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
Several versions of this incident are current, but Mr. Arthur Hughes's
account has not, I think, been published. It chanced that one day,
during the time he was working in Rossetti's studio, the engraver
called, and finding Rossetti was out, poured forth his trouble and
stated his own view of the matter with spirit. For his defence, as
he put it, much sympathy may be awarded to him. The curious drawings
executed in pencil, ink, and red chalk, crammed with highly-wrought
detail, that were to be translated into clean black and white, were, he
declared, beyond the power of any engraver to translate successfully.
How Mr. Hughes pacified him is a matter of no importance; but it is but
fair to recollect that, even had the elaborate designs been executed
with perfection of technique, any engraver must have needs encountered
a task of no ordinary difficulty. When, however, the white coating had
been rubbed away in parts, and all sorts of strokes in pen, pencil,
and pigment added, it is not surprising that the paraphrase failed to
please the designer. Although the drawings naturally perished in the
cutting, and cannot be brought forward as decisive evidence, we may
believe that the engraver spoilt them, and yet also believe that no
craftsman who ever lived would have been absolutely successful.
The number of Rossetti's book-illustrations is but ten in all,
according to the list given in Mr. William Sharp's admirable monograph.
To these one might perhaps add the frontispiece to that volume; as
although the pen-drawing, _A sonnet is a moment's monument_, was never
intended for reproduction, it forms a most decorative page. There is
also a design for a frontispiece to the _Early Italian Poets_, which
was first reproduced in the _English Illustrated Magazine_, No. 1. The
actual frontispiece was etched but never used, and the exquisitely
dainty version survives only in two impressions from the plate, both
owned by Mr. Fairfax Murray. Another frontispiece, to _The Risen
Life_,[10] a poem by R. C. Jackson, in a cover designed by D. G. R.
(R. Elkins and Co., 10 Castle St., East Oxford St., W., 1884), belongs
to the same category, in which may be placed _The Queen's Page_,
drawn in 1854, and reproduced in _Flower Pieces_ by Allingham (Reeves
& Turner, 1888). The ten which were all (I believe) drawn upon the
wood include: _Elfen-mere_, published first in William Allingham's
_The Music-master_, 1855, and afterwards reprinted in a later volume,
_Life and Phantasy_, and again in _Flower Pieces_ (1888), by the same
author. This design 'revealed to young Burne-Jones' (so his biographer,
Mr. Malcolm Bell, has recorded) that there existed a strange enchanting
world beyond the hum-drum of this daily life--a world of radiant,
many-coloured lights, of dim mysterious shadows, of harmonies of form
and line, wherein to enter is to walk among the blest--that far-off
world of Art into which many a time since he has made his way and