Part 6 (1/2)
The supposed difficulty--the thing which, at all events, it takes time to learn, is to cut the interstices neat, and each like the other But is there any reason, do you suppose, for their being neat, and each like the other? So far froular, and each different fro pride in cutting these interstices sular; taking care, at the sa only one part of the general systeood an artist of the engraver that it is impossible to say of any standard old woodcut, whether the draughtsine, from the character and subtlety of the touch, that every line of the Dance of Death had been engraved by Holbein; we knoas not, and that there can be no certainty given by even the finest pieces of wood execution of anything ner and workman And consider how much this harraver is unintelligent in applying his ; but we never could mistake his hand for Holbein's
99 The true ards this , is first that there be nothan necessary; secondly, that all the interstices be various, and rough You h the entire series of the Dance of Death without finding any cross-hatching whatever, except in a few uniround, so rude as to need scarcely more than one touch to each interstice
Albert Durer crosses more definitely; but yet, in any fold of his drapery, every white spot differs in size frohtful, by the kind of variety which the spots on a leopard have
On the other hand, where either expression or forhts and darks, the old engraver becoround he is careless
The endeavor, with your own hand, and common pen and ink, to copy a sures 2 and 3) will prove this to you better than any words
100 I said that, had Tenniel been rightly trained, thereof a Holbein, or nearly a Holbein, in him I do not know; but I can turn from his work to that of a , Holbein's equal
Equal, in the sense that this brown stone, in h not the likeness, of that in ht They are both of the same true and pure crystal; but the one is broith iron, and never touched by forh companionshi+p, and has been exquisitely polished So with these two men
The one was the coood an artist that you cannot always tell their drawings asunder
But the other was a farmer's son; and learned his trade in the back shops of Newcastle
Yet the first book I asked you to get was his biography; and in this fra by Hans Holbein, and one by Thomas Bewick I knohich is most scholarly; but I do _not_ knohich is best
101 It is ratulate yourselves on his silish nobles had left the history of birds to be written, and their spots to be drawn, by a printer's lad;--but I did not tell you their farther loss in the fact that this printer's lad could have written their own histories, and drawn their own spots, if they had let him But they had no history to be written; and were too closely ether obscured Had there been Mores and Henrys to draick could have drawn them; and would have found his function As it was, the nobles of his day left his, and sparrows--of his day, which seemed to hiht or thought of beautiful things was ever granted him;--no heroic creature, Goddess-born--how much less any native Deity--ever shone upon hilishtruth;--the cloud of Oly, but not an Aphrodite
102 The three pieces of woodcut froed) in the opposite plate, show his utth and uthly understand both:--the nificent artistic power, the flawless virtue, veracity, tenderness,--the infinite huland and Florence, in the use they ifts in their children
For the moment, however, I confine myself to the examination of technical points; and we must follow our former conclusions a little further
[Illustration: I
Things Celestial and Terrestrial, as apparent to the English Mind]
103 Because our lines in woodto economize lines,--not merely, as in all other art, to save ti necessarily blunt, we must make up our minds to do with fewer, by many, than are in the object But is this necessarily a disadvantage?
_Absolutely_, an iood a thing as a painting, or line engraving But in its own separate and useful way, an excellent thing, because, practiced rightly, it exercises in the artist, and summons in you, the habit of abstraction; that is to say, of deciding what are the essential points in the things you see, and seizing these; a habit entirely necessary to strong humanity; and so natural to all humanity, that it leads, in its indolent and undisciplined states, to all the vulgar a of sketches better than pictures The sketch see foruard you fro; and that nobody canto finish with extreme care But the abstraction of the essential particulars in his subject by a line-, when it is coment what to look at; and, if you are a fool, you look at the wrong thing;--but in a fine woodcut, the ”
105 For example, here is a little tailpiece of Bewick's, to the fable of the Frogs and the Stork[V] He is, as I told you, as stout a reformer as Holbein,[W] or Botticelli, or Luther, or Savonarola; and, as an iht and left, at lower or upper classes, if he sees the Most frequently, he strikes at vice, without reference to class; but in this vignette he strikes definitely at the degradation of the viler popular overned, because it cannot understand the nobleness of kingshi+p He has written--better than written, engraved, sure to suffer no slip of type--his legend under the drawing; so that we know his , indeed!”
106 There is an audience of seven frogs, listening to a speaker, or croaker, in the middle; and Bewick has set himself to show in all, but especially in the speaker, essential frogginess of mind--the marsh te as he has done by the abstraction of wood-outline The characteristic of a entle in temper, and firy ular in teed Bewick's orator-frog for you, Plate I c, and I think you will feel that he is entirely expressed in those essential particulars
This being perfectly good wood-cutting, notice especially its deliberation No scrawling or scratching, or cross-hatching, or '_free_'
work of any sort Most deliberate laying down of solid lines and dots, of which you cannot change one The real difficulty of wood engraving is to cut every one of these black lines or spaces of the exactly right shape, and not at all to cross-hatch them cleanly
107 Next, exa, above I have purposely chosen this as an exa as a dark object on light ground, to explain to you what I ards local color, but not light and shade You see both frog and pig are absolutely without light and shade The frog, indeed, casts a shadow; but his hind leg is as white as his throat In the pig you don't even knohich way the light falls
But you know at once that the pig is white, and the frog brown or green
108 There are, however, two pieces of chiaroscuro _i It is assuround--dark against his own ru is absolutely necessary to solidify hi, flat on the background, but for that alternative tail, and the bits of dark behind the ears Secondly: Where the shade is necessary to suggest the position of his ribs, it is given with graphic and chosen points of dark, as few as possible; not for the sake of the shade at all, but of the skin and bone