English Illustration 'The Sixties': 1855-70: With Numerous Illustrations by Ford Madox Brown: A. Boyd Houghton: Arthur Hughes: Charles Keene: M. J. Lawless: Lord Leighton, P.R.A.: Sir J. E. Millais, P.R.A.: G. Du Maurier: J. W. North, R.A.: G. J. Pinwell: Dante Gabriel Rossetti: W. Small: Frederick Sandys: J. Mcneill Whistler: Frederick Walker, A.R.A.: and Others — Dante Alighieri — John Shaqi
English Illustration 'The Sixties': 1855-70: With Numerous Illustrations by Ford Madox Brown: A. Boyd Houghton: Arthur Hughes: Charles Keene: M. J. Lawless: Lord Leighton, P.R.A.: Sir J. E. Millais, P.R.A.: G. Du Maurier: J. W. North, R.A.: G. J. Pinwell: Dante Gabriel Rossetti: W. Small: Frederick Sandys: J. Mcneill Whistler: Frederick Walker, A.R.A.: and Others
Dante Alighieri · en
Without going back too far for our purpose, one of the first books that
contains illustrations by artists whose work extended into the sixties
(and, in the case of Tenniel, far beyond) is _Poems and Pictures_,
'A Collection of Ballads, Songs, and Poems illustrated by English
Artists' (Burns, 1846). So often was it reprinted that it came as a
surprise to discover the first edition was fourteen years earlier than
the date which is upon my own copy. Despite the ornamental borders to
each page, and many other details which stamp it as old-fashioned,
it does not require a rabid apologist of the past to discuss it
appreciatively. From the first design by C. W. Cope, to the last, _A
Storm at Sea_, by E. Duncan, both engraved by W. J. Linton, there is no
falling off in the quality of the work. The influence of Mulready is
discernible, and it seems probable that certain pencil drawings for the
_Vicar of Wakefield_, engraved in facsimile--so far as was within the
power of the craftsmen at that time--did much to shape the manner of
book-illustrations in the fifties.
Nor does it betray want of sympathy with the artists who were thus
influenced to regret that they chose to imitate drawings not intended
for illustration, and ignored in very many cases the special technique
which employs the most direct expression of the material. In _The
Mourner_, by J. C. Horsley (p. 22), you feel that the engraver
(Thompson) has done his best to imitate the softly defined line of a
pencil in place of the clearly accentuated line which is most natural
in wood. Yet even in this there is scarcely a trace of that elaborate
cross-hatching so easily produced in plate-engraving or pen drawing, so
tedious to imitate in wood. Another design, _Time_, by C. W. Cope (p.
88), shows that the same engraver could produce work of quite another
class when it was required. Curiously enough, these two, picked at
random, reappear in almost the last illustrated anthology mentioned in
these chapters, Cassell's _Sacred Poems_ (1867).