowering and
scraping the surface as he does, almost in the manner of mezzotint,
is entirely personal and admirable, whilst his conceptions have often

a sensational grandeur which reminds one of El Greco and Blake.
The Bible has inspired another " Central European," Bruno Gold-
schmidt, to attempt a series of illustrations. He, too, is filled with
cosmic visions and with phantasies of strange bitterness and emaciation,
as his "After the Fall" [202] and " Moses changing water into blood,"
[203] here dlu^rated, may prove. "And there was blood throughout
all the land of Egypt." The reason for the choice of just these subjects
IS not perhaps far to seek. The terror and bitterness becomes sdll
greater when we contemplate such a humble piece of work as the
one here [206] presented, a woodcut that has ceased to serve any
aesthetic purpose and has become once more, as in the early days,
a message which those who run may read. It was recently done in
Russia and represents that glorious culmination of our present stage
of civihzation : a " man-eating " Russian. This cut and others here
[204, 205] reproduced are taken from "Tchernaia Goduna"—the Black
Year—a periodical dealing with all the aspects of the terrible famine.
To those whom art is mainly an occupation for minds mentally at a
loose end, these things should be particularly displeasing. These
Russian Famine woodcuts have nothing to do with art, in so far as
this word stands for conscious aesthetics. They are strictly utilitarian :
their appeal is to our ethic or moral, rather than to our aesthetic sense :
they are essentially sentimental. What, nevertheless, raises them to a
higher level than the sentimental pictures, with which the world since
the days of Greuze has been made familiar, is the absence of aesthetic
trappings. It is the economy of means caused by a strict attention
to and concentration upon the subject matter, the content of the cut
which makes their form valuable.

It is claimed that these Russian cuts, as indeed the " Upheavalist"
art of present-day Russia, in general, are made by members of the
242

Proletariat, The " Proletkult," of Moscow, have pubHshed an album,
" Graphica," containing twenty woodcuts, all said to have been done
by working men. In so far as these cuts represent an aesthetic effort,
they are on an average no better than a similar effort would make
them in countries which do not make a cult of the proletariat. Art has,
as such, no part in class distincdons. Modern Russian xylography, in
so far as I can judge, shows the same divisions that are manifest in all
other : the good, the bad and the indifferent. The aspect of some of
the best of these cuts suggests that, far from being the spontaneous
result of primitive effort, they are the result of a conscious and effective
economy in the means of expression, which is the outcome of modern
aesthetic experiments, and these have their origins in Western Europe.

HAVE, in the foregoing, attempted to trace the various
developments of one of the oldest, and, in a sense,
simplest forms of muldplying graphic art. I hope I
I have convinced the reader that it is also and un-
doubtedly one of the most interesdng media of

complete freedom, not hkely to fall into neglect or disuse.
Xylography, vv^hether on soft wood or on hard wood, or on a substitute
such as linoleum, will grow in favour as artists discover the splendid
training it is capable of giving, not only to the hand in the matter of
execution, but also, and perhaps even more, to the mind in the matter
of design. Material and tool enforce concentration. Experienced wood
engravers of the old type confirm the fact that it is far more difficult
to cut wood in the new and apparently so much cruder manner,
precisely because every incision has a significance of its own which
must be carefully premeditated and gauged beforehand ; scribbles and
" accidents " which look so well in etching or water colour are here
impossible. On the other hand, the material has more character than
the Hthographic stone, not to mention its substitutes.
Whether it deserves to exist as a means of decorating books that is
another question which is open, I think, to legitimate doubt. It seems,
however, quite likely that for spontaneous and forcible appeal it may
come once more into general use in connection with posters, news-
papers and modernised " broadsides." Portraits, such as Galhen\'s
[144], already used extensively in continental periodicals, and satires,

such as Ludovic Rodo\'s "Duke of Marlborough" [74], are capital
examples of this kind of thing; they are so much more personal than
a mechanically reproduced design. Properly handled, woodcuts have
a quality which Charles Ricketts has very aptly called " warmth,"
generated by the resistance which tools and niaterials oppose to the
designer\'s will. Hence there is always a sense of intimacy in its products
which pleases or vexes, that is to say stimulates, the beholder\'s mind
to a much greater extent than any other form of print making.
To the collector, therefore, the woodcut offers happier hunting grounds
than any other multiplying medium; but it demands also more
aesthetic sensibility and intelligent discrimination. Technical standards
of craftsmanship, on which so many collectors rely, are here of very
litde avail. The modern woodcutters share the privileges of the
" monks " of Medmenham Abbey; they too may do p they wish,
with only this single proviso : they must succeed. This is precisely
the point where the difficulty for the collector arises : who is to tell
him ? He cannot take the artist\'s word or the world would be full of
masterpieces ; it may even happen that where the critic perceives
success, the artist himself would pronounce failure.
In the ultimate resort the collector, like the rest of us, must rely,
pending the last, on his own judgment.

BEWICK: Thomas Bewick\'s Works,
Memorial Edition. London, 1885.
BINYON, Laurence : A Catalo^e of
Japanese and Chinese Woodcuts in the
British Museum.

BURGER, Fritz : Einführung in die
Moderne Kunst. Berlin, 1917.
CRAWHALL, J. : Old ffrendes wyth
new faces with sutable sculpture, 1883.
Chapbook Chaplets, 1884.

DODGSON, Campbell : Woodcuts of
the XV. Century in the John Ryland
Library, Manchester. Manchester, 1915.

DODGSON, Campbell : Catalogue of
Early German and Flemish Woodcuts in
the British Museum. London, 1903.
FLETCHER, F. Morley : Woodblock
Printing. London, 1916.
FRIEDLAENDER, Max J.: Der
Holzschnitt. Berlin, 1921.
FUCHS, E. : Honoré Daumier,
Munich, 1918.

FÜRST, Herbert : The Modern Wood-
cut, Print Collector\'s Quarterly, vol. 8,
Nos. 2 and 3. London, 1921.
FÜRST, Herbert : Modern Wood-
cutters. Edited by

GAUGUIN, Paul: Thieme, ^Ige-
meines Lexicon der Bildenden Künste.
Leipzig, 1920.

GUIDE to an Exhibition of Woodcuts
and Metal-cuts of the XV. Century,
chiefly of the German School. British
Museum, 1914.

HUGO, The Rev. Thomas : Bewick\'s
Woodcuts. London, 1866.
HAYDEN, Arthur: Chats on Old
Prints. London, 1907.
JACKSON & CHATTO: A Treatise of
Wood Engraving. London, 1861.
KRISTELLER, Paul: Kupferstich und
Holzschnitt in vier Jahrhunderten.
Berlin, 1921.

KURTH, Julius : Der Japanische Holz-
schnitt. Munich, 1922.
MEIER-GRAEFE, J.: Felix Vallotton.
Paris, 1898.

SAHLEN, A.: Om Träsnilt och Träsni-
dari. Stockholm, 1914.
SALAMAN, Malcolm: The Modern
Colour Print of original design. Lon-
don, 1919.

SALAMAN, Malcolm : Modern Wood-
cuts and Lithographs. By British and
French Artists. Studio Special Number.
London, 1919.

WEITENKAMPF, F. : Wood Engrav-
ing To-day. New York, 1917.
WESTHEIM, Paul: Das Holzschnitt-
buch. Potsdam, 1921.
WHITMAN-SALAMAN: The Print
Collector\'s Handbook. London, 1912.

Mittheilungen der Vereinigung Bildender
Künstler Oesterreichs: Ver Sacrum.
^^903» Vienna.

The Page. Edited by Gordon Craig.
The Play Boy. New York, 1919.
Der Sturm. Berlin, 1923.

HINTS ON THE PRACTICE OF XYLOGRAPHY:
BY W. THOMAS SMITH, DEMONSTRATOR IN
WOOD ENGRAVING IN THE SLADE SCHOOL
OF FINE ARTS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

The most spontaneous manifestations of the art of xylography are
produced by what is called the wood engraver\'s "White Line" in
contradistinction to the copper-plate engraver\'s and woodcutter\'s black
one.

It is necessary at the outset to emphasize the technical importance of
this " White Line," on which creative original work depends, for two
reasons :

In the first place, it is the natural and, therefore, a speedy, economical
and spontaneous one, which produces its effects at least six times faster
than the woodcutter\'s " black " line.

Secondly, it is aesthetically superior, because of the singular and
characteristic quality it gives to the print.

The method proceeds as nature itself does, evolving light from out of
the darkness, a principle that differentiates wood engraving, in a
fundamental way, from all other methods of producing prints by
means of Hnes.

The exploration of this unique domain of the wood engraver, more
particularly for original work, practically ceased about 1830, with the
small subjects of Bewick, Clennell, Blake, Calvert and others,
who regarded wood engraving not merely as a process for imitating
something else, e.g., reproducing a drawing, a menial use into which
it had since their time fallen. They looked upon it as the objective
sought for, i.e., the original itself, a work that had to depend on
aesthetic qualities which the tool and the material (the medium)
would enable the knowledge and individuality of the draughtsman,
the Painter-engraver, to give to it.

The fFood Engravers \'\'White Line " v. The Copper-Plate
Engravers and Woodcutters \'\'Black Line*\' demonstrated.

As a demonstration of the foregoing principle of the white hne take
respectively a blackboard, a sheet of white paper, a piece of white and
a piece of black chalk ; regard both the black and the white chalk as
the burin that will plough a hne or furrow which would print white on
the wood block, but black on the copper-plate.
The blackboard represents the wood block, and the white paper the
copper (or some other metal) plate.

Set up some object for study, for instance, a pot of flowers, then proceed
to render the drawing and effect of the arrangement, first on the white
paper with black hnes, etc., and then depict it on the blackboard, with
various white hnes, dots, dashes and spaces.

The latter (minus of course the clear incisive white line, which the
burin alone can give), will suffice to indicate the principle, the true
modus operandi of the wood engraver, the former, that of all other
forms of pure engraving on metal, excepting only the ancient metal
white line work sometimes mistaken for wood engraving, but which
IS of no use where spontaneity of expression is essential.
By means of this simple exercise, it will be realized that the abihty to
engrave on both materials (metal and wood) equally well, turns solely
on the abihty to handle the burin (on, of course, a smaller scale), as
easily as the chalks, etc. (on the larger one).

The wo^ of my pupils (some in this book) has proved that this is no
more difficult to acquire than wielding a pen was, when first we set
out to render pot hooks and hangers.

In the light of present-day developments of it in both Europe and
America, it is obvious that the possibilities of wood engraving have
never been fully examined ; further, that its development was handi-
capped and restricted by the exigences of reproductive work, which
unfortunately monopolized it.

Until comparatively recently, wood engraving par excellence also
came to consist largely of how close or minutely one could engrave,
t,e, cut, white Hnes, side by side, with a more or less mechanicai
regularity, reproducing various tints which, with but few reservations
were of a cast-iron or photographic quality. \'

The inore accomplished, because bolder, work of this order, with some
exceptions to be found among the engravers of Doré Vpisan for

instance), reminded one of engine turning or machine ruHng; in fact,
special tools were introduced for this kind of work; they were graded
and numbered, usually from one to twelve, and so on, their concepdon,
as well as their use, except in some rare cases, displaying the mind
of the engineer rather than that of the artist.

Tools {Burins and Scoupers): The principle of their
construction and method of sharpening.

But three kinds of tools are required for both wood engraving and
wood cutdng, namely, the square Burin, and lozenge-shaped, and
the Scouper, see Figs. 1 and 2.

These implements every engraver has to make up (from the rough
state in which they are sold) to his or her own liking and requirements.
The cutting power of the burin is at its best when ground and set at
half a right angle, i,e,, 45 degrees : if the angle is more, it does not
cut so easily or smoothly, if less, the point becomes too attenuated,
and is, therefore, liable to break off under the strain put upon it.
The angle of the scouper, a tool made stouter throughout, niay, there-
fore, be reduced to about 38 degrees with advantage to its cutting
qualities.

toeousjy drmng the tool in any direction, its point wiU sink (dive)
mto and cut the wood to the required depth. The varying depths, owing

On the other hand if the handle be depressed>hilst the burin is
smdtaneously. pushed forw^d this action will cause the cutting poim
to dive up agam, so to speak, out of the wood.

This narrows this incised line more or less gradually or abrupdy
according to Ae way the depression of its handle is regulated ^

The handles of the tools must be shaped and pitched as in Figs. 1, 2,3
They are set, so as to give adequate clearance for the hand gripping
them as shown m Figs. 12 13 and 14, enabling the point of tL burin
to cut as described, to travel over any part of the wood block or metal
plate, which IS best held m place on a leather bag during this operation
1 his bag, stuffed with silver sand. Fig. 17, serves not only as a rest\'
^t also as a pivot on which to turn the block or plate.
Having decided on a subject for engraving, a piece of prepared annle
pear or box wood is procured the size the print is to be As the
wood IS a section of the tree about an inch thick, the cutting \'therefore
will be against (/..., on the end of) the grain, not along aKrS^ k
as in wood plank engraving and cutting. ^ ^^

There are usually six alternative ways of commencing an engraving
(other methods with experience and enterprise will suggest
themselves).

First, one may black the surface of the wood, with for instance, Indian
ink, thus making a small blackboard of it on which may be indicated
the proportions of the composition in faintly cut or scratched lines,
which will of course be white, no other kind of preliminary drawing
on the wood being resorted to.

Secondly, some sketching may be done on the wood with a lead pencil;
the lines of which reflecting light on its blackened surface as they do,
can then be gone over (and more or less revised when cut into) with
the burin.

The effect produced by these lines (white) will, of course, be shown
by the light colour of the wood, as its blackened surface is cut away.
This method may be pursued when engraving either direct from nature
or from sketches ; it permits of a quality, style and individuality that
is not to be obtained by other methods; obviously, it is a pro-
cedure that requires more experience and confidence than the others.
If one desires to proceed more cautiously, a preliminary sketch with
an ordinary pen and some writing ink may be made on the surface
of the wood, which absorbs the ink quickly and indelibly, or the
wood may be whitened with some flake white powder and a little
water, a litde brick dust powder being added to give the polished surface
of the wood a tooth for the pencil.

The wood being thus prepared, the design can then be drawn on the
block (a good 6H pencil is best), with or without additional tones or
washes made of the writing ink, diluted with water as required, put
on with a sable brush.

One may alternatively paint the design on the block in body colour,
i.e., with Chinese white and Indian ink with water, but not too thickly,
otherwise it will flake off in patches when the burin cuts through it
into the wood, and so perchance carry away some important detail in
the drawing, before it has been secured in gravure with the burin.
Lastly, the subject, whether a painting or a drawing, may be photo-
graphed on the wood.

be kept in mind that the quaUty and effect aimed at in the wood
engraving is to be produced by long or short white lines, spaces, etc.,
aided, but not trammelled, by any of the foregoing prehminaries, some
or all of which are probably in black lines.

It should be realized at the outset, that all the resulting black spaces,
the wood left between these white lines as they are cut by the
burin or scouper, are to be regarded (if at all) as more or less accidental,
so to speak, just as the reverse is the case with metal engraving.
These (engraved and, therefore), " white Hnes " will necessarily be
suggested by the requirements of the subject; their varying directions
and qualities (thick and thin ; straight flowing or broken) will render
the modeUmg and the more or less broken luminous tones required,
relieved by black and white spaces judiciously left on the one hand,
and cut away on the other, with the scouper, or if the space be a large
one, with a gouge and mallet.

Proving and Printing without a Press, viz., by Hand,
with the Burnisher and Frotton.

The medium and practice of wood engraving fortunately is not
dependent on mechanical aid or assistance, and the less these are
^sorted to the better the quaHty of the limited edition of prints will be.
The most brilhant proofs, such as would be required by some
collectors, are those taken by hand, i.e., with the burnisher and
frotton, with the best quaHty proofing ink, on the best quaHty paper of
a suitable tone, m the following manner.

A piece of (for instance) India paper, of a requisite thickness,
depending on taste and the size of the print is laid face downwards
on the engraved block which has been inked with the roHer, Fig. 11;
a thin smooth card. Fig. 10, is then rubbed over the paper, causing
it to adhere, stick evenly to the inked block ; a second card charged
with beeswax is then rubbed over it; lubricated in this way by the
wax, it will not rough up under friction.

The first card is again rubbed over the paper in conjunction with a
steel (Fig. 9), ivory or bone burnisher placed on top of it; some pressure
of course is required when doing this.

By this ancient method of the " niello " workers a fine brilhant impres-
sion may be taken, because the varying degrees of pressure required,
greater on the darker parts in the engraving, are thereby better regulated
than is possible by the mechanism, the press of the printer and his
system called " overlaying." These " overlays " are various patterns of
paper cut out by the machine minder to correspond in shape with the
darker masses in the engraved block, and stuck on the " tympan,"
i.e., that part of his press that folds over on to the paper to be printed
on ; the latter is placed between it and the block.
For limited editions of more than say twenty-five prints, or for en-
gravings of a large area, one would probably prefer the printer to make
the impressions and by overlaying, if necessary, as near as possible
to the artist\'s burnished proof.

Nevertheless, no impression can compare for quality of prface, etc.,
with the proof carefully taken by one moderately skilful in the use of
the burnisher and the frottons, i.e., the two cards in this case, Fig. 10.

Accidents, corrections and revisions to a wood block are effected by
making incisions and then inserting plugs, i.e., pieces of the sanie kind
of wood, or by rubbing down and so lowering the surface, with fine
glass paper or by both combined, thus darkening the subject. This
glass paper, however, must be used with discretion, or much needless
work, in re-entering, i.e., going again into the incised lines with the
burin to widen (to lighten) them again may ensue. The black spaces
between the white Hnes {i.e., the surfaces, which of course supply the
ink to the print), are pyramidical in section, and a scraper or fine glass
paper applied evenly all over them, therefore, lowers and so widens
them, at the same time narrowing the " white Hne " and causing the
block to print a darker tone.

Plugging, up to a moderate area, for many reasons is best done by
the engraver himself, in the following manner :
If area for correction be small, drill a hole where required, cut, trim
and then taper a piece of wood (the plug) as round as possible (with
the flat tool. Fig. 3) to fit the hole, Fig. 7.

Should a plug of irregular shape be required, cut and shape the plug
first of all, tapering it on every side; this done, hold the smaller end
(which is to be inserted) to the block, exactly covering the surface to
be repaired; now scratch a hne on the block close up to, round the
plug, with an ordinary fine needle, thus the area and shape of the hole
required for the plug will be indicated and made to correspond
exactly to the plug prepared for it.

Next cut into these scratches lines (making thern deeper) with the
burin and scouper, keeping the sides of the resulting hole or pit up-
right; this would be about a i inch deep if the area of the plug is
about i an inch square.

Apply some powdered resin to the sides of this pit and also to the
sides of the plug itself.

Now insert it, and then, with a hammer, drive the plug into the pit.
The block should be resting on some flat, heavy, hard surface
meanwhile.

By this means the taper-shaped piece of wood is forced, squeezed on
to the side of the pit, more particularly at the surface edges, the place
that matters most; a close fit all round is thus ensured, the resin
securely cements it there and prevents its springing or coming out
again, Fig. 7.

Next take a sheet of thin card or thick paper, and an engineer\'s hack
saw (thirty-two teeth to the inch), cut a hole in the card or paper, and
lay it on the block to protect it, allowing the unwanted end of the plug
{i.e., the part above the surface of the block), to stick through this hole
in the card or paper. Now lay the saw (the blade only, no handle is
required—Figs. 7 and 8) flat on the card protecting the block. Then
cut off this projecting part by sawing evenly all round, gradually
working towards the centre; if sawn through from one side direct to
the other it is liable to chip off at the edge and so spoil the operation.
The remainder of the inserted plug that still projects is then carefully
pared down, fairly close to the level of the whole surface of the block,
with a small sharp chisel called a flat tool set in a wood engraver\'s
handle. Fig. 3, working from the outside edge of the plug towards
its centre.

The inserted wood is then levelled off perfectly flush with the finest
glass paper (known as 00 and Flour) and finally polished by rubbing
with a piece of fine brown paper, free from dust or grit, all held
stretched across something flat whilst in use.

Woodcuts and Engravings along and across the grain, made either
with the knife and gouge or with the scrive and gouge.

Wood cutdng on the plank is done either with a scrive a hollow
burin), Fig 4, or a knife. Fig. 16, assisted by gouges of different widths.
When the knite is used, two cuts are required to the scrive\'s one; the
latter, therefore, is quicker.

The small thin blade of a pocket knife, partly bound with string.
Fig. 16, to protect the fingers and as a grip (if made of good steel) is
as good as the knives made and sold for this purpose.
The first cut is made along each side of the hne, i.e., the wood to be
left standing, which must be pyramidical in section.

The knife when cutting is tilted to one side, at an angle of (approx.)
45 degrees, as m Fig. 15.

Another cut is then made, more or less parallel to the first cut
(depending on requirements), at a distance of from about of an
inch upwards, the knife tilted (the 45 degrees in the opposite direction).
These cuts made at opposite angles, therefore, cause a Vee-shaped
strip of wood, automatically, to come away from each side of the line,
leaving a right angle furrow on both sides of the wood left standing^
which will, therefore, print black; the superfluous wood between
these trenches is then removed with a sharp gouge.
It will thus be seen that to get a single black line, by this art craft of
the " Form Schneider," four cuts are required with the knife but only
two with the scrive.

The scrive is better known as a wood carver\'s Vee or parting tool.
For engravings and woodcuts it is ground, set and pitched at a

"Diffidentia." Trial proof (fragment), much reduced. This and " Vigilantia," p. 257,
were demonstrations of freehand plank engraving by the writer made with " thescrive."
The surface of the wood was first blackened all over, hence the tool acted in a similar
way to a piece of chalk on a blackboard. See remarks on next page.

different angle to that of the wood carver, as invented and used by the
writer, and, as shown in Fig. 4, with handles of cork.
It may thus be pushed in exactly the same way on soft woods, as the
sohd burin or scouper is used on the hard ones.
Unlike the latter, however, it is not so easy to sharpen or keep in order.
When in good trim the " scrive " cuts quickly, with ease, and as
sharply and cleanly across the grain of the wood as with {i.e., along) it.
With the additional aid of a few gouges of different widths (Figs. 5
and 6), the scrive is not only suitable for woodcuts, but, eminently so,
for wood engravings, especially on a comparatively large scale, when
speed and ease of expression are more than ever necessary; as, for
instance, when engraving a head or a portrait direct from life, see
examples (reduced) pages 257 and 261, trial pieces of two prints at
B.M. and V.A.M. freehand work, with the scrive and gouges, evolved
from sketches from life reversed in a mirror.

Any soft even grained wood is suitable for woodcuts and engravings
made on the plank {i.e., along and across the grain), for instance,
well-seasoned cherry, hme, maple, sycamore and American white
wood.

Planks of such wood of various widths, 1 inch thick, are planed flat
and then smoothed with a scraper or glass paper.
Cut or engraved on with knife, scrive or gouge, both sides being made
use of, they also yield good colour prints in oil, and delicate fine ones
in water colours, i.e., to those who know the proper papers to use and
the Japanese method of printing them.

Strength or boldness of line in scale with the size of the print:
a guide {approx.) to determining this.

Some help as to what strength of line to adopt in an engraving may be
found in an old tradition to the effect that the print which best emits

all the qualities it is capable of, is of a requisite boldness, not, however,
too coarse or harsh in texture. Mere fineness, on the other hand, like
much smooth painting, is too often a refuge for incompetence.
This traction and theory (one easily tested) is as follows : At a
distance of three dmes the diagonal {i.e., of the length from left bottom
to right top corner of the print), the lines, dots, dashes in the darker,
the shadows or semi-transparent parts of the subject, should still be
just visible ; and only on increasing this distance should these lines,
etc., merge into half-tones, etc. A less strength or boldness of Hne than
this results in a diminution of the required vibrant quaHties, trans-
parency, or luminosity in those parts of the print.

Wood engraving, i.e., in its best sense, cannot of course be learnt from
books or articles such as this, although it is hoped that these hints will
assist the adoption of correct methods based on sound principles.
For instance, one gives the diagrams. Figs. 12, 13 pd 14, showing
how the burin must be held if one is to excel in using it freely, but
it is not possible to explain how it should be driven and controlled,
ocular demonstration is necessary ; similar remarks apply to using the

Without tuition at the start, one courts b^ habits, difficult to eradicate,
unnecessary set backs, tool difficulties, involving much loss of time;
a requisite confidence and the facility necessary to express oneself
freely is impaired, the technique, quality and fluency of line suffers.
AU this results in undue Hmitations of the medium.
These Hmitations, usually, are evident in a dearth (if not entire absence)
of line, half-tones or light, often with too great a predominance of black
in the\'print, or a predilection for dark subjects, night scenes, sombre
interiors or miniature poster work of the contrasting black and white

Conclusion: the secret of Wood Engraving, as with any other art,
consists in allowing the medium to dictate its technique.

University College, to give three years ago to art students interested
m wood engraving. It. pretends, therefor?, to notCg more t£n an
introduction to the subject, and in particular to the neiTppficadon of
Its prmaple : this may be referred to as the rediscovery rf he use o
a whtte hne worhng on black, the principle followed in many S the

w-.i? J • ^ novittate is not necessary to acquire this art
With adequate instruction at the start a drLghtsmTinSly uses

fco ^v itiirT« ^Pg\'^^ng" righdy avoids the undesirable
" the sixties " referred to Schneider," that of