Chapter I: Part 1

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Details about the “Inscriptions” in the “Prints by Jackson” section
of catalog are given at the beginning of that section.]

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM

BULLETIN 222
WASHINGTON, D.C.
1962

United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1962

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents,
U.S. Government Printing Office

Washington 25, D.C.

_John Baptist Jackson:_

18th-Century Master
of the Color Woodcut

_Jacob Kainen_

Curator of Graphic Arts
Museum of History and Technology

_Publications of the United States National Museum_

The scholarly publications of the United States National Museum include two series, _Proceedings of the United States National Museum_ and _United States National Museum Bulletin_.

In these series are published original articles and monographs dealing with the collections and work of the Museum and setting forth newly acquired facts in the fields of Anthropology, Biology, History, Geology, and Technology. Copies of each publication are distributed to libraries and scientific organizations and to specialists and others interested in the different subjects.

The _Proceedings_, begun in 1878, are intended for the publication in separate form, of shorter papers. These are gathered in volumes, octavo in size, with the publication date of each paper recorded in the table of contents of the volume.

In the _Bulletin_ series, the first of which was issued in 1875, appear longer, separate publications consisting of monographs (occasionally in several parts) and volumes in which are collected works on related subjects. _Bulletins_ are either octavo or quarto in size, depending on the needs of the presentation. Since 1902 papers relating to the botanical collections of the Museum have been published in the _Bulletin_ series under the heading _Contributions from the United States National Herbarium_.

This work forms number 222 of the _Bulletin_ series.

REMINGTON KELLOGG

_Director, United States National Museum_

CONTENTS

_Page_

_Preface_ IX
Jackson and his Tradition 3
_The Woodcut Tradition_ 4
_Status of the Woodcut_ 7
_The Chiaroscuro Tradition_ 9
Jackson and his Work 13
_England: Obscure Beginnings_ 14
_Paris: Perfection of a Craft_ 17
_Venice: The Heroic Effort_ 25
_England Again: The Wallpaper Venture_ 40
_Critical Opinion_ 51
_Postscript_ 54
Catalog 69
_Prints by Jackson_ 71
_Jackson’s Workshop_ 90
_Unverified Subjects_ 95
The Chiaroscuros and Color Woodcuts 97
_Bibliography_ 171
_Index to Plates_ 177
_Index_ 181

_PREFACE_

John Baptist Jackson has received little recognition as an artist. This is not surprising if we remember that originality in a woodcutter was not considered a virtue until quite recently. We can now see that he was more important than earlier critics had realized. He was the most adventurous and ambitious of earlier woodcutters and a trailblazer in turning his art resolutely in the direction of polychrome.

To 19th century writers on art, from whom we have inherited the bulk of standard catalogs, lexicons, and histories-- along with their judgments-- Jackson’s work seemed less a break with tradition than a corruption of it. His chiaroscuro woodcuts (prints from a succession of woodblocks composing a single subject in monochrome light and shade) were invariably compared with those of the 16th century Italians and were usually found wanting. The exasperated tone of many critics may have been the result of an uneasy feeling that he was being judged by the wrong standards. The purpose of this monograph, aside from providing the first full-length study of Jackson and his prints, is to examine these standards. The traditions of the woodcut and the color print will therefore receive more attention than might be expected, but I feel that such treatment is essential if we are to appreciate Jackson’s contribution, in which technical innovation is a major element.

Short accounts of Jackson have appeared in almost all standard dictionaries of painters and engravers and in numerous historical surveys, but these have been based upon meager evidence. A fraction of his work was usually known and details of his life were, and still are, sparse. Later writers interpreting the comments of their predecessors have repeated as fact much that was conjecture. The picture of Jackson that has come down to us, therefore, is unclear and fragmentary.

If he does not emerge from this study completely accounted for from birth to death, it has not been because of lack of effort. Biographical data for his early and late life-- about fifty years in all-- are almost entirely missing despite years of diligent search. As a man he remains a shadowy figure. I have traced Jackson’s life as far as the available evidence will permit, quoting from the writings of the artist and his contemporaries at some length to convey an essential flavor, but I have refrained from filling in gaps by straining at conjecture.

While details of his life are vague, sufficient information is at hand to reconstruct his personality clearly enough. After all, Jackson wrote a book and was quoted at length in another. A contemporary fellow-practitioner wrote about him with considerable feeling. These and other sources give a good indication of the artist’s character.

The man we have to deal with had something excessive about him; he was headstrong, tactless, impractical, enormously energetic, a prodigious worker, a conceiver of grandiose projects, and a relentless hunter of patrons. He was at home with his social superiors and had some pretentions to literary culture, he had a coarse gift for the vivid phrase in writing, and his tastes in art ran to the classic and heroic.

This study includes an illustrated catalog of Jackson’s chiaroscuros and color prints. Previous catalogs, notably those of Nagler, Le Blanc, and Heller, have listed no more than twenty-five works. The present catalog more than triples this number.

To acknowledge fully the assistance given by museum curators, librarians, archivists, and scholars on both sides of the Atlantic would necessitate a very long list of names. However, I wish especially to thank Mr. Peter A. Wick of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, who has been generous enough to allow me to read his well-documented paper on Jackson’s Ricci prints; Mr. A. Hyatt Mayor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Mr. Carl Zigrosser of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Miss Anna C. Hoyt and Mrs. Anne B. Freedberg of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Dr. Jakob Rosenberg and Miss Ruth S. Magurn of the Fogg Art Museum; Mr. Karl Kup of the New York Public Library; Miss Elizabeth Mongan of the Rosenwald Collection, National Gallery of Art; Miss Una E. Johnson of the Brooklyn Museum; Mr. Gustave von Groschwitz of the Cincinnati Art Museum; and Dr. Philip W. Bishop of the U.S. National Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

I am particularly grateful to curators of European collections, who have been uniformly generous in their assistance. Special thanks are due Mr. J. A. Gere of the British Museum and Mr. James Laver of the Victoria and Albert Museum, who have gone to considerable trouble to acquaint me with their great collections. Others whose help must be particularly noted are Mr. Peter Murray, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London; Mme. R. Maquoy-Hendrickx of the Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Brussels; Dr. Vladimír Novotný of the Národní Galerie, Prague; Dr. Wegner of the Graphische Sammlung, Munich; Dr. Wolf Stubbe of the Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Dr. G. Busch of the Kunsthalle, Bremen; Dr. Hans Möhle of the Staatliche Museen, Berlin; Dr. Menz of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden; Miss B. L. D. Ihle of the Boymans Museum, Rotterdam; and M. Jean Adhémar of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.

The excellent collections of chiaroscuro prints in the Museums of the Smithsonian Institution have formed a valuable basis for this monograph. These prints include the set of Jackson’s Venetian chiaroscuros, originally owned by Jackson’s patron, Joseph Smith, British Consul in Venice, now in the Rosenwald Collection, National Gallery of Art, and the representative sampling of Jackson’s work in the Division of Graphic Arts, U.S. National Museum.

I am indebted to the following museums which have kindly given permission to reproduce Jackson prints in their collections. These are listed by catalog number.

Smithsonian Institution 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 (also in color), 24,
25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 39, 50, 51, 52, 53 (also in color), 54, 55,
56, 57, 58, 63

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (W. G. Russell Allen Estate) 1 (also in
color), 11, 14, 23, 33, 34, 38, 40 (also in color)

Fogg Art Museum 13 (also in color)

Worcester Art Museum 32

Metropolitan Museum of Art 5 (Rogers Fund) (also in color), 17, 31
(gift of Winslow Ames), 73 (Whittelsey Fund)

Philadelphia Museum of Art (John Frederick Lewis Collection) 2, 60,
61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 74

British Museum 2 (in color), 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 37, 41, 42, 43
(also in color), 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49 (also in color), 59, 69, 70,
71, 72, 75, 76 (photographs by John R. Freeman & Co.)

Victoria and Albert Museum (Crown copyright) 3, 35, 36, 40

Finally, I want to thank the Editorial Office of the Smithsonian Institution for planning and designing this book; the Government Printing Office for their special care in its production; and Mr. Harold E. Hugo for his expert supervision of the color plates.

A grant from the American Philosophical Society (Johnson Fund), made it possible to conduct research on Jackson in Europe. Acknowledgment is herewith gratefully given.

JACOB KAINEN

_Smithsonian Institution_

_September 1, 1961_

_John Baptist Jackson_

18th-Century Master

of the Color Woodcut

Jackson and His Tradition

_The Woodcut Tradition_

Although the woodcut is the oldest traditional print medium it was the last to win respectability as an art form. It had to wait until the 1880’s and 1890’s, when Vallotton, Gauguin, Munch, and others made their first unheralded efforts, and when Japanese prints came into vogue, for the initial stirrings of a less biased attitude toward this medium, so long considered little more than a craft. With the woodcut almost beneath notice it is understandable that Jackson’s work should have failed to impress art historians unduly until recent times. Although he bore the brunt as an isolated prophet and special pleader between 1725 and 1754, his significance began to be appreciated only after the turn of the 20th century, first perhaps by Martin Hardie in 1906, and next and more clearly by Pierre Gusman in 1916 and Max J. Friedländer in 1917, when modern artists were committing heresies, among them the elevation of the woodcut to prominence as a first-hand art form. In this iconoclastic atmosphere Jackson’s almost forgotten chiaroscuros no longer appeared as failures of technique, for they had been so regarded by most earlier writers, but as deliberately novel efforts in an original style. The innovating character of his woodcuts in full color was also given respectful mention for the first time. But these were brief assessments in general surveys.

If the woodcut was cheaply held, it was at least acceptable for certain limited purposes. But printing pictures in color, in any medium, was considered a weakening of the fiber-- an excursion into prettification or floridity. It was not esteemed in higher art circles, except for a short burst at the end of the 18th century in France and England. This was an important development, admittedly, and the prints were coveted until quite recently. They are still highly desirable. But while Bartolozzi stipple engravings or Janinet aquatints in color might have commanded higher prices than Callots or Goyas, or even than many Dürers and Rembrandts, no one was fooled. The extreme desirability of the color prints was mostly a matter of interior decoration: nothing could give a finer 18th century aura. It was not so much color printing that mattered; it was _late 18th century_ color printing that was wanted, often by amateurs who collected nothing else. Color prints before and after this period did not appeal to discriminating collectors except as rarities, as exotic offshoots. Even chiaroscuros, with their few sober tones, fell into this periphery. Jackson, as a result, was naturally excluded from the main field of attention.

The worship of black-and-white as the highest expression of the graphic arts[1] automatically placed printmakers in color in one of two categories: producers of abortive experiments, or purveyors of popular pictures to a frivolous or sentimental public. This estimate was unfortunately true enough in most cases, true enough at least to cause the practice to be regarded with suspicion. As an indication of how things have changed in recent years we can say that color is no longer the exception. It threatens, in fact, to become the rule, and black-and-white now fights a retreating battle. A comparison of any large exhibition today with one of even 20 years ago will make this plain.

[Footnote 1: The purist’s attitude was pungently expressed by
Whistler. Pennell records this remark: “Black ink on white paper
was good enough for Rembrandt; it ought to be good enough for
you.” (Joseph Pennell, _The Graphic Arts_, Chicago, 1921, p.
178.)]

At first glance Jackson seems to be simply a belated 18th-century worker in the chiaroscuro process. If to later generations his prints had a rather odd look, this was to be expected. Native qualities, even a certain crudeness, were expected from the English who lacked advantages of training and tradition. And Jackson was not only the first English artist who worked in woodcut chiaroscuro, he was virtually the first woodblock artist in England to rise beyond anonymity[2] (Elisha Kirkall, as we shall see, cannot positively be identified as a wood engraver) and he was the only one of note until Thomas Bewick arose to prominence about 1780. He was, then, England’s first outstanding woodcutter. We will find other instances of his significance from the English standpoint, but his being English, of course, would have a small part in explaining the importance of his prints.

[Footnote 2: The only earlier name is that of George Edwards.
Oxford University has most of the blocks for a decorated alphabet
he engraved on end-grain wood for Dr. Fell in 1674. Further data
on Edwards can be found in Harry Carter’s _Wolvercote Mill_,
Oxford, 1957, pp. 14, 15, 20, and in Moxon’s _Mechanick Exercises,
or the Doctrine of Handy Works Applied to the Art of Printing_.
(Reprint of 1st ed., 1683, edited and annotated by Herbert Davis
and Harry Carter, Oxford, 1958, p. 26n.)]

Jackson made, in fact, the biggest break in the traditions of the woodcut since the 16th century. He broadened the scope of the chiaroscuro print and launched the color woodcut as a distinct art form that rivaled the polychrome effects of painting while retaining a character of its own. These were not modest little pieces of purely technical interest. The set of 24 sheets reproducing 17 paintings by Venetian masters made up the most heroic single project in chiaroscuro, and the 6 large landscapes, completed in 1744, after gouache paintings by Marco Ricci, were the most impressive color woodcuts in the Western world between the 16th century and the last decade of the 19th.

But Jackson’s grand ambition to advance the woodcut beyond all other graphic media had little public or private support and finally led him to ruin. His efforts were made with insufficient means and with few patrons. As a consequence, he rarely printed editions after the blocks were cut and proofed. The Venetian set is well known because it was printed in a substantial edition. A few additional subjects were also sponsored by patrons, but most of Jackson’s other chiaroscuros were never published-- they were limited to a few proofs. Editions were postponed, no doubt, in the hope that a patron would come along to pay expenses in return for a formal dedication in Latin, but this did not often happen. Most subjects exist in a few copies only; of some, single impressions alone remain. Others have entirely disappeared.

With a large part of Jackson’s work unknown, his reputation settled into an uneasy obscurity which, it must be granted, has not prevented his work from being collected. The chiaroscuros, especially the Venetian prints, can be found in many leading collections in Europe and the United States, but the full-color sheets after Ricci are excessively rare, particularly in complete sets.

Jackson has long been considered an interesting figure. _His Essay on the Invention of Engraving and Printing in Chiaro Oscuro_...,[3] with its bold claims to innovation and merit, his adventurous career as an English woodcutter in Europe, his adaptation of the color woodcut to wallpaper printing and his pioneering efforts in this field, and Papillon’s immoderate attack on him in the important _Traité historique et pratique de la gravure en bois_[4] will be discussed later. For the moment we can say that the Essay was the first book by an Englishman with color plates since the _Book of St. Albans_ of 1486, with its heraldic shields in three or four colors, and the first book with block-print plates in naturalistic colors.[5]

[Footnote 3: Jackson, London, 1754. Hereafter cited as Essay.
Other references bearing directly on Jackson will receive only
partial citation in the text. They are given in full in the
bibliography, page 171.]

[Footnote 4: Papillon, Paris, 1766. Hereafter cited as the
_Traité_.]

[Footnote 5: Occasional book illustrations in two or three
colors, confined chiefly to initial letters and ornamental
borders, appeared as early as the 15th century. Ratdolt in 1485
printed astronomical diagrams in red, orange, and black, and used
similar colors in a Crucifixion in the _Passau missal_ of 1494.
The _Liber selectarum cantionum_ of Senfel, 1520, however, has a
frontispiece printed in a broad range of colors from more than
four woodblocks. The design is attributed to Hans Weiditz.]

Although critics have been interested in Jackson as an historical figure, they have been uncertain about the merit of his work. Opinions vary surprisingly. Most judgments were based on the Venetian chiaroscuros and depended upon the quality of impressions, many of which are poor. Criticisms when they have been adverse have been surprisingly harsh. It is unusual, to say the least, for writers to take time explaining how bad an artist is. To do this implies, in any case, that he warrants serious attention; space in histories is not usually wasted on nonentities. We can see now that Jackson was misunderstood because the uses of the woodcut were rigidly circumscribed by tradition.

_Status of the Woodcut_

After the 15th century the woodcut lost its primitive power and became a self-effacing medium for creating facsimile impressions of drawings and for illustrating and decorating books, periodicals, and cheap popular broadsides. At its lowest ebb, in the late 17th century, and in the 18th, it was used to make patterns for workers in embroidery and needlework and to supply outlines for wallpaper designs to be filled in later by “paper-stainers.”

The prime deficiency of the woodcut as an art form lay in the division of labor which the process permitted. Draughtsmen usually drew on the blocks; the main function of the cutter was to follow the lines precisely and carefully. Small room existed for individual style or original interpretation; there was little in the technique to distinguish one cutter from another. In spite of these limitations, gifted cutters could rise beyond the dead level of ordinary practice. As fine draughtsmen with a feeling for their materials they did not trace with the knife, they drew and carved with it. Their feeling for line and shape was sensitive, crisp, and supple. But although they created the masterpieces of the medium they suffered from the traditional contempt for their craft. Creative ability in a woodcutter was rarely recognized, and the art fell into gradual decline. By the time the 18th century opened it had been almost entirely abandoned as a means of creating and interpreting works of art, and had been relegated to a minor place among the print processes.

The attitude of the print connoisseur was clearly stated as early as 1762 by Horace Walpole:[6]

I have said, and for two reasons, shall say little of wooden cuts;
that art never was executed in any perfection in England: engraving
on metal was a final improvement of the art, and supplied the
defects of cuttings in wood. The ancient wooden cuts were certainly
carried to a great heighth, but that was the merit of the masters,
not of the method.

[Footnote 6: Walpole, 1765 (1st ed. 1762), p. 3.]

William Gilpin in 1768 went even further. Describing the various contemporary print processes he omitted the woodcut entirely as not worthy of consideration. He acknowledged that “wooden cuts” were once executed by early artists but made no additional reference to the medium.[7]

[Footnote 7: William Gilpin, _An Essay on Prints_, London, 1781
(1st ed. 1768), p. 47. “There are three kinds of prints,
engravings, etchings, and mezzotintos.”]

As late as 1844 Maberly[8] cautioned print amateurs to steer clear of block prints:

Prints, from wooden blocks, are much less esteemed, or, at least,
are, generally speaking, of greatly less cost than engravings on
copper; and there are connoisseurs who may, perhaps, consider them
as rather derogatory to a fine collection.

[Footnote 8: Maberly, 1844, p. 130.]

Specialized histories of wood engraving, written mainly by 19th-century practitioners and bibliophiles, have tended to emphasize literal rendition rather than artistic vision. The writers favored wood engraving executed with the burin on the end grain of hard dense wood, such as box or maple, because it could produce finer details than the old woodcut, which made use of knife and horizontally grained wood. They judged by narrow craft standards concerned with exact imitation of surface textures. Linton, for example, is almost contemptuous in his references to the chiaroscuro woodcut:[9]

... The poorest workman may suffice for an excellent chiaroscuro.
I do not depreciate the artistic value as chiaroscuros of the
various prints here noted nor underestimate the difficulty of
production; but my business has been solely with the not difficult
knifecutting and graver cutting of the same.

[Footnote 9: Linton, 1889, p. 215. A woodcut in the German manner
was far more difficult to manage than Linton imagined. Bewick
tried to imitate the cross-hatched lines of a Dürer woodcut
without success. He finally concluded (1925, pp. 205-207) that the
old woodcutters had used two blocks, each with lines going in
opposing directions, and had printed one over the other!]

_The Chiaroscuro Tradition_

The chiaroscuro woodcut was originally designed to serve a special purpose, to reproduce drawings of the Renaissance period. These were often made with pen and ink on paper prepared with a tint or with brush and wash tones on white or tinted paper. Highlights were made and modeled with brush and white pigment; the result had something of a bas-relief character. Neither line engraving nor etching was suited to reproducing these spirited drawings, but the chiaroscuro woodcut could render their effects admirably. Its nature, therefore, was conceived as fresh and spontaneous, as printed drawing, in fact.

Chiaroscuros were usually of two types, the German and the Italian. The Germans specialized in reproducing line drawings made on toned paper with white highlights. The woodcuts, however, could stand by themselves as black-and-white prints; the tones required separate printing. The typical German chiaroscuro was therefore from two blocks. The earliest dated print in this style is Lucas Cranach’s _Venus_, with “1506” appearing on the black block. But the brown tint might have been added a few years later. Jost de Negker, working after drawings by Hans Burgkmair, cut blocks which are dated, on the black block at least, as early as 1508, and work by Hans Baldung and Hans Wechtlin appeared shortly after.

The Italian style originated with Ugo da Carpi, who in 1516 petitioned the Senate in Venice to grant him exclusive rights to the chiaroscuro process, which he claimed to have invented. For many years, until Bartsch adduced proof in favor of the Germans, da Carpi was conceded to be the founder of this process. His first work dates from 1518 but obviously he produced prints earlier-- how much earlier is uncertain. Working mainly after the loose, fresh wash drawings of Raphael and Parmigianino he developed a method of reducing their tonal constituents to two or three simple areas plus a partial outline, each of which was cut on a separate block. The blocks were then inked with transparent tones and printed one over the other to achieve gradations. White highlights were imitated, as in the German manner, by cutting out lines on a tone block to let the white paper assert itself. The result was a broadly treated facsimile of the original drawing. Some liberties were occasionally taken in interpretation, and sometimes fanciful changes were made in color combinations.

This technique was followed in Italy during the remainder of the 1500’s, the most prominent early workers being Antonio da Trento (Fantuzzi), Domenico Beccafumi, and Giuseppe Niccolò Vicentino. Late in the century Andrea Andreani acquired a large number of blocks by previous Italian chiaroscurists and reissued them, adding his own monogram. By multiplying these subjects he reduced their rarity and emphasized their distinct character, their difference from other types of prints. The Italian term “chiaroscuro,” meaning light and dark, has persisted as a generic name for this class of work.

The Italian and German techniques were often pursued in variant styles. The Germans sometimes used three blocks, with outlines not only in black but in a tone and white as well. Burgkmair’s _Death as a Strangler_ (B. 40)[10] and Wechtlin’s _Alcon Freeing his Son from the Serpent_ (B. 9) are of this type.

[Footnote 10: Adam Bartsch, _Le Peintre graveur_, Vienna,
1803-1821.]

The Italians, in turn, often used two blocks in the German fashion, reproducing a complete crosshatched pen drawing with one tint block. Even da Carpi used this procedure more than occasionally, as in _St. John Preaching in the Desert_ after Raphael (B. XII), and in _The Harvest_ after Giulio Romano (B. XII). Most other Italian chiaroscurists made frequent use of this method which had the virtue of simplicity. Outstanding exponents included Niccolò Boldrini, who worked chiefly after drawings by Titian, and in the early 17th century the brothers Bartolomeo and G. B. Coriolano. Andreani’s prints were usually in a more independent style which employed a clear outline in gray or soft brown with three tints blocks. While technical procedures were identical in Italian and German chiaroscuros after pen drawings, the Italian work tended to be looser than the German, which was more careful and methodical.

The Italian style, then, strictly interpreted, was simply the da Carpi style. Less rigorously considered, it included the free Italian variants of the German process.

Hendrick Goltzius of Haarlem, whose first chiaroscuros date from 1588, combined both Italian and German influences with marvelously crisp drawing and cutting and sharper color combinations than were common. Paulus Moreelse, a Dutch artist in the first half of the 17th century, employed a dark block in clear outline but modeled his forms internally in the da Carpi manner. The technical procedure was therefore close to Andreani’s.

A number of other well-known artists including Simon Vouet and Christoffel Jegher, and quite a few anonymous ones, also turned out occasional pieces in the first half of the 17th century, generally in the manner of da Carpi or Goltzius. Perhaps the most prolific was Ludolph Businck, who created prints in France especially after drawings by George Lallemand.

After this period little was done in the medium until 1721, when Count Antonio Maria Zanetti in Venice made his first chiaroscuro woodcut. He worked consistently for almost thirty years and sent proofs to his friends in Europe, mostly important connoisseurs, through whom the prints became widely known. For the most part they were in the da Carpi style, to which he added a light charm. Between 1722 and 1724 Elisha Kirkall in London published twelve chiaroscuros after Italian masters. The prints were done in a combination of media-- etching and mezzotint with relief blocks in either wood or metal-- and were outside the woodcut tradition, but they attracted attention to the old process. In about 1726 Nicolas and Vincent Le Sueur in Paris produced some chiaroscuros, and a year later Jackson made his first example. The Le Sueurs followed da Carpi’s method while Jackson used a loosely drawn outline and three tint blocks in a slight variation of the Andreani style.

One characteristic was shared in common by all early chiaroscurists; their work always reproduced drawings, usually in exact size. Jackson added a new dimension to the medium in 1735 by beginning to work after oil paintings.[11] His attempt to convey their scale, solidity, and tonal range, while retaining the woodcut’s breadth of execution, was perhaps carrying the chiaroscuro into complexities for which it was not suited. The method called for extraordinary talents in planning, drawing, cutting, and printing, and it resulted in impressions that could not escape a certain heaviness of effect when compared with traditional work. Jackson’s prints in this style are both daring and original, but no later woodcutter had either the desire or the temerity to follow his example. The method remained a dead end in chiaroscuro.

[Footnote 11: Andrea Andreani in 1599 published ten plates after
cartoons of Mantegna’s nine paintings, _The Triumph of Julius
Caesar_ (B. 11), printed from four blocks in variations of gray.
But Mantegna’s cartoons were basically drawings in monochrome, and
Andreani’s fine chiaroscuros did not differ appreciably from the
usual examples.]

Jackson and His Work

_England: Obscure Beginnings_

Little is known of Jackson’s early years. It is assumed that he was born in England about 1700, although many accounts, probably based upon Nagler, have him born in 1701. Papillon[12] conjectures that he studied painting and engraving on wood with “an English painter” named “Ekwits,” but is not sure he remembers the name correctly. He believes this artist engraved most of the head pieces and ornaments in Mattaire’s _Latin Classics_, published by J. and R. Tonson and J. Watts in London, 1713, and remarks on similarities with Jackson’s style. Chatto[13] believes these cuts were executed by Elisha Kirkall, interpreting the initials _EK_ appearing on one of the prints to refer to this engraver rather than to “Ekwits.” He goes on to assume that Kirkall also engraved the blocks for Croxall’s edition of _Aesop’s Fables_, 1722, by the same publisher, and adds that Jackson was probably his apprentice and might have had some share in their execution. Most accounts of Jackson, taking Chatto’s word, note him as a pupil of Kirkall.

[Footnote 12: Papillon, 1766, vol. 1, p. 323. Most probably
Papillon confused “Ekwits” with Elisha Kirkall.]

[Footnote 13: Chatto and Jackson, 1861 (1st ed. 1839), p. 448.]

Linton[14] believes that only Kirkall or Jackson could have made the cuts, “unless some _Sculptor ignotus_ is to be credited with that most notable book of graver-work in relief preceding the work of Bewick.”

[Footnote 14: Linton, 1889, p. 130.]

But it is doubtful that Jackson was a pupil of Kirkall. For this assumption we have the evidence of a curious and important little book, _An Enquiry into the Origins of Printing in Europe_,[15] which because of a misleading title and an anonymous author has been overlooked as a reference source. It is a transcription of Jackson’s manuscript journal and was prepared for publication to coincide with the launching of the wallpaper venture, Kirkall is mentioned as follows (pp. 25-26):

... I shall give a brief account of the State of Cutting on Wood in
England for the type Press before he [Jackson] went to France in
1725. In the beginning of this Century a remarkable Blow was given
to all Cutters on Wood, by an invention of engraving on the same
sort of Metal which types are cast with. The celebrated Mr.
_Kirkhal_, an able Engraver on Copper, is said to be the first who
performed a Relievo Work to answer the use of Cutting on Wood. This
could be dispatched much sooner, and consequently answered the
purpose of Book-sellers and Printers, who purchased these sort of
Works at a much chaper [sic] Rate than could be expected from an
Engraver on Wood....

[Footnote 15: London, 1752. Hereafter cited as the _Enquiry_. The
first half deals with Jackson’s opinions on the origins of
printing from movable type and the progress of cutting on wood,
the second half with Jackson’s career and his venture into
wallpaper manufacturing. The real content of the book was so
little known that Bigmore and Wyman’s comprehensive, annotated
_Bibliography of Printing, London, 1880-86_, vol. 1, p. 201,
described it as dealing with “certain improvements in
printing-types made by Jackson, the typefounder.”]

It does not seem reasonable that Jackson would learn the art of woodcutting from Kirkall and then refer to him as a famous engraver on copper and type metal. It is just as difficult to believe that Kirkall taught Jackson to work on metal, not wood.

The “EK” who engraved the blocks for Mattaire’s _Latin Classics_ might very well have been Kirkall, whose style also might have had something in common with Jackson’s early work. But this would not necessarily indicate a definite influence. English pictorial relief prints for book illustration in the first decades of the 18th century had one characteristic in common; they were almost all done with the engraver’s burin on type metal or end-grain boxwood. They therefore showed elements of a “white-line” style as opposed to the black-line or knife-cut method commonly used in other countries. While it is likely that Jackson was an exception to the general rule in England (we have his word for it in the _Enquiry_, as we shall see), he was also deeply influenced by the prevailing English style of burin work on wood or type metal. If Papillon saw a similarity between Jackson’s cuts and those in the _Latin Classics_, it might have been because he was unfamiliar with other examples of English work and did not recognize a national style.

The initials “J. B. I.” appear on a small cut in the 1717 edition of Dryden’s plays, also published by Tonson. If this is an early piece by Jackson it would indicate that he might have been born earlier than 1701, although it is conceivable that he could have made it when he was sixteen.

This is the extent of the evidence, or rather lack of evidence, of Jackson’s early years in England. Nothing is certain except that woodblock work was at a particularly low ebb. Standards in typography and printing were rude (Caslon was just beginning his career), far inferior to those on the Continent. Cuts were used rather sparingly by printers, and almost always for initial letters (these included little pictures), for tailpieces, and for decorative borders. As a measure of economy the same cut was often repeated throughout a book. Also, initial letters were sometimes contrived to permit the type for different capitals to be inserted in the center area, so that in some instances no more than two cuts were needed to begin alternate chapters in a volume. Rarely were woodblocks employed to illustrate the text. Pictures were almost always supplied by the copper-plate engraver, even when the prints were small and surrounded with typographical matter. This was an expensive and troublesome procedure, but it was the only one possible where an able group of cutters or engravers on wood did not exist and where printers found it difficult to achieve good impressions on the uneven laid paper of the time.

The main employment for knife cutters on wood was in making the popular prints, or illustrated broadsides, which had been sold in city and village throughout the country since the early 1600’s. Plank and knife could be used for these prints because of the generally large size of the pictures and the lack of sophistication of the audience. They are described by Bewick from his memories as a boy in the 1760’s:[16]

I cannot, however, help lamenting that, in all the vicissitudes
which the art of wood engraving has undergone, some species of it
are lost and done away: I mean the large blocks with the prints from
them, so common to be seen, when I was a boy, in every cottage and
farm house throughout the country. These blocks, I suppose, from
their size, must have been cut on the plank way on beech, or some
other kind of close-grained wood; and from the immense number of
impressions from them, so cheaply and extensively spread over the
whole country, must have given employment to a great number of
artists, in this inferior department of woodcutting.... These
prints, which were sold at a very low price, were commonly
illustrative of some memorable exploits, or were, perhaps, the
portraits of eminent men.... Besides these, there were a great
variety of other designs, often with songs added to them of a moral,
a patriotic, or a rural tendency, which served to enliven the circle
in which they were admired. To enumerate the great variety of these
_pictures_ would be a task.

[Footnote 16: Bewick, 1925 (1st ed. London, 1862), pp. 211-212.]

Bewick adds that some of these popular woodcuts, although not the great majority, were very good. Since this was the main field for woodcutters, it is an interesting conjecture that Jackson might have been trained for this craft. As he matured, we can assume that he felt the urge to excel as a woodcutter and left the country to develop his potentialities.

It must be remembered that in painting and engraving England was far behind the continental countries, which could boast of centuries of celebrated masters. The medieval period persisted in England until the time of Henry VIII. Traditional religious subjects, so indispensable to European art, were thereafter generally proscribed. There was no fondness as yet for themes of classical mythology, and the new and developing national tradition in painting had to form itself on the only remaining field of pictorial expression, portraiture. Standards of style were set by foreign artists who were lured to England to record its prominent personages in a fitting manner. Beside such masters as Holbein, Zuccaro, Moro, Geeraerts, Van Dyck, Mytens, Lely, Kneller, Zoffany, and Van Loo, among others, native painters seemed crude and provincial. The list of foreign artists other than portraitists who visited England before 1750 for varying periods is also impressive.

If good native painters were rare in the first decades of the 18th century, good engravers or woodcutters were even rarer. Hogarth, whose earliest prints were produced in the 1720’s, received his training from a silversmith.

Jackson’s next move was toward the Continent.

_Paris: Perfection of a Craft_

Jackson arrived in Paris in 1725, his age 24 if we accept 1701 as his birth date. Here flourished a brilliant community of artists, craftsmen, dealers, and connoisseurs; woodcutting, etching, and line engraving were highly developed and the printing offices made extensive use of woodcuts for decoration and illustration. The woodcut tradition mimicked line engraving and was confined chiefly to tiny blocks wrought with the utmost delicacy. The main influence came from the 17th century-- in particular from the etchings and line engravings of Sébastien Le Clerc and from the etchings of Jacques Callot, whose simple system of swelling parallel lines, with occasional cross-hatchings, was adopted by both line engravers and woodcutters.

Le Clerc, whose style was influenced by Callot, had produced a vast number of illustrations involving subjects of almost every type; his designs, therefore, were ready-made for publishers who wanted good but low-priced illustrations. Woodcutters copied his engravings shamelessly, line for line. The overblown high Baroque style in ornament, swag, and cartouche was also drawn upon as a source for decorative cuts. In an attempt to imitate the full tonal scale of engraving, the woodcutters used heavier lines in the foreground to detach the main figures from the background, which was made up of more delicate lines. Background lines were often narrowed further by scraping down their edges, an operation that caused them to merge imperceptibly into the white paper. In this way, although the natural vigor of the woodcut suffered, an effect of space and distance was achieved. Because of the small scale this technique was difficult, especially when cross-hatching was added, and special knives as well as a phenomenal deftness were needed to work out these bits of jewelry on the plank grain of pear, cherry, box, and serviceberry wood.

Jackson’s initial impression of the state of woodcutting in France is described in the _Enquiry_ (p. 27):

From this Account it is evident that there was little Encouragement
to be hoped for in England to a Person whose Genius led him to
prosecute his Studies in the ancient Manner; which obliged Mr.
_Jackson_ to go over to the Continent, and see what was used in the
_Parisian_ Printing-houses. At his arrival there he found the
_French_ Engravers on Wood working in the old Manner; no Metal
Engravers, or any of the same Performance on the end of the Wood,
was ever used or countenanced by the Printers or Booksellers in that
City. He tells us that he thought himself a tolerable good Hand when
he came to _Paris_, but far inferior to the Performances of
Monsieurs _Vincent le Seur_ and _Jean M. Pappillon_....

Jackson admits benefiting from the friendship and advice of these woodcutters, then goes on to describe their work with a ruthless frankness. Le Sueur, he says, was a brilliant copyist of the line engravings of Sébastien Le Clerc but, because he was a line-for-line copyist, lacked skill in drawing. Papillon’s father, also a woodcutter who copied Le Clerc, avoided cross-hatching, which Jackson considered an essential ingredient of the true style of black-and-white woodcutting; Papillon himself, while described as a draughtsman of the utmost accuracy, was criticized for making his work so minute that it was impossible to print clearly. Jackson says in the _Enquiry_ (pp. 29-30):

If his Father neglected Cross Hatching, the Son affected to outstrip
the _le Seurs_ in this difficult Performance, and even the ancient
_Venetians_, believing to have fixed a _Non plus ultra_ in our Times
to any future Attempts with Engraving on Wood.

... I saw the Almanack[17] in a horrid Condition before I left
_Paris_, the Signs of the Zodiack wore like a Blotch,
notwithstanding the utmost Care and Diligence the Printer used to
take up very little Ink to keep them clean. I have chosen to make
mention of these two _Frenchmen_ as the only Persons in my time
keeping up to the Stile of the ancient Engraving on Wood; and as
they favoured me with their Friendship and Advice during my abode in
_Paris_, I thought in Justice to their good Nature it was proper to
give some Account of their Merit!

[Footnote 17: The _Petit almanach de Paris_, founded by J. M.
Papillon in 1727 and illustrated with his woodcuts.]

Acknowledgment of friendship and merit in this vein, while entirely true (Papillon was minute to the point of exhibitionism, and his cuts were often not adapted to clear printing), demonstrates the lack of tact that made powerful enemies for Jackson wherever he traveled. Papillon no doubt read the _Enquiry_, in which he was discussed at length, and the well-known _Essay_, with its aggressive tone and irresponsible claims. When Papillon’s _Traité_ came out in 1766 he took the opportunity to put the English artist in his place. Certainly his account was colored by Jackson’s writings; there is no other explanation for this display of personal bitterness in a work published 36 years after the Englishman left Paris (pp. 327-328):

J. Jackson, an Englishman who lived in Paris for a few years, might
have perfected himself in wood engraving, which he had learned, as I
said previously on page 323, from an English painter, if he had been
willing to follow my advice. As soon as he arrived in Paris he came
to me asking for work; I gave him some things to execute for a few
months in order to allow him to live, for which he repaid me with
ingratitude by making a duplicate of a floral ornament of my design
which he offered, before delivering the block to me, to the person
for whom it was to be made. From the reproaches I received when the
matter was discovered, I refused, naturally, to employ him further.
Then he went the rounds of the printing houses in Paris, and was
forced to offer his work ready-made and without order, almost for
nothing, and many printers, profiting by his distress, supplied
themselves amply with his cuts. He had acquired a certain insipid
and limited taste, little above the mosaics on snuffboxes, similar
to other mediocre engravers, with which he surcharged his works. His
mosaics, however delicately engraved, are always lacking in effect,
and show the engraver’s patience and not his talent; for the
remainder of the cut has only delicate lines without tints or
gradations of light and shade, and lack the contrast necessary to
make a striking effect. Engravings of this sort, however deficient
in this regard, are admired by printers of vulgar taste who
foolishly believe that they closely resemble copper plate engraving,
and that they give better impressions than those of a picturesque
type having a greater variety of tints.

Jackson, having been forced by poverty to leave Paris, where he
could find nothing further to do, traveled in France; then,
disgusted with his art, he followed a painter to Rome, after which
he went to Venice, where, I am told, he married, and then returned
to England, his native country.

Whether or not Jackson was unethical he was certainly an active competitor and many printers “supplied themselves amply with his cuts.” He must have produced an enormous amount of work during his five years in Paris because John Smith, in his _Printers Grammar_,[18] says that Jackson’s cuts were used so widely and for so many years in Paris that they replaced the fashion of using “flowers,” or typographical ornaments, and that this style did not come into vogue again until the cuts were completely worn down through use.

[Footnote 18: Smith, 1755, p. 136.]

This statement is not entirely true, but it is probable that Jackson’s woodcuts, more broadly executed than the typical French products, outlasted all others of the 1725-30 period. They were consistently re-used, and appeared, as far as they can be traced, well into the 1780’s.[19]

[Footnote 19: See cuts in _Dissertatiumeula quodlibetariis
disputationibus_ of C. L. Berthollet, Paris, 1780, and _Voyage
littéraire de la Grèce_, of de Guys, 1783.]

Elsewhere in the _Traité_, however, Papillon has a good word for Jackson’s abilities:[20]

Jackson, of whom I have already spoken, also engraved in
chiaroscuro; I have a little landscape by him which is very nicely
done.

[Footnote 20: P. 415. This may be the print formerly in Dresden
but lost during the war.]

It was inevitable that Papillon and Jackson should clash. The Frenchman’s notion of woodcutting was influenced, as we have seen, by copper plate engraving; he wanted, by incredible minuteness of cutting, to achieve approximately the same results. This was in keeping with the delicate French _rocaille_ tradition on which Papillon was nurtured; to him any other contemporary style of book decoration was evidence of bad taste. Jackson, on his part, felt that this approach violated the essentially broad, vigorous nature of the woodcut and, in addition, made excessive demands on the printer. Since this impoverished beginner, and an Englishman at that, refused to take his earnest advice or to fall into the prevailing style, Papillon was enraged. After all, Jackson was working as an employee. But Papillon was not entirely blind. In a number of places in the _Traité_ he made reference to other woodcutters who were working in Jackson’s style, and he recorded some of the works the Englishman illustrated during his five years in Paris.

Jackson’s blossoming out as a maker of wallpaper after his return to England and his brash claims in this connection in the _Essay_, must also have irked Papillon, who knew the field as an expert; his father in 1688 had set up the first large printing house in France for wall hangings, and after his death in 1723 Papillon had inherited it. In 1740, he sold the business to the widow Langlois, but he had run the shop during Jackson’s residence in Paris and his former employee no doubt had learned a great deal by observing its operation. Yet here more than twenty years later was the upstart Englishman again, venturing into wallpaper manufacturing with an air of moral superiority, attacking all other products as unworthy. Jackson’s ridiculing of the Chinese style must have been particularly galling since Papillon and his father had specialized in producing such papers. These were much better than comparable English work, but Jackson, confining himself to English products, had attacked the whole style without making distinctions.

According to the _Enquiry_ (pages 32-55 of this book will be drawn upon for the ensuing details of Jackson’s career), M. Annison, Director of the Imprimerie Royale, for whom Jackson produced many cuts, introduced him to Count de Caylus, collector, connoisseur, etcher, and the leading spirit in French engraving at the time. De Caylus had, in 1725, undertaken to direct the reproduction of drawings and paintings in the best French collections.[21] Pierre Crozat, the famous collector, sponsored the publication of this ambitious work.

[Footnote 21: _Recueil d’estampes d’après les plus beaux tableaux
et d’après les plus beaux dessins qui sont en France dans le
cabinet du Roy, dans celui de M. le Duc d’Orléans et dans d’autres
cabinets, divisé suivant les différentes écoles._ Paris, 1729-42,
2 vols., 182 plates. Often called the _Cabinet Crozat_, it was
reprinted by Basan in 1763 with aquatint tones by François
Charpentier replacing the woodblock tints.]

The drawings were reproduced in chiaroscuro while the paintings were rendered in black-and-white by a corps of engravers. The chiaroscuros were made by combining an etched outline, usually by de Caylus or P. P. A. Robert, with superimposed tones, mainly in green or buff, from one or two woodblocks cut in most cases by Nicolas Le Sueur, or under his direction. This was not a new printing method. Hubert (not Hendrick) Goltzius had first employed it in a set of Roman emperors after antique medallions in 1557.[22] To reproduce drawings by Raphael, Parmigianino, and himself, Abraham Bloemart, as well as Frederick and Cornelius Bloemart in the early 1600’s, had used this combination extensively, and as described earlier, p. 11, Kirkall had used it between 1722 and 1724.[23] The combination method produced rather feeble prints that lacked the vigor of straight woodblock chiaroscuro. The etched outline was thin and ineffective, and the tints were pallid so as not to overpower the drawing. Only Abraham Bloemart’s prints in this style were convincing, although Kirkall’s chiaroscuros, in their soft, over-modeled way, had individuality. But the _Cabinet Crozat_ lacked distinction entirely. The chiaroscuros had a mechanical look, a fact not surprising when we remember that they were produced by a team of engravers-- assembled, as it were, from several hands working in different media. The best prints were a few chiaroscuros made entirely from woodblocks by Nicolas Le Sueur, although these were also rather tepid, no doubt to harmonize with the rest of the work.

[Footnote 22: _Imperatorum imagines_, Antwerp, 1557. The
woodblocks were cut by Josse Geitleugen.]

[Footnote 23: In the _Enquiry_ (p. 31) Jackson asserts that
Kirkall’s tints were made from copper plates, not woodblocks.]

Jackson tells us that he worked on some tint blocks, first from a drawing by Giulio Romano and later from a drawing by Raphael, _Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter_, the original _modello_ for one of the famous tapestry cartoons. Count de Caylus, he says, liked the work and wanted to employ him further on the project, but Crozat rejected him flatly. De Caylus, according to Jackson, was embarrassed and distressed and offered recompense for the lost time and labor, but Jackson, not to be outdone in generosity by a nobleman, refused, explaining that the honor of knowing the Count and receiving his approbation more than made up for his lost effort.

Vincent Le Sueur objected to the combination method and withdrew early from the project. Possibly Jackson, who also disliked this method and was not known for his discretion, was considered by Crozat to be a disruptive element. Possibly his style of cutting was not retiring enough for Crozat’s tasteful French notion of chiaroscuro. This project, in any case, aroused the Englishman’s interest in the process. _Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter_, after Raphael, made about 1727, was probably Jackson’s first chiaroscuro woodcut. No doubt he produced it on his own and offered it as a plate for the publication, perhaps at the time he was commissioned to cut the tint blocks to be used in combination with de Caylus’ etching of this subject.

With both Papillon and the powerful Crozat against him, Jackson was finished in Paris. De Caylus urged him to go to Italy. Accordingly, in April 1730, he left Paris in the company of John Lewis, an English painter, and set out for Rome, where he expected to continue his studies in drawing and deepen his knowledge of art.