The Book: Its History and DevelopmentDavenport, Cyril
History
The Book: Its History and Development
Davenport, Cyril
Bookbinding; Books; Books -- History; Printing -- History
Luke Clennell also worked with and helped Bewick, and much of his early
work is like that of his master. But, like Harvey, Clennell soon
evolved a style of his own. He cut some of the beautiful little cuts,
after Stothard, in Rogers’ “Pleasures of Memory.” No doubt the Bewick
training had much influence for good over Clennell’s manner.
Charlton Nesbit followed Bewick closely for a time, and then, like his
fellow apprentices, he worked out his own style. His work is very good
and true, and he was particularly successful in his illustrations to
Northcote’s _Fables_ and _Rinaldo and Armida_.
John Thompson was quite one of our greatest wood engravers. He worked
well into the nineteenth century, and did an immense quantity of
work. He engraved a celebrated set of illustrations to the _Vicar of
Wakefield_, after Mulready, and was also very successful with those to
Tasso’s _La Gerusalemme Liberata_ in 1826. His work is quite different
from that of Bewick.
The nineteenth century in England was rich in numbers of excellent wood
engravers, and a list of their names alone would be a long one. A proof
of the high estimation in which the work of many of these artists was
held is to be found in the fact that their services as engravers were
freely sought by continental publishers of finely illustrated books.
J. B. Jackson, who introduced tone colour-printing, actually worked
with J. M. Papillon in France in the eighteenth century. Then there
were the Landells, Gray, Whimper, Wright, Folkard, and Green, and,
quite late in the century, J. W. Whymper, Horace Harral, James Cooper,
W. J. Linton, the Dalziels, and Swain. These two last have signed an
immense quantity of excellent work, but they were large firms, and
the greater part of their work was done by their workmen. Many of the
artists of this time did most excellent work as designers for wood
engravings, especially Sir John Millais, D. G. Rossetti, Fred. Walker,
Fred. Sandys, Lord Leighton, Birket Foster, Sir E. Burne-Jones, G. du
Maurier, and Cecil Lawson.
[Illustration: FIG. 69.--Knife for engraving on soft wood.]
J. M. Papillon, who worked during the earlier half of the eighteenth
century, belonged to a French family of wood engravers, and wrote a
treatise about wood-cutting with the knife, which is of great interest.
His work is small and excellent. Papillon makes mention of a foreigner
who worked with him and used the _end_ of the wood to work upon, and
that he used a graver. This foreigner is supposed to have been the
English artist J. B. Jackson, who was eminent here not only as an
engraver, but also as the pioneer in the matter of colour-printing from
wood blocks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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