The life and works of Thomas Bewick; being an account of his career and achievements in art, with a notice of the works of John Bewick

Front matter

THE LIFE AND WORKS

BEING AN ACCOUNT OF

HIS CAREER AND ACHIEVEMENTS IN ART

Preface

It has long been an acknowledged want in artistic biography that no comprehensive volume on the Life and Works of Thomas Bewick, the recognised father of the Art of Engraving on Wood in England, has hitherto been published. At various times and in different ways — as memoirs in journals, as notices in newspapers, and as biographical accounts forming prefaces to lists of his works — the outline of the story of Thomas Bewick’s career has appeared ; but, except in one instance, these have not aimed at giving in detail a narrative of the interesting episodes in the artist-engraver’s long, fruitful, and well-spent life.

This one exception is “ A Memoir of Thomas Bewick, written by himself,” published upwards of thirty years after his death. It was edited by Jane Bewick, the engraver’s eldest daughter, “ a very superior woman, animated, intelligent, and gentle.” In this the record of the early life of the artist is in every respect acceptable,* but the narrative of the later period does not give a satisfactory account of the engraver’s achievements ; and it enters into the discussion of questions on which the writer had not expended more study than is given by an ordinarily thoughtful man.

The purpose of the present work is to show the engraver more than the politician ; the pictorial designer in place of the religious advocate ; the energetic artist and graphic moralist rather than the letterpress teacher.

In carrying out this end, the following pages, in many instances, take a bibliographic form. This is not mentioned to be apologized for, as it is necessary in describing Bewick’s works ; but that the ordinary reader may not be disappointed in finding so much space devoted to the purely technical portion of the scheme. To the admirer of Bewick’s prints, and to the collector of his works, the particulars of books (which have never

* Mr. Ruskin recommended it to his Oxford students as cne of the first Art books they ought to obtain.

a 2

VI

PREFACE.

previously been given in the same way) will be considered the most practically serviceable part of the whole.

It has been my rule, throughout the long study necessary to compile this volume, not to describe any engraving without having seen it. Every endeavour has been made to insure accuracy, yet it is scarcely to be expected that, in detailing so large a number of works, errors of commission or of omission should have been wholly avoided, and the reader’s indulgence is craved for any that may be detected.

The authorities which have been specially consulted are : Bewick’s Memoir, 1862; Hugo’s “Bewick Collector,” and the Supplement to the same ; G. C. Atkinson’s Memoir of Bewick ; Chatto and Jackson’s “ Treatise on Wood Engraving ; ” Fox’s “ Synopsis of the Newcastle Museum;” Bell’s “Catalogue of Bewick’s Works;” and F. G. Stephens’s “ Notes on Bewick.”

I have to thank the following gentlemen for information supplied during the preparation of this volume : — Dr. Joly, Dublin; Mr. Crawford J. Pocock, Brighton ; Mr. J. W. Ford, Enfield ; Mr. C. Welsh, Fondon ; the Rev. Mr. Wray, Ovingham ; Mr. R. S. Nisbet and Mr. E. T. Nisbet, Newcastle, with other friends in Northumberland; also Professor W. H. Corfield, Fondon, and Mr. Thomas Allan Croal, Edinburgh, for special information and assistance. My thanks are also due to the Rev. Mr. Pearson, Messrs. Griffith and Farran, Messrs. Chatto and Windus, the Rev. Mr. Buckley, Mr. C. Hopper, Mr. Salkeld, and Mr. Mozley, for the loan of blocks ; and to Mr. W. Bowman and Mr. H. Bowman for a perusal of, and permission to make extracts from, Mr. J. E. Bowman’s manuscript. I have also to thank the subscribers to the volume who so quickly came forward in response to the circular issued in November last, and to hope that the publication will meet with their approval.

D. C. THOMSON.

London, June 1st, 1882.

Feeding the Fowls. Vignette in the “Looking Glass for the Mind.” hrom the original block engraved by John Bewick. Lent by Messrs. Griffith and Farran.

Table Of Contents

PAGE

CHAP.

I. Birth and School Life ........... i

Introduction

The Art of Engraving on Wood in England, though never practically lost from the period of its first introduction about the end of the fifteenth century, was in a very languid condition at the time when Thomas Bewick was apprenticed in Newcastle in 1767. Professors of the Art did then certainly practise in London, if not also in other places in England, but their productions were of a very feeble kind, though they served to keep alive the traditional methods of this branch of Engraving.

In other countries at the same date Engraving on Wood was, as also in England, discarded, in the case of important work, for the practice of engraving on copper. France appears to have been the only nation whose wood engravers exhibited works of merit during the interval between the end of the sixteenth century and Bewick’s time, but even the engravings of Nicholas Le Sueur and John Michael Papillon are good only in the sense of being the best of their age.

For the finest early examples of works of Art multiplied by having been cut on wood we have to look to the German Schools ; to the masterpieces of Albert Diirer, Louis Cranach, Hans Holbein, and other artists of the country where such works were first produced in Europe. Few, if any, of these early

b

INTRODUCTION.

xii

designers cut their own drawings on the wood, this part of the labour being given over to men (and it is said sometimes to women) who had no knowledge of Art, but who knew how to cut wood round the lines drawn on the flat surface, and who worked under the guiding eye of the draughtsman.* The works of Thomas Bewick are of quite a different class. They, too, as designs, are of the supremest quality. They were not only conceived and drawn, but were also engraved by him. As the productions of a thorough artist, each may be looked on as exemplifying the legitimate condition of the Art of Engraving on Wood, as opposed to plate engraving, and as different from simple wood cutting. A wood engraving ought, as a matter of course, to be a work which cannot be given in a better way by any other method for the purpose for which it is intended to be employed. The greatest use of wood engraving is to have it worked together with type for letterpress printing, and this being what no other method of artistic production could, until very recent years, readily be adapted to, therefore the first consideration is the fulfilment of this condition. It is quite possible so to engrave a wood block that it cannot satisfactorily be printed from.

The most artistic work is what is termed “white -line” engraving, obtained by cutting the lines forming the picture into the wood. Fac-simile engraving, or as it is sometimes, though perhaps not quite correctly, called, “black-line” work, is produced by cutting away the wood so as to leave the lines drawn by the artist untouched — cross-hatched or otherwise— a style now much more extensively practised than the former. For this less freedom can be allowed than for the other, as the engraver or cutter must carefully, almost servilely, avoid the artist’s pencil strokes, and show his skill (and that sometimes he does admirably) by trained hand

* It is to be remembered, therefore, in examining these old German woodcuts, that while the designs are, for the purpose, of the highest quality, the engraving, or, more exactly, the cutting of these blocks is only a mechanical result, and one not at all to be admired for its own sake, it being often rude in the extreme.

INTRODUCTION.

xiii

work only, as the head can scarcely enter into the labour. At the same time it is to be observed that it is possible to combine the two methods, as is done in many modern wood engravings.

It is also proper that in an engraving on wood each line should be cut with definite meaning, without inaccuracy, and also without undue hesitation. It may not by multiplicity or rigidity of line invade too far the province of plate engraving, and thus lose the advantages afforded by wood over metal ; nor of etching by unnecessary looseness or trickily obtained mystery. It must for a basis have open, honest, sound work, such as can only be produced on wood, and not by any other style of engraving.

It may be thought little to claim for Thomas Bewick’s works the correct observance of these conditions ; yet it was as necessary for him to observe them as it must and ever will be for engravers who wish to practise their Art, not as imitating steel-plate work or original drawings in pen and ink on paper, or any other method, but as the distinct and beautiful Art of Engraving on Wood. That Bewick satisfied these provisions will be at once and without debate admitted, and it is only necessary to add a few words on his claim as a master in his profession.

In the first place we find him as a youth, with fewer advantages for observing artistic labours than are now yearly afforded to thousands of children, able, before he has terminated his seven years’ apprenticeship, to produce works very greatly in advance of his master ; in twelve years more to engrave blocks beside which the works of the best contemporaries are meagre and commonplace ; and in another twelve years to -render himself, by his truthfully drawn designs, the first engraver in the world. The “Select Fables,” the “History of Quadrupeds,” and the “History of British Birds ” reveal on every page the superiority of his talent in depicting with his pencil and graver the correct form and true spirit of those animals which every one may contemplate with admiration.

This was a very great change in Wood Engraving. Until his time it had

XIV

INTRODUCTION.

been content to show outlines wanting the finish of a shaded drawing, or prints usually occupying, amongst copper-plate illustrations, a place of a very inferior kind. Before Bewick’s day, also, there had been little attempt at transcript from nature, and conventionality reigned supreme.

The change from conventionality to natural forms was one that could not have been brought about except by one possessing the royal stamp of genius. And with this Thomas Bewick was certainly endowed. He also had the humbler, yet quite as necessary, gift of perseverance ; and together these led him to approach nature in simplicity, to receive her lessons with faithfulness, and to depict what he saw with unfailing certainty and loveliness. Thus it was with the Figures in the Birds and Quadrupeds. With the Vignettes for these works and in the Fables it was somewhat different, for here his grave humour as well as his glorious veracity displayed itself, and showed another side of the artist-engraver’s powerful mind.

When Bewick began his labours artistic Wood Engraving did not exist. He led it from mechanism to untrammelled and enduring excellence. It is perfectly probable the change would have come by other means, if not through his exertions ; yet it must have been slower and less individual, “here a little, there a little, line upon line,” and therefore less striking. Reforms and changes in all things must come, but because of this certainty we are none the less to honour the immediate instruments who stimulate to new or more vigorous life. Bewick may only have been the inevitable exponent of a reformation, but none the less are we to bow before the heavenborn gift of ability to carry that reformation to a successful issue.

The Common Snipe. The “ History of British Birds,” Vol. II.

Chapter I. Birth And School Life

' I "'HOMAS BEWICK, whose works in the art of engraving have been, from the time of their production, increasingly admired by every class, and whose career it is proposed to trace in the succeeding pages, was born on the 1 2th of August, 1753, in a small cottage standing on a slope overlooking the river Tyne, in the county of Northumberland.

His father, John Bewick, who was born in 1715, supported himself and his family partly by the proceeds of a land-sale colliery which he rented, and partly by farming. He married comparatively early in life, but his wife dying childless, he was married again to Jane Wilson, the daughter of a Cumberland farmer, who was born in 1727, and who became the mother of the illustrious engraver. Cherryburn House, where they went to live, is nearly twelve miles in a westerly direction from Newcastle, and close

B

THOMAS BEWICK.

to the little village of Eltringham, in the parish of Ovingham, whose church is on the opposite side of the river Tyne.* Bewick in his writings mentions that his mother, when still young, had been chosen housekeeper to the curate of Ovingham, the Rev. Christopher Gregson, and while there the Cumberland lass won the heart of the widower. Mr. Gregson was, in after-years, one of the warmest friends the engraver had, and Bewick records with satisfaction how readily the clergyman acknowledged the value of his young housekeeper. Mr. Gregson, whose stipend was not great, had a number of pupils to whom he imparted education, and he found his housekeeper as helpful on account of her ability to superintend the Latin lessons of the learners, as of her proficiency in her more special duties. From this scene of combined mental and practical responsibilities she was taken to preside over the cottage at Cherryburn in 1752.

Here, the next year, Thomas Bewick, eldest of the family, was born. The 1 2th of August was the day on which he celebrated the anniversary of his birth ; but there was, even to himself, some doubt of the precise date, and it may possibly have been the 10th or the 11th of the month. A tablet erected to the artist’s memory in Ovingham Church gives the date as August 1 2th. The parish register only records the date of his baptism, which took place at Ovingham on the 19th August, 1753.

In due time the family increased until the children numbered eight — five girls and three boys; but, with one exception, we have here very little to do with them. The exception was the second son, John, born about March, 1760,! who, inspired by his brother’s example and precept, also became a celebrated engraver. William, the third son, lived until 1833, when he died at the ripe age of seventy-one; Jane, the youngest child, was fifty-six when she died in 1825 ; Hannah, the eldest girl, died in her brother Thomas’s house at the Forth in Newcastle in 1785, aged thirty-one. There

* See Sketch Map, p. 37.

f The parish register does not contain the exact day : the baptism took place on March 30th, 1760.

THOMAS BEWICK.

were also Agnes (born 1756?), Ann (born 1758?), and Sarah, born in 1766, who was cut off in early maidenhood in 1782.*

The house at Cherryburn where Bewick was born is to-day sadly different from what it was in the engraver’s youth ; yet the surrounding scenery still possesses much of the character and beauty described in the Memoir written by himself, and published in 1862.

“ At the south end of the premises was a spring-well, overhung by a large hawthorn bush, behind which was a holly -hedge, and further away was a little boggy dean with underwood and trees of different kinds. Near the termination of this dean, towards the river, were a good many remarkably tall ash-trees, and one of oak, supposed to be one of the tallest and straightest in the kingdom. On the tops of these was a rookery, the sable inhabitants of which, by their consultations and cawings, and the bustle they made when building their nests, were among the first of the feathered race to proclaim the approaching spring. The corn-fields and pastures to the eastward were surrounded by very large oak and ash trees To the westward,

adjoining the house, lay the common or fell, which extended some few miles in length, and was of various breadths. It was mostly fine green sward or pasturage, broken or divided, indeed, with clumps of ‘ blossom’d whins,’ foxglove, fern, and some junipers, and with heather in profusion, sufficient to scent the whole air. Near the burns which guttered its sides were to be seen the remains of old oaks, hollowed out by time, with alders, willows, and birch, which were often to be met with in the same state.”

The cottage where Bewick was born still stands amidst trees and greenery, and the Cherryburn still runs down the steep incline to the river, though the water is less than it was in Bewick’s time. The landscape, though not so heavily wooded, is doubtless much the same as the young artist saw it ; the river can be heard and seen in its course to the harbour of the Tyne ; and the rooks still congregate in the neighbourhood, though their former homes in the ash-trees have long since disappeared.

* In the “ Archseologia EE liana ” the Rev. Anthony Hedley gives the derivation of the name Bewick, which is applied to various places in the northern part of Northumberland. He says Bewick is “ one of the few Norman appellations in the county ; imposed, probably, by the monks of St. Albans, who, with the church at Eglingham, had very early possession of the township and other lands in the same parish. It is composed of beau, fine, pretty, and the Saxon wick, in allusion to the happily chosen site of the village of Old Bewick.”

B 2

THOMAS BEWICK.

This cannot but be noted by the visitor of the present day ; and the natural beauty of the spot renders the mind ready to receive a favourable impression of the house where the father of English wood engraving was brought into the world. But alas ! instead of a neatly kept cot, as might be expected, the “house” is found to be a stall, a covering for useful and picturesque, but at close quarters not too agreeable, animals — a veritable byre with all its unpleasant odours. There is nought but the bare walls which enclose the space occupied by the room of the celebrated Cherryburn ; there is now neither window, fireplace, nor chimney, nothing of any kind to show it once was inhabited by human beings ; merely four plain stone walls, with an opening only at the door, and over it there is written, “Thomas Bewick born here.”

Cherryburn.

1 he accompanying cut gives a view of the “house” in its most favourable aspect. The artist and author of “The Tyne,” Mr. W. H. Palmer (Messrs. Bell and Sons), has rendered it with all the beauty its surroundings lend, but

THOMAS BE men.

his artistic sense has hidden the cottage itself as much as possible from sight. Ardent hero-worshippers may wish to view the very room where the great engraver and moralist was born, but the environs will be the attraction for most people — the scenes from which Bewick drew many of his inspirations, the Northumbrian hillsides where, as Mr. Ruskin says, he “ grew into as stately a life as their strongest pine.”

Around, far and near, the country is one noble picture of beautiful river scenery diversified with rocks and foliage, vividly recalling the vignettes in the Birds and Quadrupeds. Here a corner of river border-land, with trees above and rocks below ; there a distant view of a cultivated hillside with farmhouse nestling among the trees. One time a tail-piece is recalled by a ferry-boat waiting for passengers ; at another by a glimpse of the ruins of Prudhoe or of the Norman tower of Ovingham Church. The entire country, to one acquainted with Bewick’s cuts, is filled with a series of delights and surprises. A journey there, even in the present day, unfolds the wonderful fidelity of every landscape Bewick drew, and fills the visitor with admiration and enthusiasm for the delineator of the grand simplicity and truth of nature.*

Bewick’s father, though not rich, was not by any means one of the poorer sort. In the pit which he rented he employed a number of miners, and his profits from the colliery must have been enough to make him a person of some consequence. f Charnley, in his slight memoir, mentions that he “ was considered a great wit in his part of the country; and being possessed of a vast fund of anecdote, was in the habit of entertaining customers with his

* The family who reside at Cherrybum at the present time are descendants of Thomas Bewick’s youngest brother, William. The house has been built since the engraver’s youth, and is a large structure much more suited to modem requirements than the little cottage of Bewick’s birth.

f A Land-sale Colliery is a colliery where the coals are sold only by land-sale, i.e. they are sold at the pit’s mouth and carted away, or else sent overland by rail in trucks. In speaking of a land-sale colliery it is meant the coals wrought from that colliery are not shipped. In most offices separate books are kept for “ Land-sale Coals ” and “ Shipment Coals.”

THOMAS BEWICK.

stories, so long as he had company at the colliery.” He was a man not unlike in personal appearance what his son afterwards became. “ He was a stout, square-made, strong and active man, and through life was a pattern of health,” relates Bewick in his Memoir. “ He never would prosecute any one for theft ; he hated going to law, but he took it in his own hand, and now and then gave thieves a severe beating.” But he “could not be troubled to harbour ill-will in his mind, and if he were passionate he was equally compassionate.”

He was always rather severe with his son, but the boy knew how to evade any punishment his father thought necessary to inflict. In one instance young Bewick had given some trouble, and he relates how he did not dare go to his usual sleeping-place until his father’s passion had subsided. He cautiously remained hidden for a time, knowing that if he kept out of sight his father’s displeasure would evaporate, and he would altogether escape chastisement.

From what is related it is evident that the miners had occasionally no easy time with their employer’s eldest son. All sorts of tricks were played by the scarcely controllable boy on the pitmen, who, ignorant and superstitious, were easily frightened at ghosts and unaccountable occurrences, of which young Bewick was often the origin. But though the boy sometimes played on their fears, he was also capable of appreciating their readiness to assist each other in moments of danger.

As will be seen in the appendix, in an extract from an unpublished manuscript, it is said that Bewick wrorked in the pit with his father’s men ; and though this is a statement unsupported by other evidence except Dovaston’s, it is not at all unlikely that he did sometimes go down the pit. It may safely be presumed that he was constantly about the mine, and familiar with the methods of labour, and it is certainly no disparagement to the greatness of the artist that he was able to free himself from the debasing associations of the miner’s life. Granting that he put his hand to the pick-

THOMAS BEWICK .

axe, the fact only further displays his strength of character in the early choice he made of the high pursuits of an artist-engraver.

As the boy’s years became greater he was sent to school : not so much that he should learn, but that he might be kept from mischief. Doubtless, as the family increased, the parents were glad to have their restless “ laddie ” sent even for half the day, when they could be free from anxiety concerning him. The teacher appreciated the circumstances, and did not press his young scholar at first with many lessons, and Bewick was some time at school before he mastered his alphabet, not to mention words even of the smallest size. The teacher, though thus discreet at first, did not very long allow his pupil so much freedom ; he was a pedagogue of the old school, and thoroughly believed in the use of the birch. Soon after, Bewick was

made to feel the “delicate persuasiveness” of the instrument, and, as he relates, the master frequently beat him unjustly for not learning what he was not advanced enough to comprehend. The master, in short, was a cross-grained and rather ignorant old man, without sufficient capacity to teach, and without enough cunning to rule, the boys. After a tremendous struggle one day between him and Bewick, in which the master’s shins suffered severely from the iron-hooped clogs of the scholar, the spirited boy ran away, and did not make his appearance at school again until another teacher had been appointed. He “played the truant every day,” he says, and in a little burn or rivulet not far off he entertained himself by making dams and swimming boats, probably very much in the manner shown in the frontispiece to Volume II. of the “ History of British Birds.” When a new schoolmaster was installed Bewick was sent to see how he would succeed with him, and as the new-comer proved to be a man as naturally suited for his post as the former one was unfitted, the boy soon made friends with him, and mastered his lessons as quickly and as happily as his parents could desire. Between the time of his breaking the shins of the old master and his return to school, young Bewick had been frequently subjected to

THOMAS BEWICK.

chastisement, both by his father and his mother, in order to compel him to go back to his lessons. The good couple had, no doubt, some anxiety over the refractoriness of their eldest boy. It was not a very terrible crime, however; boys have always been, and ever will be, truants when they are dissatisfied and can obtain an opportunity of escape. But Bewick’s mother had received a fair education herself, and it must have given her serious pain to perceive in her son what could only have appeared symptoms of a disposition to despise book-learning, and which might, to the nervous apprehension of a devoted mother, seem leading to something worse. Good lady, though she did not live to witness the greatest of her son’s achievements, she survived long enough to see all her best desires fulfilled. Her anxieties disappeared ere long, owing to the character her son established as a successful and respected citizen, and in the filial respect his growing intelligence began to pay to his parents.

When not at school young Bewick made himself useful in running errands. In a letter written after he had left Cherryburn over fifty years, he relates his well-remembered experiences of earlier days. “When a boy,” he says, “ I was frequently sent by my parents to the fishermen at Eltringham Ford to purchase a salmon, and was always desired not to pay twopence a pound ; and I commonly paid only a penny, and sometimes three-halfpence.”*

The second teacher Bewick was under at Mickley school only lived to occupy the position a few years, and the boy was then sent to another master. This was to Ovingham, which, like Mickley, is about a mile from Cherryburn, but in an opposite direction and across the Tyne. There the Rev. Mr. Gregson, Bewick’s mother’s former employer, still received boys as day

* From a letter dated April 26, 1824, to a friend on “ Salmon destruction in the Tyne.” Another extract from this letter is curious to read at the present time. “ I have been told,” Bewick writes, “ an article had always been inserted in every indenture of apprenticeship in Newcastle that the apprentices were not to be forced to eat salmon above twice a week, and the same bargain was made with common servants.”

THOMAS BEWICK.

scholars, and sometimes girls too, and the boy was now handed over to him. Bewick’s former character for unruliness was somewhat injudiciously imparted to the new master by the father. The hint given at the same time was acted on, and the pupil was rather severely treated. But Bewick bore no resentment for what he felt he partly deserved, and an intimacy began between teacher and pupil which afterwards ripened into friendship between man and man.

The Turkey. “ History of British Birds,” Vol. I.

Winter. From a vignette in the “ History of British Birds,” Vol. I.

Chapter II. First Gleams Of Art

T T has been well said that “ we need no testimony of the preternatural sort ” to make us believe Bewick must have been very early in the habit of noticing natural beauties as well as the village surroundings in which he was placed. We have no difficulty also in believing that he took much delight in endeavouring, to the best of his ability, to make representations of their forms. Though it is evident no forcing or training could have developed Bewick’s genius, and it was as natural for him to turn to artistic pursuits “as the sparks fly upward,” yet we love to learn the little details of how he first came to depict the familiar objects in his works. He was emphatically a student of nature; he loved its sincerity and simplicity. Before he had seen any works of artists he began to show a strong indication of his taste, and nature and the little details of cottage life provided him with everything he longed for. It was at first only occasionally that the indications of his affection for such things were seen, although they were as characteristic of the fully developed artist as of the embryo delineator of