The graphic arts : a treatise on the varieties of drawing, painting, and engraving in comparison with each other and with nature

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Preface

TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.

ON sending the sheets of this work to America, for an edition to be published at a moderate price and without illustrations, a question had to be considered which was not quite so simple as, at first sight, it appeared. There were a great many references to illustrations published in the first expensive English edition, and it seemed, of course, to the author, as it would to anybody else, that these references ought to be expunged when the engravings or reproductions no longer accompanied them. On further consideration, however, there appeared to be strong reasons against this course. The book contains very numerous references to works of art which cannot possibly be presented in its pages, to such things as mural paintings and other works in fiill colour which cannot be properly reproduced ; and as the reader will not be able in every case to go at once to the performances themselves, as he will be obliged by distance to take a good deal on trust at all events, and to accept the author's conclusions at least provisionally, there seems to be no reason why the illustrations to the edition de luxe should not be referred to in the cheaper editions just as freely as any other absent works of art. It being decided, then, that the references should be maintained, the only remaining doubt concerned the form of viii Preface to the American Edition.

them. The strictly accurate and correct way would have been to say each time, '' the reader may see an example of this in an illustration by such an artist engraved or reproduced by such another artist and published in the columbier octavo edition of this work," but the most inexperienced of writers would feel the awkwardness of sajdng that a hundred times over. The conclusion was to keep all allusions to illustrations precisely as they stood in the first edition. The reader may find this a convenience if he has access to an illustrated copy.

The book is dedicated to a poet instead of being dedicated to a painter or other workman in the graphic arts, but there is an especial fitness in the dedication. I mean it as an expression of a desire that the graphic arts should be better understood by men of high literary culture than they have generally been hitherto, and also that those concerned in them should look to literature with more sympathy and imderstanding. It would not have occurred to me to dedicate this book to Scott, Wordsworth, or Byron, if I had written in their day, because they lived outside of the Graphic Arts just as an illiterate artist may live outside of literature ; but Browning is not an outsider, and it is pleasant to think of a man who by s)rmpathy and knowledge is one of ourselves, one of the artistic firatemity, as it were, and yet at the same time a poet of great power and a thinker whose influence is steadily increasing. There is nothing to be more lamented than the isolation of one form of culture fi*om another, when it implies a real privation of light, and it was a characteristic of the age that immediately preceded ours to isolate men in separate cells of knowledge, each of which had its own little window looking out upon the world in its own special direction. It was not so in the great age of the Renaissance, and it is much less so at the present date (1882) than it was thirty years ago ; but we remember the time in England when artists were gener-

Preface to the American Edition. ix

ally illiterate and scholars equally ignorant of the fine arts and the natural sciences. At the present day one of the best linguists in our country is President of the Royal Academy, one of the most imaginative poets is a famous painter, and some of our* most eminent men of science are men of great literary power, with a wide knowledge of books and a lively interest in art. I do not dispute the economical doctrine that division of labour is good for mechanical production, but I feel perfectly certain that the concentration of all the faculties upon one art prevents the mind from seeing the arts in their true relations to .each other. Suppose the case of a painter, hard at work every day at his own specialty in painting, I should say that unless he takes care to keep his mind open by looking at the other varieties of art and taking an interest in them, he is very much exposed to the danger of narrowing his mind to the range of qualities visible on his own canvases. He may judge of other graphic arts unfairly, as a Spanish peasant goes to his own church, and believes that Protestants are not Christians.

The object of the present volume is to show as truly as possible the different kinds of usefulness which belong to the different graphic arts, without unduly extolling or depreciating any of them. For my part, I love them all, and each of them has in my eyes its own dignity, derived from associatioh with the labours of great men. The more we know of what they have done in these arts, the more the arts themselves become honourable in our estimation. It will be found, too, that they throw light upon each other, and that there are many close analogies, not suspected at first, between processes apparently very different. The truth is that the variety of processes is not so great as it appears. Although the range of the graphic arts is extensive in their dealings with nature, their technical range is limited. All painting whatever is founded upon one of the two opposite

X Preface to the American Edition,

principles of transparence or opacity ; all engraving whatever is founded upon line or mass. All the graphic arts together are founded either upon naturalism or some kind of conventionalism, and by the time we have studied them enough to recognise old friends with new faces we are constandy meeting with principles long ago familiar.

PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON.

January, 1883.

PREFACE

TO THE ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED EDITION.

THE lesson brought home to me by the studies which have led to the production of this volume, is, that we ought not to despise any form of art which has been practised by great men. If it was good enough for them, it is probably good enough for us. Able artists have often accepted quite contentedly what may be truly called limited means of expression, but they have never tolerated a bad art.

This reasonable degree of trust in the practical sense of great artists has not always been general. A well-known instance of the contrary is familiar to us in the history of etching. For a long time before the modem revival of that art it was treated with a degree of contempt which is hardly imaginable now. People could not be induced to look at etchings, no publisher would invest in them, no periodical would insert them, and the general belief of the time was that Rembrandt had practised an art which, at the best, was only a defective substitute for engraving. Surely a little reflection might have dissipated such a prejudice as that ! Rembrandt was an illustrious painter, a painter not only of great mental capacity, but of consummate technical skill, which he exhibited in remailcable variety. Besides this, he left behind him a great number of admirable drawings vtv xii Preface to the English Illustrated Edition,

ink, in bistre, and other materials, quite sufficient to prove, if he had never produced such a thing as a picture at all, that he was a draughtsman of extraordinary powers, both mental and manual. Now, pray consider the extreme inherent improbability that such an artist as Rembrandt by these means had proved himself to be would have spent nearly half his time on a bad art ! He must have known, at least as well as we do, what are the qualities and powers which make an art available as a means of expression for such a genius as his, and, having made the necessary practical experiments, he must have come to the conclusion that etching possessed them.

If we, in the present day, are liable to any wrong judgments about other arts, like that of our immediate predecessors about etching, we have a ready means of correcting them. We have simply to inquire — the inquiry need not be long or difficult — if the art that we feel inclined to despise has been practised by great artists. If it has been practised by them, not as a mere experiment, but as a pursuit, our contempt for it is either without grounds or on wrong grounds, we are probably blaming it for the absence of some quality which is not necessary to the expression of artistic ideas. Let us take as an example the simple and primitive-looking art of drawing with common pen and ink upon common white paper. Most people do not think much of such an art, for the materials are very cheap and to be met with everywhere, and the work does not flatter the eye when it is done. Still, it may deserve attention and consideration, for it was practised by many of the greatest artists who ever lived, amongst whom may be specially mentioned these three — Raphael, Titian, Michael Angelo. When we come to look into the matter, we find that the pen, though it does not offer any soft ^»ixury to the sense of. sight, is one of the best instruments for the expression of firm, decided, substantial knowledge, and that

Preface to the English Illustrated Edition* xiii

IS why those great men used it The lead-pencil is sometimes despised because it is given to beginners, yet it was employed habitually by Turner in the full maturity of his talent ; and its predecessor, the silver-point, was constantly in the hands of the old masters.

Some of us remember the time when water-colour was so despised in France that no critic would take it into consideration as a serious art. It was connected, in the popular conception, with the attempts of school-girls, and by an association of ideas in accordance with common mental habits, it was assumed that an art practised by young ladies could not possibly express the ideas oC thoughtful and educated men. It would have been equally reasonable to infer that because young ladies used pens and paper for their school themes an experienced author could not employ them for his manuscripts ; but reason is powerless against the prejudices of association. The most practical argument in favour of water-colour is, that it actually has been employed by men of great learning (in artistic matters) and great genius. If it had been a feeble art, such men as MUller and Cox would not have resorted to it

Lithography is slightly esteemed because it has been vulgarised by feeble work, or by work that is manually skilful, but destitute of mental originality. It is also very unfortunate in being frequently represented by impressions from worn stones. It has become a business, and a business not always conducted with a due regard even to a commercial reputation. But surely this unlucky turn in the application of the art has nothing to do with its higher capabilities? It was heartily appreciated by great men in the last generation. If such men as Decamps, Gericault, and Delacroix, practised it or approved of it, we may be quite sure that it is an artist's process, whether it may happen to be fashionable in the present day, or applied to unfashionable uses.

XIV Preface to the English Illustrated Edition.

I am told now that woodcut, though popular enough in a practical way as an adjunct to journalism, and a handmaid of scientific literature, is despised by the aesthetic taste of the day. Like lithography, it has become a trade ; careful drawings ai^ often cut to pieces by apprentices, and badly printed afterwards. We may deplore these errors. It is always sad to see good materials turned to unworthy uses, but these misappUcations ought not to make us unjust to the art which is pursued unworthily-. Is literature always followed with a due sense of its noblest responsibilities and powers ? Woodcut can be printed cheaply, so that it is used and abused in commerce, yet it has fine artistic capabilities. It is not a painter's process, because it is too laborious for an occupied painter to undertake it ; but it is a thoroughly sound process, capable of the most various effects ; and it has been encouraged by great artists, especially by Holbein, too delicate a draughtsman to patronise a rude and imperfect art.

The fundamental error in estimating the Graphic Arts is to rank them by comparison with the ineffable completeness of nature. They may be compared with nature ; they shall be so compared in this volume, but only as a matter of scientific curiosity, not at all for the purpose of condemning some arts and exalting others. We who are constantly accustomed to the language — or rather, in the plural, the very different languages — of the graphic arts, lose by familiarity with their meaning the sense of their real remoteness from nature. We forget — we become incapable of properly understanding — what a distance there is between the natural object and the artistic representation. For example, it was the custom of the old masters in many of their drawings to shade in strong, open, diagonal lines. There is nothing in nature like that. It is simply a conventional language intended to convey the notion of shade without imita-

Preface to the English Illustrated Edition. xv

tioiiy without even the beginning of an imitation, of its qualities. This is a single instance, but I could fill a hundred pages with such instances. If imitative truth were the test of excellence in the fine arts, the greater part of the drawings, etchings, and engravings in our museums, and many of the pictures in our galleries, would have to be condemned without remission. The real test of excellence in a process is this. Will it conveniendy — that is, without too much troublesome technical embarrassment — express human knowledge and human feeling? Will it record in an intelligible manner the results of human observation? If it will do this for man, with reference to some limited department of nature only, such as form, or light and dark, or colour .without full natural light, then it is a good art, however far it may fall short of nature in a vain struggle for complete imitation. This is the reason why we valfe so many drawings by great artists in which they voluntarily bridled the imitative instinct. They restrained that instinct ; they pulled it up at some point fixed in each case by some special artistic purpose and by the nature of the materials that they employed. They did not share the scorn for limited means of expression, which is one of the signs of imperfect culture, but they looked upon each tool as a special instniment and employed it in accordance with its proper uses, content if it expressed their thought, often not less content if the thought were conveyed by a hint or a suggestion to intelligences not very far inferior to their own.

In our own time an entirely new set of processes have rendered service by reproducing drawings and engravings of various kinds, often with a remarkable degree of fidelity. Some of ^ese processes have been employed in the illustration of the present volume, and great care has been taken, by the rejection of failures, to have the best results which the present condition of photographic engraving could afford. The reader may be glad xvi Preface to. the English Illustrated Edition.

to know how these reproductions have been made. Without entering into details which would require many pages for their explanation, I may say that the processes used for this volume are of very different natures. That employed by Messi:s. Goupil, called photogravure^ is a secret, and all I know about it is that the marvellously intelligent inventor discovered some means of making a photograph in which all the darks stood in proportionate relief, and from which a cast in electrotype could be taken which would afterwards serve as a plate to print from. All the Goupil photogravures in this volume are so produced, and very wonderful things they are, especially the Mercuij, which is the most difficult feat of reproduction I have hitherto seen attempted, on account of the extreme delicacy of many lines and the sharpness of others. We also give plates printed in two or more colours. They are printed in tach case from one copper and with one turn of the press ; how, we are unable to explain, but though the making of these illustrations is mysterious, the quality of them will be admitted by everyone who knows the originals in the Louvre. M. Dujardin's process of heliogravure is entirely different. He covers a plate made of a peculiar kind of bronze with a sensitive ground, and after photographing the subject on that simply etches it and has it retouched with the burin if required.* M. Amand Durand employs ordinary copper plates, and uses bichromatised gelatine as an etching ground, which acquires various degrees of insolubility by exposure to light. He bites his plates like ordinary etchings ; and when they are intended to represent etchings he rebites them in the usual way and works upon them with dry point, &c., just as an etcher does, but when they represent engravings he finishes them with the

♦ He does not draw it, the drawing is done by photography ; he bites it in the lines cleared by the chemical process. M. Dujardin is not an artist like Amand Durand, but he is a remarkably skilful scientific operator.

Preface to the English Illustrated Edition, xvii

burin. In the reproductions from Mr. Poynter*s drawings, in this volume, the dark lines are done by photographic etching, and the uniform ground, which imitates Mr. Poynter*s paper, is in ordinary aquatint. The reader now perceives the essential difference between the Goupil process, in which there is no etching, and the processes employed by the heliograveurSy which are entirely founded upon etching.

The mechanical autotype process is founded upon the absorption of moisture by partially soluble gelatine, and its rejection by bichromatised gelatine rendered insoluble by exposure to light. The printing is done in oil ink, which is rejected by the moist gelatine and caught by the insoluble. In the reproduction of a pen drawing the ink Unes are printed from portions of gelatine which have been rendered insoluble by the action of light, and the blank spaces between the Unes represent the moistened gelatine. This is an excellent process for many purposes, certainly the best of all for the imitation of pen drawings.

The most defective of all photographic processes are generally those intended to print like woodcuts in the text. Such reproductions often abound in thickened or in broken Knes, or in lines run together, and when this is the case they are worse than worthless from a critical point of view. The few reproductions printed with the text in the present volume have been very carefully executed by Messrs. A. and W. Dawson, and are as nearly as possible free from these defects. The process includes both photography and electrotype, but I am not able to give the reader very precise information as to the means by which the hollows are produced. The line, of course, is in relief, and always very nearly at the same level, as in woodcut.*

♦ Apropos of woodcut, I have just detected an erratum in the footnote to page 75. Writing from memory, I had the impression that the

b xviii Preface to the English Illustrated Edition.

The processes of photographic engraving have rendered very great services, especially to students of moderate means who live at a distance from great national collections, but the right use of reproductions must always be accompanied by a certain reserve. You can never trust them absolutely, for you can never be certain that a publisher will be a sufficiendy severe critic to reject everything that is less than the best. They are most precious as memoranda of works that we have seen and known, and then the only limit to their usefulness is the danger that the reproduction which we possess may gradually take the place in our minds once occupied by the original which is absent

sitter for the first sketch mentioned there was a valet, on account of his costume, but he was really a gentleman who had put on an old-fashioned dress. The reader will find him at page 52a

Contents

PAGB

I. Importance of Material Conditions in the

Graphic Arts i

Chapter I. Importance Of Material Conditions In The Graphic

ARTS.

TECHNICAL studies have been so generally undervalued that the purpose of a book like this may be readily misunderstood or misrepresented. It may be supposed to deal with matter only, and to neglect the mental element in art, be- , cause it is not disdainful of material things. This would be a wrong estimate of its purposes.

In the Graphic Arts you cannot get rid of matter. Every drawing is in a substance and on a substance. Every substance used in drawing has its own special and peculiar relations both to nature and to the human mind.

The distinction in the importance of material things between the Graphic Arts and literature deserves consideration because our literary habits of thought lead us wrong so easily when we apply them to the arts of design. All of us who are supposed to be educated people have been trained in the mental habits which are derived from the study of books, and these habits, as all artists and men of science are well aware, lead students to value words and ideas more than things, and produce in their minds a sort of contempt for matter, or at least for the knowledge of matter, which indisposes them for material studies of all kinds, and often makes them blind to the close connexion which exists between matter and the artistic expression of thought.

In literature, such a connexion can scarcely be said to exist. A writer of books may use pen or pencil, and whatever quality of paper he chooses. There is even no advantage in reading the original manuscript, for the mechanical work of the printer adds clearness to the text without injuring the most delicate shades of literary expression. The quality of paper used by Sir Walter Scott did not affect one of his sentences ; the quality of the different papers which were carefully selected by Turner, for studies of different classes, determined the kind of work he did upon them. Ink and pencil in the hands of a writer express exactly the same ideas ; in the hands of a draughtsman they express different ideas or different mental conditions. A draughtsman does not interpret the light and shade of Nature in the same manner with different instruments. He has to throw himself into a temper which may be in harmony with the instrument he uses, to be blind for the time to the qualities it cannot render, to be sensitive to those which it interprets readily. Even the roughness or smoothness of the substance he is working upon determines many a mental choice.

Of these things a literary education gives us no perception. It even misleads our judgment by inducing us to suppose that substances are beneath the consideration of an artist, as they are outside the preoccupations of an author. Or it may felsify our opinions in another and more plausible way. It may, and it often does, induce people to think that technical matters may concern artists and still be below the region of the higher criticism which should interest itself in the things of the mind, and not bestow attention upon the products of the laboratory, or the processes of the painting-room. As a result of this way of thinking we sometimes hear critics praised for not being technical, and blunders in technical matters, which surprise those "who understand the subject, do not appear to diminish the popularity of writers upon art, if only their style be elegant and their descriptions lively and amusing. Technical ignorance appears even to be an advantage to a critic, as it preserves him from

Material Conditions, 3

one of the forms of tiresomeness, and leaves him to speak of sentiments which all can enter into rather than of substances which only workmen and students ever touch, and of processes which only the initiated can follow.

It will be my purpose in the present volume to show how mental expression is affected by material conditions in the graphic arts. I shall point out, not in vague generalities, but in accurate detail, the temptations offered by each substance used and each process employed. I shall make it clear in what manner, and to what degree, the artist has to conform himself to material conditions in order that he may best express the thoughts and sentiments which are in him, and, above all, I shall make it my business to show how the choice amongst those thoughts and sentiments themselves, how the expression of some and the suppression of others, may in very many instances be accounted for by the nature of the materials employed. It is only by a thorough understanding of these conditions of things that criticism can lay its foundations in^ truth and justice. You may write brilliantly about an artist without knowing anything of the inexorable material conditions under which his daily labour has to be done ; you may captivate readers as disdainful of those conditions as yourself by the cleverness with which you can substitute rhetoric for information ; but if you have any real desire to understand the fine arts as they are — if you have any keen intellectual curiosity about them, if you wish to speak with fairness of those who have worked in them — you will be brought to the study of matter as well as to the comparison of ideals. The criticism which professes indifference to technical knowledge is a criticism without foundations, however prettily it may be expressed. It is to the true criticism what a cloud is to a mountain — the one a changeful vapour sometimes gorgeous with transient colour and bearing a deceptive appearance of permanent form, the other massive and enduring, with a firm front to every wind and a base of granite deep-rooted in the very substance of the world.

There is a prevalent idea that the study of material conditions is uninteresting — a dull study, not fit to occupy the attention of highly cultivated persons. This idea comes from our curiously unsubstantial education. The training of a gentleman has been so lAuch confined to words and mathematical abstractions that he has seldom learned to know the intimate charm which dwells in substances perfectly adapted to human purposes. There is a charm in things, in the mere varieties of matter, which affects our feelings with an exquisite sense of pleasurable satisfaction when we thoroughly understand the relation of these substances to the conceptions and creations of the mind. This charm is entirely independent of their costliness, and one of the best results of knowledge is that it makes us appreciate things for themselves as no one can who is unfamiliar with their noblest uses. A painter takes some cheap earth which he finds in Italy, such as the ferruginous earth of Sienna ; and it is better than gold to him, for it will enter into a hundred lovely combinations where gold would be of no use. Art does not reject what is costly, yet seeks nothing for its costliness. It accepts the blue of the lapis lazuli, and the colouring matter of the emerald,* but it also keenly appreciates a stick of well-burnt charcoal or a bit of common chalk. Many of the most delicate designs left to us by the old masters were done with the .silver-point, one of the simplest instruments and one of the cheapest, as it did not wear perceptibly with use. Here we find artists taking advantage of that blackening of silver by the very tarhish which gives so much labour to servants. The diamond point is used by engravers on metal, who appreciate its marvellous hardness. Ivory is used by miniature-painters on account of its exquisite surface. So ^influential are substances upon the fine arts that the modem development of wood-engraving has been dependent upon the use of a particular kind of wood, and even on a peculiar way of

* In ultramarine and the emerald oxides of chromium, the first is lapis lazuli in powder, and the second contains the colouring matter of the emerald.

Material Conditions, 5

sawing it across the grain, whilst the existence of lithography is dependent upon the supply of a peculiar kind of stone. The metals used in engraving directly affect the style of the engraving itself. The existence of such a metal as copper has had a direct influence upon art, for if there had been none of it in the world a great deal of the best work in etching and engraving would never have been executed. If an artist who had etched on copper took to etching on zinc, the change of metals would produce, after a few experiments, a marked alteration in his manner. Even the degree of fineness or coarseness, in paper or canvas, affects the style of an artist. No one paints in the same way on coarse cloth and smooth panel ; no one draws in the same way on rough paper and Bristol board.