Jacob Kainen

“ The only known copy of this battle picture, made from about seven blocks, is in the Print Room of the British Museum. It is a magnificent piece. Probably nothing with this breadth of handling had ever been done in woodcut before. The color is grave and beautifully harmonized, although the paper has deteriorated and the colors have darkened somewhat. The blocks were cut with ardor, almost fury; everything is brought to life with masterly assurance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even if we feel that Jackson was building up his project to attract attention, or that he was intoxicated by the idea of creating art on such a grand scale, there is still something wrong in his conceiving it in terms of wallpaper. What is certain is that Jackson was desperately anxious to create color prints. In the absence of art patrons, wallpaper was his only excuse for continuing as an artist. ”

“ Copies of the Pictures of all the best Painters of the Italian, French and Flemish Schools, the fine sculptur’d Vases of the Ancients which are now remaining; in short, every Bird that flies, every Figure that moves upon the Surface of the Earth from the Insect to the human; and every Vegetable that springs from the Ground, whatever is of Art or Nature, may be introduced into this Design of fitting up and furnishing Rooms, with all the Truth of Drawing, Light, and Shadow, and great Perfection of Colouring. ”

“ In Paris Jackson had suggested using a cylinder press for printing wood blocks. The gentlemen to whom the suggestion was made, Count de Caylus, Coypel, and Mariette, were sure that the enormous pressure would split the blocks. The Englishman, on the contrary, felt that the pressure, properly controlled by a chase, would hold the blocks together. Printing would be much more rapid and the exceptional vigor of the impression would suggest a hand drawing. The use of cylinder presses for chiaroscuro printing was already well known to experts. ”

“ Dear Sir!—Do Me the Favour to accept these four prints of Jackson’s. They are no where sold, & will soon be scarce. When You consider their Merit, I am confident You will lament the hard Fate of the ingenious Artist; who, at this Time, in his old age, & in his own Country is unprotected unnoticed, and can difficultly support Himself against immediate distress & Ruin.
I am, with great Respect,
Dear Sir!
Your obliged affect humble Servant
T. Hollis
Bedford Street, February 10, 1755
We do not know the results of this appeal. ”

“ 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 anonymity2 (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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The new audience created by the advancing Industrial Revolution wanted printed pictures of a less subtle type; they preferred imitations of sentimental, 67 banal, story-telling oil paintings with a high, waxy finish. Neither aquatint nor other copper-plate media were suitable for these products, and color lithography did not receive serious attention until the late 1830’s. The wood engraving, which had inherited the function of the woodcut and which had greater flexibility in rendering tones and details, became the logical vehicle for the new color picture. ”

“ The worship of black-and-white as the highest expression of the graphic arts1 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. ”

“ The relief impressed with the blocks is so strong that, going beyond all other prior attempts of the kind, it represents an essential factor of the composition through its actual light-and-shadow effects.
Although by this time Jackson’s chiaroscuros were regarded with respect and his color prints were acknowledged to be of prime importance, some of the conservative wallpaper historians were still repelled by their vigor, which did not suit genteel notions of interior decoration. ”

“ 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 9 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ He broadened the scope of the chiaroscuro print and launched 6 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ His main emphasis, we note, is on the Ricci prints.
A peculiarity of the color woodcut, which first was put up with as a characteristic of the technique but finally was enhanced and utilized fully as a means of expression, is the physical relief that stands out in thick and soft paper with the sharp pressure of die wood-blocks.... No one has employed the relief of the woodcut so consciously and artfully as the Englishman John Baptist Jackson in the eighteenth century, who, particularly in some landscapes, created most effective and richly colored sheets. ”

“ 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. 5 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. ”

“ Although spurned by the better artists, color had too popular an appeal to be ignored. It was inescapable that Jackson’s successful technical procedures should finally be adopted and corrupted in the area of commerce.
Woodcut artists up to Jackson, with few exceptions, had used color for one major purpose, to reproduce drawings in line and tone. By enlarging the conception of the color woodcut Jackson brought the primitive chiaroscuro phase of its 68 history to an end. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Venetian prints were not merely an extension of chiaroscuro, they represented a daring effort to go beyond line engraving for reproducing paintings. Justification for this attempt is given in the Essay (p. 6) :
... and though those delicate Finishings, and minute Strokes, which make up great Part of the Merit of engraving on Copper, are not to be found in those cut on Wood in Chiaro Oscuro; yet there is a masterly and free Drawing, a boldness of Engraving and Relief, which pleases a true Taste more than all the little Exactness found in the Engravings on Copper Plates ... ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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....
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. ”

“ 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. ”