Chapter XII: Part II (5)

The Florentine picture has undoubtedly a conspicuous iconographic importance as the most authentic portrait of the woman who shared the throne of Charles V. At the same time, its value from the standpoint of the history of art is immeasurably greater, inasmuch as it affords us a most interesting insight into Titian’s methods. This picture should be compared with the painting in Madrid, their points of variance carefully considered with the question why the master omitted this or added that. It is as though in this picture we were watching him at work with our very eyes. Especially noteworthy is the fact that the imperial crown is not repeated. An artist whose work lacks character needs a symbol as an outward and visible sign-post. One, on the contrary, who knows how to express dignity in the bearing of his sitter, can dispense with these commonplaces. Titian was, of course, compelled to adopt the outline of the features, the colouring of the complexion and of the hair. He even adopted the pose in its main outlines. On the other hand he changed the colour of the dress and the pose of the hands; the pose of the Florentine picture is conventional and meaningless. By adding the book of hours he gains a signal detail of characterization, for the empress was very devout. If in the Flemish picture there is a certain note of contrast brought out by the sombre dress and the costly jewels, in Titian’s picture these ornaments blend with the costly draperies, glowing in the richest colours which robe the empress here. More important still is the fact that the antithesis is toned down thereby, and something of life comes into the pale face by reason of the warm red robe, while in the other it has a cold and lifeless tone, intensified by the dead black garment. And here the little glimpse of landscape which Titian introduces in the right-hand half of the picture gains a special significance of its own. It deflects the eye a little, well-nigh without arousing one’s consciousness that it is so doing; it adds a nuance of restfulness and colour that has as subtle and pleasing an effect as that of a Gobelin, although the landscape is convincingly realistic, instinct with that realism that comprises in its quintessence all the elements of colour and of form, and yet is the abstraction of the characteristics of a definite locality. This, comparatively speaking, small patch (considered as a patch of colour within the picture as a whole) prevents the figure from standing out in too hard relief from the dim-lit background and adds that very essential element of atmosphere to give life to the picture. ¶ It is worth noting that not until a, comparatively speaking, later period did Titian make use of a landscape background. All his earlier portraits show a neutral tone for the background. One finds it for the first time, in so far as the number of Titian’s paintings known to us at present justifies an expression of opinion, in the portrait of the duchess of Urbino of 1537. Thenceforward Titian made very frequent use of this subtle and life-giving device of his art. The portrait of Count Porcia in the Brera gallery in Milan, the little Strozzi in Berlin, the picture of Charles V in Munich are examples of it. Here the element which henceforward is inseparable from courtly portraiture is created. Rubens and Vandyke, above all, follow in the footsteps of the Venetian, whose influence might be traced down to modern times. ¶ Put the Flemish portrait by the side of Titian’s; it is, we see, the self-same picture in its main outlines, and yet with what fundamental distinctions. On the one hand the work of a ‘trifling brush’ (the emperor’s own words, according to Aretino) and on the other the conscious feat of a prince of painters. ¶ Nothing within the scope of artistic consideration can afford so much incitement and pleasure as to force one’s way into the work of the really great. For what they did is not merely a delight to the beholder; it remains an enduring exemplar for the worker. From this sole instance it becomes manifest how a thing insignificant in itself may suffice to force the fruits of genius. Thus an Italian novel gives birth to one of Shakespeare’s dramas, thus the puppet play of Doctor Faust to Goethe’s sublimest work.

A NEWLY DISCOVERED PORTRAIT DRAWING BY DÜRER

❧ WRITTEN BY CAMPBELL DODGSON ❧

The British museum, thanks to a timely hint from a friend, has recently acquired a portrait drawing of considerable interest and unknown to students of the present generation. It represents a middle-aged woman, plain-featured and of a short, thick-set figure, seated, with clasped hands, drawn in three-quarter face and looking to the left. The sitter is plainly dressed, without a trace of ornament on the materials of her clothing; she wears a ring on the first finger of her left hand, and the artist has sketched very slightly a double or triple chain with pendants hanging from her neck and reaching across her bodice nearly to the waist. ¶ The portrait, which measures 16½ by 12⅜ ins. (42 by 31·5 centimetres), is lightly drawn in black chalk on a green prepared ground. The watermark of the paper is the large high crown surmounted by a cross (Hausmann, No. 4). A border line, which can be traced round three sides of the drawing, near the edge, is clearly a modern addition, being drawn with lead pencil. The portrait itself has entirely escaped retouching, and the whole sheet is in good preservation, except in a few places where the surface has been rubbed or stained; a severe crease across the lower right-hand corner of the paper has caused the prepared surface to crack. ¶ In the left-hand lower corner is the collector’s mark of Sir Thomas Lawrence, Fagan, 507 (1), stamped blind, and in the corresponding corner to the right is the initial C, also stamped blind, which belonged, according to Fagan (No. 72), to Captain William Coningham. The Lawrence stamp, in this form, was affixed to the drawings by Samuel Woodburn after he had purchased them in 1835. Coningham, too, had dealings with Woodburn; it may be conjectured that he purchased the present drawing from that dealer, and that it was included in the collection of drawings by old masters which Coningham sold to Messrs. Colnaghi in 1846. That would account for the absence of any mention of this drawing in the catalogue of the Woodburn sale in June 1860, when the bulk of the Lawrence drawings were finally dispersed. The drawing had been for a long period in private hands prior to its purchase by the trustees of the British museum in July of the present year, and had not appeared in the sale-room. ¶ After so much has been said about externals, it is time to look more closely at the drawing itself, which can only be reproduced, at present, on a greatly reduced scale, though it is hoped that an opportunity may present itself later on of issuing a full-sized reproduction in facsimile.

PORTRAIT OF A LADY, BY ALBRECHT DÜRER; IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM]

I have said nothing, so far, about the authorship of the drawing. The name of Holbein had been mentioned, but from the moment in which I first set eyes on it I had scarcely a doubt that the draughtsman was Dürer. No other artist of that date, so far as I remember, drew portraits in chalk on a green ground. No suspicion of forgery or fraud could be seriously entertained, and any momentary hesitation suggested by the formation of the eyes, the weak drawing of the left hand (an undeniable blemish), or the lack of energy in the shading of the costume, was soon dispelled by comparison with other drawings by Dürer on a similar scale and also on green paper, the authenticity of which has never been questioned. The impression suggested by the technique of the drawing itself was confirmed by an examination of the inscription and date, which are written in indian ink, and are indisputably genuine. Every letter is characteristic of Dürer’s handwriting; the inscription may be compared especially with the long note of the same date on a drawing in the Vienna Hofmuseum (Lippmann, 423), in which Dürer has recorded a curious dream that he had in the early summer of 1525. The figures of the date agree closely with those on the Vienna drawing, and still more strikingly with those on a drawing in Mr. Heseltine’s collection (Lippmann, 172), the portrait of a young lady in a hat, with a dog on her lap, not signed, but dated 1525, also in indian ink. Mr. Heseltine’s portrait is that of a much more attractive person; it is also more carefully finished than the drawing which has recently come to light: but the two have much in common, even to the weak drawing of the left hand and the curious break in the outline of the upper eyelid of the left eye. The pose of the two figures is the same; the treatment of the clothes, both in outline and in shading, is curiously similar. The new portrait may also be compared with two large drawings on green paper already in the British museum: the portrait of Dürer’s wife, seriously damaged, of 1522 (Lippmann, 291), and the much more finished and masterly likeness of Henry Parker, Lord Morley (Lippmann, 87), drawn on the occasion of his visit to Nuremberg in 1523[94] as a special envoy sent to confer the order of the Garter on the Archduke Ferdinand. The ground of the latter drawing is of a bluer tint, but the green of Mr. Heseltine’s drawing and of the portrait of Agnes Dürer is almost identical with that of the new drawing in the British museum. ¶ The next question which arose when the authorship of the drawing was established to my own, and, I may add, to Mr. Colvin’s satisfaction, was the interpretation of the line of Dürer’s handwriting, ‘1525 Casmirs schwest^r fraw margret.’ No Casimir was known to me among the circle of Dürer’s friends or patrons, but I was not long in finding a solution which seems to meet all the requirements of the case. The name Casimir at once suggested the royal house of Poland; a reference to the first work on Polish history that lay at hand provided me with the name of a connexion of that family whose residence was not far away from Nuremberg. This was Casimir, margrave of Culmbach (1481-1527), eldest son of the Margrave Frederick of Brandenburg-Ansbach and Bayreuth (1460-1536) by his marriage with Sophia, daughter of Casimir III of Poland. Frederick, being of feeble intellect, was deposed in 1515 by his sons and confined in the castle of Plassenburg; Casimir thereupon ruled over the greater part of the Franconian possessions of the house of Hohenzollern. He was a soldier with mediaeval ideas, and a steadfast Catholic, in opposition to his brother George of Bayreuth, who favoured the reformers; he died on September 21, 1527, at Ofen, while holding a high command under Ferdinand in the Hungarian war, and was buried, like most of his family, in the abbey church at Heilsbronn. The name of his eldest sister was Margaret; she was born in January 1483, and died, unmarried, in 1532. I suggest, then, that this prince and princess, both living in 1525, are the Casimir and Margaret of Dürer’s note. The portrait may well be that of a woman of forty-two, though we might guess her to be older. There is nothing unusual in the title ‘Frau Margret’ being applied to a lady of princely rank; we may compare the titles ‘the Lady Mary,’ ‘the Lady Elizabeth,’ by which the princesses of our own royal house of Tudor were known at the same period. I can discover no other portrait of Margaret of Brandenburg-Ansbach, except as one of a group of the daughters of the Margravine Sophia on a wing of an altarpiece at Heilsbronn[95]; here, however, the kneeling princesses are all painted to one pattern, and at so early an age that no comparison of the features is possible. Dürer’s note is thus the only ground for believing that the newly acquired portrait is that of a Hohenzollern princess. ¶ I was not previously aware that Dürer had enjoyed the patronage of any member of that illustrious family, but I ascertained in the course of the present investigation that there is reason to think that he had had direct relations with the Margrave Casimir himself. Dr. Julius Meyer[96] describes a lost votive picture by Dürer, which represented the body of our Saviour being anointed for burial, with Susanna, wife of Casimir, kneeling in adoration, and Casimir himself standing at her right hand. The picture is only known by a full description in a MS. inventory written in 1768 by its then owner, Hofrath Christian Friedrich von Knebel (1728-1805), at Ansbach. It was signed and dated 1518 in gold. It was painted, therefore, in the year of Casimir’s marriage with Susanna (1502-1543), daughter of Duke Albert III of Bavaria by his marriage with Kunigunda of Austria, sister of the Emperor Maximilian I. Susanna is described by Knebel as ‘Dürer’s great protectress’; it is reasonable to suppose, at any rate, that the close relations in which he stood at this time with the emperor, her uncle, may have led to his appointment to paint the portrait of the niece. ¶ I cannot resist the conjecture--it is hardly more--that the portrait in Mr. Heseltine’s collection was done at the same time, and represents another member of the Margrave Casimir’s family, in all probability his wife, Susanna of Bavaria. The lady cannot be another of his sisters, the youngest of whom, Barbara, was at this time thirty, while the only other survivors, Sophia and Anna, were forty and thirty-eight respectively, and already married.[97] Susanna, on the other hand, was twenty-three, and the portrait may well stand for a lady of that age. She appears to have been fond of dogs, for a large dog lay before her in Knebel’s picture. Medals of the years 1522, 1525 and 1527 respectively, containing portraits of this princess, are reproduced in ‘Schaumünzen des Hauses Hohenzollern,’ Berlin, 1901 (Nos. 522-524). No. 524, in which she is represented in a wide hat, in three-quarter face to the right, agrees best with Dürer’s drawing, but the features are far less pleasing, and Dürer was not wont to flatter his sitters. In 1528, a year after Casimir’s death, his widow married Otto Heinrich, of Neuburg, count (afterwards elector) palatine. Two medals of the year 1529, by Peter Flötner and Hans Daucher, representing Susanna in profile, are preserved in the Munich and Vienna cabinets respectively.[98] Both are superior as works of art to the earlier portraits reproduced among the Hohenzollern medals, and they tend, I think, to confirm, if not to prove, my hypothesis. ¶ Mr. Heseltine’s drawing formerly had an inscription which doubtless gave the name of the person represented. Unfortunately some vandal has cut the paper down, and his scissors have only left the extreme ends of two letters, which may be seen above the date, 1525, written, exactly as on the British museum drawing, with indian ink. Dr. Lippmann, in his note on No. 172, suggests that the lady was an Englishwoman and the drawing a counterpart to the portrait of Morley. This entirely gratuitous assumption compels him to suppose that the date was added by a later hand, and that the drawing was really made a few years earlier than 1525. The authentic inscription and date on the portrait of ‘Fraw Margret’ dispose, I think, of that suggestion. ¶ The new portrait, though not one of the finest class of Dürer drawings, is a welcome addition to the London collection, which is already unusually rich in large portrait-heads of the master’s later years.

PORTRAIT OF A LADY, BY ALBRECHT DÜRER; IN THE COLLECTION OF MR. J. P. HESELTINE]

LATER NINETEENTH-CENTURY BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS

❧ WRITTEN BY JOSEPH PENNELL ❧

ARTICLE I

Throughout the history of art, or rather the history of collecting, there has always been, in conjunction with the desire to collect, a hesitancy in collecting just those things which are ever with us and about which we know the most. Though tremendously characteristic of our age, this hesitancy is by no means confined to it. The Japanese print was ever despised in Japan, and still is, except from its pecuniary point of view, by that grossly over-rated, so-called clever people, who only learned to appreciate their own prints when taught to by the despised western barbarian; the etching of Rembrandt, until the dealer discovered its value, could mostly be obtained for a song; the mezzotint, when it was published, filled the place of the photograph, brought only a guinea, or so, though the near-as-possible counterfeit now is announced to be sold as a rarity in limited editions at the price of the original; the etching of Meryon, valued to-day as much for the paper it is printed on as for what is printed on the paper, was sold by the artist for a few francs, in several cases quite its full value--all these things and endless more are the sport of the collector. ¶ And yet it has always seemed to me extraordinary that the collector, who prizes works of the graphic arts mainly for their rarity, has never collected those which really are rare. It is inconceivable, it is astonishing and unbelievable, that the art of the nineteenth century, the art of illustration, has been so neglected that the original drawings, though they have been always with us, have never yet been properly prized, appreciated, catalogued and collected. I know that old drawings are collected, but the collector’s interest in them to a great extent dates only from yesterday, and even now their price does not equal that of prints from them, of which there may be dozens, or, in fact, nobody knows how many examples in existence. But I also know that, within the last hundred years, drawings, illustrations, have been made in England and America that will rank with any, ever made anywhere, in any age, and that these works of art are absolutely ignored. And they are ignored simply because they have not been collected, because in this country the British museum cannot purchase the work of living British artists, and often it is during the lifetime of the artist only that they can be secured, because in France there is no place to exhibit drawings save in a corner of the Luxembourg; the rest the French government possesses are buried in the Cabinet des estampes. Theoretically, the rule of the British museum may be a good one; it may be thought a safeguard against as terrible a hodge-podge as that presented on the walls of the art gallery at South Kensington. To some of us, however, a remedy suggests itself--change or modify the rule, and, under intelligent direction, there is no reason why collections as fine as those in Dresden and Berlin should not be easily obtained even in England. ¶ The consequence of this neglect, both deliberate and enforced on the part of the British government, has been that here dealers and collectors, connoisseurs and amateurs, have avoided original drawings almost altogether. Artists alone have cared for them, have collected them, and still own almost all that are best worth having.[99] But now that the best examples have been collected, or have become impossible to collect, I see signs vaguely of an appreciation. I do not for a moment think this is due to any artistic awakening or any sudden recognition of a genuine form of art--the art, as I have always described it, and as it will be known in the future, of the nineteenth century. The real cause is to be found rather in the desire for some new thing. Personally, I care very little what is bringing the change about; I am merely delighted to know that it is coming,[100] for I have been preaching the beauty of this work for many years, though, I admit, in a wilderness of paint, prints, pots and postage stamps. When it does come, the possessors of these drawings will find that they own, not only things of beauty, but wonderful examples of an individual form of expression which owes its existence altogether to the last century. I do not mean to suggest that illustration is a modern form of art; it is as old as the world. I do not mean to say that, in their way, the works of the artists of the Renaissance are not glorious; I do not mean to say that the works of the eighteenth century are not superb, after their fashion; what I do mean is, that not until the nineteenth century in England, with Blake and with Bewick, did illustration become a separate, independent and individual branch of the fine arts. The reasons are simple--the appearance of artists who loved and respected their profession, and the improvement and development of technical and mechanical processes. ¶ Blake wished to show his art in his own publications. There was nothing new in this; Dürer had done it centuries before. But Blake confined himself virtually to illustration; with Dürer, it was only one of his many means of expression. Bewick may or may not have learned to adapt the technique of steel engraving to wood from Papillon; that is a detail for the historian. What he did do, and what Papillon did not, was to impose the new method successfully on the world. Not only did Bewick produce his series of nature books, the forerunners of the present fad for that sort of thing, but he invented a school and a scientific manner of work which conquered the world. ¶ I have traced already the development of English book-illustration, showing how it spread from England to France and to Germany, and how, as it progressed through these countries, artists appeared to work for it--great artists in illustration but in nothing else, Meissonier and Menzel. I have elsewhere shown how, though these artists were ready to draw upon the wood block, they had to send to England for engravers to engrave their designs; I have shown how the pupils and the methods of Bewick were spread all over Europe: but while this was happening the art was languishing in England. Lithography and cheapness had commenced to stifle it. Education and the personal benefactor, the curses of this country, were sitting on it. The equivalent in that day to the county council, I doubt not, had it by the throat. It is true that William Harvey, Linnell, and a few others carried on, as best they could, the traditions of Bewick. But through the mid-century, Turner and his steel engravers struggled with the lithographers, Harding, Prout and Lewis, only that all alike might be undermined by Knight’s penny something or other, and that horror, as it then was, _The Illustrated London News_, always catering for the people, and the people damn any form of art.

FROM ‘GIL BLAS’ 1836, DRAWN BY I. GIGOUX,

ENGRAVER UNKNOWN]

A. MENZEL, DEL. E. KNUTCHMAR, SC.]

ORIGINAL DRAWING BY W. WESTALL]

ENGRAVED BY JACKSON]

But, with the appearance in Germany, in 1840, of Menzel’s ‘Geschichte Friedrichs des Grossen,’ and its appropriation in 1845, by the ingenious Mr. Bohn--I wonder what he paid for the blocks--a new era dawned in England. And just one word about this book. It contains 500 illustrations by Adolf Menzel, and, says the advertisement, ‘in the execution of the cuts both French and British artists (engravers) have been engaged.’ But it so happened that they were all discarded by the artist for German engravers whom he himself trained. The 500 illustrations were drawn by Adolf Menzel on the wood, and his trials and tribulations are well known to all who have studied the history of illustration. Five hundred drawings in one book, all done on little wood blocks. Why, even this is enough to ruin anybody in our day, when it is an honour to be devoid of technical ability and physical capacity for work. But then we live in a time when incompetence, laziness and anæmic imbecility are, in this country indispensible credentials to fame. ¶ This book of Menzel’s, which has never been surpassed as an example of reproductive wood engraving, was seen by the Dalziels and shown to, at any rate, Keene, Rossetti, Sir John Gilbert and, most likely, Millais. If some of the lesser but more precious illustrators then at work refused to look at it--well, the loss was their own, and it is probably one of the reasons why so little afterwards was ever heard of them. ¶ Some ten years later, in France, where ever since the thirties the romanticists had been illustrating, notably Curmer’s edition of ‘Paul et Virginie’ (1838), while Jean Gigoux in his ‘Gil Blas’ (1836) had made an everlasting reputation, there appeared Meissonier’s edition of the ‘Contes Rémois’ (1858), by which, and not by his sensational dealings in paint with millionaires, his name will be remembered. And then England woke up again. The first English book which shows any evidence of a revival in art, an attempt to escape from the be-Knighted, be-illustrated traditions, was William Allinham’s ‘Music Master,’ which contains nine illustrations: seven by Arthur Hughes, one by Rossetti--The Maids of Elfen Mere, which appears really to have made a sensation--and one by Millais. It was published in 1855. The English edition of Menzel’s ‘Fredrick’ came out in 1845. ¶ It should not be forgotten that there had been a strong saving remnant all along from the time of Bewick. Northcote’s ‘Fables’ appeared in 1828, ‘embellished’ by 280 drawings, ascribed by Northcote, but really by Harvey, ‘most excellently drawn on the wood and prepared for the engraver by Mr. William Harvey, and improved by his skill’--even Northcote himself admitted this in one edition. The ‘Voyage of Columbus,’ undated and unsigned, illustrated by Stothard, was possibly still earlier. Then there was the ‘Solace of Song’ (1837); there was Lane’s memorable edition of the ‘Arabian Nights,’ illustrated also by Harvey (1839); and there were certain other volumes; but one is not now making a bibliography. However, it was with the ‘Music Master’ (1855) that the great change came. ¶ In 1857 Moxon issued his edition of Tennyson, the only book which is well known. It is extraordionary how little good work there is in it, but this little is of the utmost importance, for it includes the monumental Rossettis and Holman Hunts, and a few beautiful Millais. Even more extraordinary is the proof given not long ago of the public’s indifference to great illustration, for when, recently, just these few fine illustrations, together with the poems to which they refer, were reprinted, accompanied not only by the artists’ original studies for them, but by a most interesting essay by Mr. Holman Hunt, one of the illustrators, this new edition fell perfectly flat. This is not very creditable to the intelligence of the British collector, but it is a fact.[101] ¶ By 1859, the movement, with the starting of _Once a Week_, got into full swing, and we are in the golden age of illustration, the most striking, the most original phase of British art. From this time onward, for ten years, the publishers of this country issued a series of books and magazines that have never been approached, and when the present tendencies in art are considered, it is fairly safe to add will never again be approached in England. Then, artists sought to put the best of themselves into illustration on the wood block. Then, engravers endeavoured to engrave these illustrations as well as they possibly could, and though all of us have been forced regretfully to admit that the methods were abominable, the drawing being cut all to pieces before it could be printed, and the artist having no redress, the published results were often astonishingly good. Then the printer took a pride in doing his work as well as he knew how. And though it might be, and often was, bad, it was the best of which he was capable, and it was frequently much better than what is done to-day. Then, the publisher regarded himself as a shopkeeper, whose business was merely to put his name on the books and to sell them, and he was content to do this and nothing more. Sometimes he succeeded, sometimes he failed. Now, not only does he sit at the receipt of custom, but he dominates the whole. He tells you what the public wants according to his ideas, and the length of his purse, and his travellers’ opinions. And as in nine cases out of ten, despite these authorities, he is supremely ignorant of the work which he farms out, and as cheapness and vulgarity are his only gods, and as paper has come down and process has come in, it is not surprising that English book-illustration should be just where it is to-day. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule among the publishers. They are few, indeed. But they know their position, and it would be discouraging to the rest to name them. ¶ But, the collector may ask, what in all this defence of book-illustration is there for me? As I have pointed out, the illustrations, at any rate up to 1865, were all drawn on the wood block, and were all cut to pieces in the engraving. There remain, therefore, only a very few and rare originals that for some reason or other were not engraved. There also remain in many cases studies for these illustrations. For example, the British museum has been lately showing an illustration, so-called, by Sir J. E. Millais, for his ‘Parables,’ published first in _Good Words_, and then in a separate volume by the Dalziels (1864). This is not the illustration really, but a study for it. It may safely be assumed that no original drawings for book-illustration prior to 1865 exist, unless they are simply drawings made on the wood for a book and never engraved, when they are not book-illustrations at all--that is, illustrations which have been used in a book--or unless they are drawings of some sort made for the steel-engraver or the lithographer, which were copied or translated by the engraver. For example, Turner’s illustrations to Rogers’ ‘Poems’ exist as most commonplace water-colours in the cellars of the National gallery. Turner and Goodall between them made a great work of art out of the ‘Datur Hora Quieti,’ but there is no original of this at all save the trifling water-colour suggestion. Some of the artists, however, were in the habit of making studies in pen-and-ink, or wash, or pencil, on paper, of the exact size of the future engraving, and containing all the details of the design, which was afterwards redrawn on the wood block. Mr. Sandys did this in very many cases, and in some he even made large versions of the drawings, especially for the ‘Amor Mundi,’ which is owned by Lord Battersea. In his case, too, one or two of his drawings, I know, never were engraved. One which I owned, and which is now in the Adelaide museum, Australia, The Spirit of the Storm, was unfinished, and a second, done for _Good Words_ or _Once a Week_, for years kicked round in a drawer in the office of Swain, the engraver, until I found it, when it was engraved and published in _The Hobby Horse_; the reason for this long neglect being that it had been considered too strong by the prurient-minded publisher of that time.

ORIGINAL DRAWING BY STOTHARD]

ROSSETTI, DEL. DALZIELS, SC. THE MAIDS OF ELFIN MERE,

FROM ALLINGHAM’S MUSIC MASTER, 1855]

After about 1865, or rather before, for the books were published in that year, some of the drawings for the illustrated editions of Dalziel’s ‘Arabian Nights, 1865,’ and ‘Goldsmith, 1865,’ were regarded by the engravers as so remarkable that they had photographs made from these drawings on the wood, and then, by the newly-discovered art of photographing on to wood, the photographs were transferred on to other wood blocks, and the originals on the wood preserved. Several are to be seen in the art gallery at South Kensington. The British museum possesses a few, and so do the Adelaide and Melbourne museums in Australia. Mr. Harold Hartley, Mr. Fairfax Murray, Mrs. C. E. Davis, Boyd Houghton’s sister, and, I believe, Mr. Heseltine, are among other owners of these rare drawings, either on wood or paper. But the number is really very small. ¶ There is also a series of drawings for Dalziel’s ‘Bible Gallery,’ commissioned by the Dalziels as early as 1863, as far as I can gather from Messrs. Dalziel’s own records, which are not too satisfactory. Most of the drawings in this series, however, were made on paper, though some by Mr. Watts and Sir Edward Poynter were on the wood, and uncut, and may be seen at South Kensington. Messrs. Dalziel, finding what a marvellous collection of illustrations they had obtained, wisely did nothing but commission artists to make more, and the work was not brought out until 1880, when the drawings were all photographed on to the wood before engraving, and thus preserved. Where most of them are to-day I do not know. As separate illustrations and great works of art, I was the first to call attention to them as far back as 1889. Those by Lord Leighton are now regarded as his masterpieces, and there are very fine examples of Ford Madox Brown, and Watts, and Sir Edward Poynter, who has never done better work. From all but the artistic standpoint the book was a failure. ¶ These, then, with rare unengraved examples which are bound to turn up, constitute all the original drawings for book-illustration reproduced by wood engraving which will ever be found, and they are mostly owned by museums. I must point out, however, that forgeries, both in the way of shameless copies of the originals, or prints worked over with pen-and-ink, and wash, and even colour--the artists themselves did this sometimes; Pinwell certainly did--and palpable imitations, have all, within a short time, been submitted to me. But, I should imagine, of all these finished drawings done upon the wood for reproduction before 1865, there are not a hundred, probably not fifty, that will ever come into the sale room. Of course, a great find may some day be made in a publisher’s office, or an artist’s portfolio. But I doubt it.

~Note on the Illustrations.~--These are mostly included merely to show the sort of drawings the artists made for the engraver and lithographer, who either translated them on to the plate or stone or had an intermediary to do this for them. The first, by Stothard, is in sepia, and a design, I know not for what book, but evidently a headpiece or initial which would have been cleaned up by the engraver. The second, by Bartolozzi, a _cul de lampe_ in washes of indian ink, is very pretty, and the engraver probably would follow it exactly, though he would lose some of the freedom. The others on the same page, by Westall and Courbould, are very typical, and represent the British style of illustration for novels and stories at the beginning of the last century, and very perfectly they represent it, and that is the best I can say for them. The Westall, in wash and pen (indian ink), is slightly touched with colour on the woman’s dress, and may have been engraved on metal and printed in two or more tints. The other is in simple black-and-white. The landscapes are very characteristic; the upper, of the stolid, solid, British water-colourist, who was determined at all costs to be British, and usually forgot he was an artist. And the other, by Barrett, is typical of the later work when Turner had made himself felt with the ‘Liber,’ or did Turner steal from Barrett? Any way, Barrett is seen at his best in this very charming sepia drawing, evidently for an illustration, while the ‘Liber’ drawings at the National gallery show Turner as an illustrator at his worst and his best. The methods of the two artists are absolutely identical; washes, little work with pen, and much scraping and scratching with the knife. As for the engravings, one is from Northcote’s ‘Fables,’ 1828, and shows the perfection of the minute work of Harvey and Jackson. Yet there is the feeling, somehow, of a big landscape in the print, and the engraving is extraordinary, putting to shame much of the modern so-called bold, but really blundering and ignorant, work on wood. The printing also is excellent in Northcote’s volumes. They were printed by J. Johnson, and the excellent blacks the printer of to-day would, even with all his improved appliances, have difficulty in equalling. The printing is much better than that in the French book, ‘Gil Blas,’ by Everat (Paulin, 1836), in which the ink is dull and grey, but in every other way the Gigoux shows the wide difference in aims there was between the leading English and French artists of that day: Harvey, all refinement; Gigoux, all force, directness and go. Both these engravers seem to have rendered the originals well. What the artists thought is another story. The Gigoux also proves that Daniel Vierge worked out rather than invented his style. The next two illustrations are from Curmer’s ‘Paul et Virginie,’ 1838, which is usually regarded, as Curmer wished it, a ‘monument typographic’ to the glory of the artists who illustrated it, is admitted to be the most important French illustrated book of the period, and to it all the better remembered Frenchmen of the time contributed something. Among the artists are Isabey, Paul Huet, Jacque, Johannot, Français, Meissonier, Steinhell; the engravers were Poiret, Lavoignat, Best, Brévière, Frenchmen; Bentworth, the German; but Orin Smith, Branston, Mary Ann Williams and her brothers, English, did the greater part of the work: a magnificent, artistic union, more practical in many ways than visits of kings and the patter of papers. The book was printed, and extraordinarily well printed, by Everat. ¶ The appearance of Turner as an illustrator changed things much. The ‘Solace of Song,’ published by Seeley, 1837, illustrated by Harvey, and engraved by W. T. Green and others, is simply metal engraving on wood, and is astonishing as an example of what can be done. The final outcome is seen in the print from ‘Sacred Allegories,’ by the Rev. W. Adams (Rimingtons, 1856), one chapter of which, ‘The Distant Hills,’ is illustrated by Samuel Palmer and also engraved by Green. This is, of its sort, probably the most perfect example of English book illustration. ¶ But in Germany the greatest progress had been made under Menzel, and his ‘Frederick,’ from which the print, The Round Table, is taken, is simply magnificent. It was engraved by Krutchmar, 1840, and from it sprang modern illustration, as I have said, in England. The first evidence is to be found in Rossetti’s Maids of Elfen Mere in Allingham’s ‘Music Master,’ 1855. In 1858 came the ‘Contes Rémois,’ Levy, illustrated by Meissonier, the perfection of French work, and the beginning and end of his reputation, as well as the most amazing proof of the genius of Lavoignat as a wood-engraver. After this the art of illustration began to flourish in England, and in a year or two the most superb work was being done.

MEISSONNIER, DEL. LAGORNAL, SC. FROM ‘LES CONTES REMOIS,’ 1858]

ANDREA VANNI

❧ WRITTEN BY F. MASON PERKINS ❧

Although the name of Andrea Vanni is by no means unfamiliar to the student of Sienese painting, it is doubtful whether its mention ever calls up to any but a few the image of a definite artistic personality. What fame Andrea now has rests more upon tradition than upon acquaintance with his art. He was born in 1333, or thereabouts. An active participant in the popular uprising of 1368, which resulted in the expulsion of the nobles and the foundation of the new government of the _reformatori_, he played, during the twenty years that followed, a busy and not unimportant part in the affairs of the Sienese republic, leaving behind him a lengthy and honourable record of the various offices which he held. In later years a friend and warm admirer of his great townswoman Caterina Benincasa, he was the recipient of much good counsel from that gentle saint, in the shape of certain letters which have perhaps done more than all his political achievements to keep alive the memory of his name. ¶ But it is not with Andrea the diplomat, or Andrea the devotee, that we are here concerned. Those who would know him better in these characters need only examine the pages of Milanesi, of Banchi and Borghesi, and of St. Catherine’s letters. Andrea has left behind him documents of a very different nature, and of a far deeper interest, than any of mere lettered parchment, and documents by no means so rare as has generally been supposed. With all his diplomatic and official celebrity, he was primarily an artist--perhaps not a great one in the superlative usage of the word, but sufficiently interesting to warrant an attempt to revive his memory as a painter by giving back to him a number of works which, in his native town and elsewhere, pass to-day under other, and sometimes greater, names. ¶ The works upon which Vanni’s reputation as a painter has hitherto rested are only three in number, and are all in his native town:--a well-known portrait of St. Catherine, in the church of S. Domenico; a very little known polyptych, in the church of S. Stefano; and a fragmentary Crucifixion, once in the church of the Alborino, now in the Istituto delle Belle Arti. Of these three works, whose common authorship is evident, the altarpiece in S. Stefano and the Crucifixion in the Belle Arti are given to Andrea on sufficiently reliable documentary grounds; the likeness of St. Catherine, on the strength of a tradition of several centuries. Despite its historical interest, and its great decorative design, this portrait-fresco, in its present state, can help us to but a slight idea of its author’s general style, and for this purpose the unimportant and somewhat coarsely-painted fragment in the Belle Arti can help us but little more. But the great polyptych of S. Stefano is happily a very different and vastly more important work, and of a nature to give us a satisfactory conception of Andrea’s manner at the time in which it was executed. A glance at this huge painting, or the accompanying reproduction, reveals at once that Vanni belonged to that same group of late trecento painters of which Bartolo di Fredi is the best known representative. Like the work of that master, it shows the influence both of Simone Martini and of the Lorenzetti. But it displays the qualities of a strongly-marked individuality as well. ¶ Let us examine it in detail, commencing with the central and most important panel of the Virgin and the Child. That which, apart from the colour, strikes us immediately and most forcibly, is the peculiar silhouette-like character of the design. The great figure of the Madonna is thrown out like a dark, clear-cut pattern against the golden background of her throne. Except for the face and hands, there is little, if any, attempt at modelling or chiaroscuro. The whole effect is flat to a degree, reminding us somewhat of the coloured prints of Japan, with their sharply-defined outlines and broad fields of colour. In this feeling for flat design, Andrea gives witness to his being a follower--if an extreme one--of Simone’s methods. But he has little or none of Simone’s subtle contours and undulating flow of line. The drapery of Andrea’s Virgin is severely simple--there is a remarkable economy of line and fold, reminding us in this rather of Ambrogio Lorenzetti than of Simone. Her stiff, upright pose, again, has none of the tender grace of Simone’s Madonnas and saints, and is more akin to that of Ambrogio’s statelier figures. In facial type Andrea’s Virgin is, however, distinctly his own. The large rounded cranium, the narrow eyes and small half-covered iris, the delicately drawn mouth, the firm but not obtrusive chin, go to make up a set of features not easily forgotten. The Christ-Child, again, reveals decidedly the influence of Simone’s models, and finds its prototype in the Child of Simone’s great fresco of the Majestas in the Palazzo della Signoria, as well as in other works by him, by his close follower Lippo Memmi, and by their school. ¶ Turning now to the other figures, we note in the Baptist a striking similarity, even in the smallest details, to Simone’s figures of that saint at Pisa and at Altenburg, of which it is evidently a free copy. The St. Bartholomew shows like influences in a less degree. The figures of SS. James and Stephen are more Vanni’s own--the head of the latter being a free repetition of the Virgin’s. The Annunciation is severely vigorous and individual, the dark figure of the Virgin again showing, very clearly, Andrea’s love of the silhouette. The side figures of saints, and the evangelists in the pinnacles, reveal a slightly stronger sense of modelling and characterization, and remind us of Bartolo di Fredi and Luca di Tommé. The colour throughout is bright and clear, laid out in broad and simple masses, with a parsimonious use of shading and a lavish use of gold. ¶ If Tizio’s notices of this altarpiece be correct--and there is no reason to doubt that they are so, especially as the style of the work itself supports rather than contradicts them--it was painted in or about 1400. It is, therefore, the production of a man already verging on his seventieth year, and must represent the later, if not the last, development of Vanni’s style. As we have already noted, it has a family likeness to the work of Bartolo di Fredi and others of his school. Still, despite all superficial or general resemblances, these two painters are widely different in style and spirit. In pure grace and charm, Bartolo leaves Vanni far behind him. Andrea’s work again, at least as we here see it, has none of the softly-graded colour, the delicate modelling, the freer line, the careful technical finish of detail--none of the _bibelot_ quality in fact--of Bartolo’s at its best. But, for all that, it convinces us that his was the deeper, grander soul. For mere prettiness or elaborate technical refinement he displays little sympathy or care. Directness and simplicity of expression, staid dignity and great seriousness of purpose--these seem the salient characteristics of his nature, as we read it in his art; nor do they disagree with the conception which the written records convey to us of the man.

IN S. FRANCESCO, SIENA]