The Graphic

“ Side by side with the evolution of letters and calligraphic art went on the evolution of the graphic power and the artistic sense, developing on the one hand towards close imitation of nature and dramatic incident, and on the other towards imaginative beauty, and systematic, organic ornament, more or less built upon a geometric basis, but ultimately bursting into a free foliation and flamboyant blossom, akin in inventive richness and variety to a growth of nature herself. ”

“ Every one perusing the pages of the historians must have been impressed with the graphic and singularly penetrative character of many of the sketches of the distinguished persons whose doings form the staple of history. These pen-portraits often stand out from the narrative with luminous and vivid effect, the writers seeming to have concentrated upon them all their powers of penetration and all their skill in graphic delineation. Few things in literature are marked by analysis so close, discernment so keen, or by effects so brilliant and dramatic. ”

“ The graphic arts do not share with painting a development based upon a desire for æsthetic expression. Their origin is imitative, thoroughly democratic, and every process continues in that lowly sphere, until the genius of some powerful artist lifts it into realms of art. For the very reason of this utilitarian tendency, and because of a gamut of expression restricted to line and tone for15 the interpretation of a world of color and form, the graphic arts, even more than other forms of artistic expression, need the steady hand of the gifted artist to sustain them on a high plane of excellence. ”

“ The graphic aim—the endeavour to represent a form exactly as it appears—a power always valuable to acquire whatever may be our ultimate purpose, leaves the draughtsman great freedom in the choice and use of line, or other means of obtaining relief, local tint, and tone. ”

“ Although it would seem as if these proportions should have established themselves earlier among practical men, we shall in these drawings confine ourselves to the graphic plan, considering it preferable. ”

“ And now observe that while the graphic arts begin in the mere mimetic effort, they proceed, as they obtain more perfect realization, to act under the influence of a stronger and higher instinct. They begin by scratching the reindeer, the most interesting object of sight. ”

“ The argument continually carries us away into a seeming denial to the graphic arts of all subject of any sort other than the painter's subject pure and simple, that is to say, form expressed on a flat surface, light and shade, tints and gradations, and color. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have now a vast public apparently interested in, and accustomed to, graphic representation in black and white, through the continual multiplication of cheap illustrated newspapers, magazines, and books, and the continual invention and adaptation to the press of cheap photographic and automatic means of reproduction, which have almost entirely displaced the woodcut as a popular medium for the interpretation of graphic art. ”

“ That the graphic arts are the expression of the imaginative life rather than a copy of actual life might be guessed from observing children. Children, if left to themselves, never, I believe, copy what they see, never, as we say, “draw from nature,” but express, with a delightful freedom and sincerity, the mental images which make up their own imaginative lives. ”

“ It is indeed obvious that a discovery so important and useful to one of the principal departments of the graphic arts as lithography is, and which may be called even more essentially capable of variation and multiplication, and perhaps in its way also more artistic, should call forth an earnest movement on behalf of the technical experts, principally with the endeavour for simpler forms and extension of its powers of work. ”

“ The two last were both engravers. All these men have done good work on the pictorial press, and some of them first won distinction through its medium. Both the Illustrated London News and the Graphic may claim to have done good service to art and artists in this respect. Their pages have always been open to young artists of ability, and while 357 they have helped forward struggling genius they have opened up new sources of enjoyment to the general public. ”

“ For all that, the world has continued obstinately to consider that painting was worth while, and though, indeed, it has never quite made up its mind as to what, exactly, the graphic arts did for it, it has persisted in honouring and admiring its painters. ”

“ It is not difficult to conclude that certain principles of art have been influential in printing since the craft was inaugurated by Gutenberg and Fust and their contemporaries, but it appears that the relation between printing8 and the graphic arts has not yet been fully and consciously acknowledged. Some of the older rules and principles of printing are in perfect harmony with the principles and rules of art, and undoubtedly had their origin in the same necessity for harmony that lies in human nature and that was the seed of art principles. ”

“ Many of the surviving heroes of the sixties contributed to the Graphic. Charles Green appears in vol. i. with Irish Emigrants, G. J. Pinwell with The Lost Child (January 8, 1870) , A. Boyd Houghton has a powerful drawing, Night Charges, and later, the marvellous series of pictures recording his very personal visit to America.
William Small, R. W. Macbeth, S. L. Fildes, Hubert Herkomer, and a crowd of names, some already mentioned frequently in this book, bore the weight of the new enterprise. But a cursory sketch of the famous periodical would do injustice to it. ”

“ Artists and writers will study effect rather than graphic truth. The florid description of some modern book of travel is as different to the actual impressions of ninety-nine people out of a hundred—allowing all these to possess average education, perception, and intellect—when painting in their minds the same subject, as the artfully tinted lithograph, or picturesque engraving of the portfolio or annual, is to the faithful photograph. ”

“ Since this is in very truth the foundation of the whole graphic art, it seems to me a good thing to set down for studious beginners a few rudiments, in which I might, as it were, furnish them with a handle for using the compass and the rule, and thence, by seeing Truth itself before their eyes, they might become not only zealous of the arts, but even arrive at a great and true understanding of them. ”

“ Drawing, composition,21 harmony, balance, proportion, perspective, color, tone, light-and-shade, values, etc., are qualities of graphic art that apply to printing with varying force, according to the exigencies of each particular case in hand, and particularly according to the comprehension and cultivation of the printer. It is always possible to explain the beauty and power of any piece of printing by reference to the same principles that are responsible for the excellencies of other works of graphic art. ”

“ Here we will be content with the simple expression of the judgment that no great and enduring work of art can be wrought which has not also a great theme.
We must not fail to call attention to a branch of graphic art which has taken root for itself and thus become independent. I refer to the development of picture-writings for the purpose of communicating the thoughts of men to other men. The origin of alphabets in picture-writing is now an accepted conclusion of science. ”

“ Their technique, which the probing critic lays bare, is neither seen nor suspected by the average beholder who stands worshipful before their paintings. In fact, the technique61 of graphic design can be effective only when it works subconsciously in the spectator’s mind. Furthermore, those old masters knew how to achieve many results through simple means. They knew how to produce unity, emphasis, balance, and rhythm by the skillful manipulation of even a single device. ”

“ It is understood that it is the gentle but constant influence that moulds our habits and lives the more readily and lastingly. If therefore it is possible for us to conceive that the printed page of a book may illustrate and enforce several of the more elemental and important principles underlying graphic art, we may thereby realize that printing may readily be employed in the character of a very powerful art educator, if because of certain inalienable limitations it must be denied full recognition as a member of the sisterhood of arts. ”

“ Pass your finger lightly over some of the heavier lines, and if your finger-tips are sensitive, you will distinctly feel these ridges of ink. Why this difference? Because human ingenuity has devised several ways of obtaining an impression. There are three4 such possibilities, which divide the graphic arts into three main groups, namely:—
Relief processes: Woodcut, wood-engraving;
Intaglio processes: Engraving, dry-point, mezzotinting, and the etching processes ”

“ When graphic art was not under the dominion of the religious motive, but was impelled by utilitarian designs, it worked out a very different result, becoming more and more conventional while painting itself comes to be more and more realistic. ”

“ Assuredly we have no guarantee that in nature the emotional elements will be combined appropriately with the demands of the imaginative life, and it is, I think, the great occupation of the graphic arts to give us first of all order and variety in the sensuous plane, and then so to arrange the sensuous presentment of objects that the emotional elements are elicited with an order and appropriateness altogether beyond what Nature herself provides. ”

“ If we examine the relation of principles of art to the book page we will be able to appreciate the exact importance of those principles in the composition of any15 other form of printing, and to so apply them as to secure results most nearly relating printing to graphic art. ”

“ Many illustrations from wash drawings of to-day are of a daring, spirited style in which figures are drawn with or without backgrounds, and when well done they are undeniably attractive, and may be abundantly met with in such publications as The Graphic, Illustrated London News, Sketch, In Town, St. ”

“ The clear, graphic style gives it a popular appeal that sets it miles apart from the ordinary treatise, and for the reader who wishes to get a rapid focus on the world events of the present, perhaps no book written will be more interesting. ”

“ Other processes, on the contrary, never benefit the minority. In graphic art, for example, there are several colour-processes by which very cheap reproductions of pictures can be produced, but their use is, for necessary commercial reasons, confined to popular works. ”

“ The art of graphic illustration on the blackboard is in almost constant demand in oral work. Even rude and untechnical sketches by teachers who have no acquired skill in artistic drawing are of the greatest value in giving a quick and accurate perception of places, buildings, persons, and surrounding conditions of a story or action. ”

“ There may26 be a picture, by a photographer or by a painter, having all the requisite component parts to make it a work of art; there may be, for example, a woman, an axe, a road, a mountain, trees; but these thrown together upon a canvas do not make a work of art unless they are properly composed, even if they are arranged in an order satisfying to the realist, and each faultlessly executed. It is not the same thing to paint and to make pictures; to print and to execute artistic printing. ”

“ They may be without knowledge of graphic art and without skill. They may not be able to take a pencil or a piece of charcoal and sketch out a horse or a hut or the general aspect of a single pictorial moment as it would appear on the screen. They may never have given any thought to the question of how best to arrange simultaneous or successive movements in order to give the strongest emotional appeal to the spectator. Yet they are drawing screen pictures, and drawing them on the typewriter! ”

“ It is the touch of beauty given to science that produces art. In printing the matter of securing balance and unity is at once more simple and more difficult than in painting. The component parts to be dealt with are more rigid and restricted, but are purely conventional and precise. The painter's conception is given balance and unity through the original drawing and color-scheme corrected and perfected by constant scrutiny and by tests and continual alterations. ”

“ Graphic art without colouring, is as food without flavour; and it was the deficiency of colouring in the great works of the Roman and Florentine schools that caused Sir Joshua Reynolds to confess a certain want of attraction in them. ”

“ The product of the skilled paper maker has more than quadrupled, in artistic variety, during the few years last past, until it is now the fault of its designer if a book intended to be harmoniously artistic is not as true to its motive in paper as in typography or binding. ”

“ While too much science is often deadly to art, the true basis of pictorial composition is rigidly scientific, and all of the principles governing it are of use and importance to the printer, especially in planning displayed work and in title pages. ”

“ The Daily
Graphic For twelve years (1894 to 1906) Knight was the dramatic of The Daily Graphic, and I am indebted to Mr. Hammond Hall, who was editor during the whole of that period, and to Mr. Lionel F. Gowing, the present editor, for the following reminiscences. Mr. ”

“ The other reasons for the evolution of the book format into its present form are logical. If they do not lead to the conclusion that art has been served and justified in full they assuredly do not lead to a contrary conclusion. The early paper makers produced a sheet that was uneven in shape and variable in size, and the pressman was compelled to make large allowance on the front and tail margins. ”