Illustration

“ Whilst, then, Art and Illustration are distinct, and much of the latter may be within the reach of many to whom the former is impossible, there is no reason why either should needlessly offend the canons of the other. Art—seeking, as it should, to awaken a sense of pleasure in the beautiful—adheres to truth, in idea if not in fact. [11] Illustration, which portrays fact truthfully, may yet do so in such manner as shall not annoy the cultivated and artistic senses; and this is the art of illustration. ”

“ Finally it will be remarked that by dispensing with illustrations I preserve intact my egoism and the dignity of a rival art. Nothing can be more absurd than the conventional illustration which merely attempts to picture over again what the writer has already pictured in words. ”

“ For the traditions of art and of race that find a focus in the illustrative etchings of this artist, the creative traditions, and instinctive modes of thought that are represented in the forms and formation of his art, are forces of intellect and passion and insight not previously, nor now, by more than the one artist, associated with the practice of illustration. ”

“ The illustration of books, and even more of magazines, may be said to have been born in our time, so far as variety and abundance are the signs of it; or born, at any rate, the comprehensive, ingenious, sympathetic spirit in which we conceive and practise it. ”

“ It is an understood fact that illustration, in this present, is a decided factor in commercial and literary progress, proving that adults as well as children are influenced by pictures, and that the fine arts no less than the liberal arts have a mission beyond beauty, even a didactic use. ”

“ In any attempt to indicate the fundamental significance of the art of literature in the educational development of the individual and of society there must also be a certain repetition of idea and of illustration. ”

“ It may be well to note that illustrations should not be too prominent, or, to pursue our figure, they should not be painted windows, attracting attention to themselves rather than letting in the clear light of day. ”

“ Animation, force, beauty, dramatic contrast, vividness, variety, are the qualities that will more or less serve, according to the style of the composition. Aptness in the story or anecdote, facility in graphic illustration, readiness in expressing emotion, happiness in the imitative faculty, for touching off the eccentric in character or incident, are talents that come into play, and in the exercise of these, gesture of course has an important place. ”

“ Yet, although greater men are less fully dealt with, a running narrative showing where the illustrations appeared will be more valuable than any attempt to estimate the intrinsic value of the work, or explain its attractive quality. That the work is singularly lovable, and has found staunch and ardent admirers amid varying schools of artists, is unquestionable. ”

“ In this way the abstract demonstrations should form but a small part of the instruction, and should be given when, by familiarity with concrete illustrations, they have come to be felt as the natural embodiment of visible fact. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He had invention, by which new trains of events are formed, and new scenes of imagery displayed, as in the Rape of the Lock; and by which extrinsick and adventitious embellishments and illustrations are connected with a known subject, as in the Essay on Criticism. He had imagination, which strongly impresses on the writer’s mind, and enables him to convey to the reader, the various forms of nature, incidents of life, and energies of passion, as in his Eloisa, Windsor Forest, and Ethick Epistles. ”

“ In fables, where the primary purpose is to convey an abstract truth, a something bigger and broader than the mere interesting events described, the illustrations add much to the meaning and purpose of the text. ”

“ Such a rich chapter it had been, when one came to look back on it all! With illustrations so numerous and so very highly coloured! ”

“ There is xi a reaction already, and signs of a better and more sober treatment of illustration, which only requires a better understanding of the requirements and limitations of the processes, to make it equal to some of the best work of the past.
The modern illustrator has much to learn—more than he imagines—in drawing for the processes. A study of examples by masters of line drawing—such as Holbein, Menzell, Fortuny or Sandys—or of the best work of the etchers, will not tell the student of to-day exactly what he requires to know ”

“ To judge the image as a picture is judged, would, as we have seen, be absurd; and what is sought in poetry by those painters and others whose interest in the world is primarily visual is not pictures but records of observation, or stimuli of emotion. ”

“ His own sense of all this, as I have already indicated, was that beauty comes with expression, that expression is creation, that it makes the reality, and only in the degree in which it is, exquisitely, expression; and that we move in literature through a world of different values and relations, a blest world in which we know nothing except by style, but in which also everything is saved by it, and in which the image is thus always superior to the thing itself. ”

“ Not only the life and character of the object represented, but the life and character of feeling in the artist.
Now perhaps you will realise how a drawing, though it represents only an ugly old beggar man, may be beautiful. Life, in all its forms is wonder{224}ful, even if sometimes horrible. And the expression of it by a thing so slight as a line is beautiful, because we need not trouble about the object represented, but be satisfied to enjoy only the life and character that the line expresses. ”

“ Such grumblers, however, do not duly consider that the imaginative faculty invariably depicts the objects it would represent as grand and impressive, with a few striking touches rather than in fulness of detail, and that thereby it lends to the image more of character, solemnity, and dignity. A thousand times have I heard the complaint that the objects for a knowledge of which we are originally indebted to description, invariably disappoint us when we see them with our own eyes. ”

“ My imagination presents to me anything but a vivid image of this glorious structure, and when art presents an imitation of it, to my eye it awakens in me no sensation and I am unable to judge of the merits of the picture. ”

“ Nothing, within the picture, occurs; nothing is done or, more acutely than usual, than everywhere, suffered; it is all a mere affair of the rich impression, the complexity of images projected upon the quintessential spirit of the hero, whose own report is what we have—an affair of the quality of observation, sentiment and eloquence brought to bear. It is not too much to say even that the whole thing is in the largest sense but a theme for style, style of substance as well as of form. ”

“ The expression of the divinely touching countenance breathed all the fervour of genius under the influence of inspiration, and the contours of the face, from the peculiar uplifted position of the head, were precisely such, as lends to painting the happiest line of feature, and shade of colouring. ”

“ Much depends here upon the artistic knowledge of editors and publishers, who have it in their power to have produced good or bad illustrations from the same original. The makers of the blocks being confined to time and price, are practically powerless, and seldom have an opportunity of obtaining the best results. It should be mentioned that blocks made from wash drawings, being shallower than those made from line drawings, suffer more from bad printing and paper. ”

“ In addition to our first general definition, we may further observe, that by a Whole in Painting is signified the complete expression, by means of form, color, light, and shadow, of one thought, or series of thoughts, having for their end some particular truth, or sentiment, or action, or mood of mind. We say thought, because no images, however put together, can ever be separated by the mind from other and extraneous images, so as to comprise a positive whole, unless they be limited by some intellectual boundary. ”

“ The personification of abstract ideas by modern painters or sculptors, of wealth, of commerce, of health, for instance, shocks, in most cases, the aesthetic sense, as something conventional or rhetorical, as a mere transparent allegory, or figure of speech, which could please almost no one. ”

“ Look into the mind of man, where wisdom reigns enthroned; where imagination, the painter, sits, with his pencil dipt in hues lovelier than those of sunset, adorning familiar life with glowing tints. What a noble boon, worthy the giver, is the imagination! ”

“ The flow is easy, the style graceful and natural; but the step from poetry to prose is substantial as well as formal; the imagination is ossified, and we exchange the exuberance of legendary creativeness for the dogmatic record of fact without reality, and fiction without grace. ”

“ The true artist will seek to shape this living substance into the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skilful selection and arrangement of his material, and by the most direct and appealing presentation of it in portrayal and characterization.
The short stories which I have examined in this study, as in previous years, have fallen naturally into four groups. The first group consists of those stories which fail, in my opinion, to survive either the test of substance or the test of form. These stories are listed in the yearbook without comment or a qualifying asterisk. ”

“ In addition to the poetic fancy and the idealism of art and literature generally, we must distinguish the work of imagination in the æsthetic, in the moral, in the religious, in the scientific, and in the political life. ”

“ There is, however, a higher form of art in both pictures and literature. There are pictures that suggest some noble aspiration, some great universal truth, some great conflict between duty and interest. ”

“ As to the picturesque—a word that connotes, in its critical uses, some quality in the objects of sense which strikes us as at once novel, and characteristic in its novelty—while by no means the highest of literary arts, it is a perfectly legitimate one. ”

“ Somewhat later in the history of fiction, as in the history of figure painting, we find instances in which the element of setting is used for a decorative purpose, and is brought into an artistic relation with the elements of action and character. ”

“ It is a finished picture, delineating almost every variety of human character, crowded with figures, whose lineaments no lapse of time, no change of manners, can render faint or indistinct, and which will retain, to the latest centuries, every stroke of outline and every tint of color, as sharp and as vivid as when they came from the master’s hand. ”

“ Those beautiful pictures in which a different object seems to have been followed—in which the expression is that of permanent emotion, not transient passion, while they captivate our admiration, seem to be exceptions from the general design, and to have been suggested by the peculiar nature of the subject represented, or a particular firmness of mind in the artist. ”

“ The conscious utterance of thought, by speech or action, to any end, is Art. ”

“ The style is elegant, the story, which involves a succession of mysteries and cross purposes, is well developed, and the scene and character painting is full of spirit and truth. The authoress is certainly a woman of genius, which she has used to excellent purpose.”—Southern Literary Messenger. ”

“ It is when we compare works of imagination in writing with works of imagination on the canvas, that we can best form a critical idea of the different schools which exist in each; for common both to the author and the painter are those styles which we call the Familiar, the Picturesque, and the Intellectual. ”

“ A figure involves the discovery of a striking or essential contrast or contradiction between objects, or the recognition of a likeness or affinity ranging in closeness from mere similarity to complete identification. Whichever be the process, the result is the universal and typical meanings of literature, its pleasing indirection of statement, its enlarged outlook upon many other spheres, the vista of suggestion and association opening in every direction, the surprised, the shocked or delighted recognitions, that await us on every page. ”

“ These Essays now form a species of composition in our language, a mixture of prose and verse—the man with the poet—the self-painter has sat to himself, and, with the utmost simplicity, has copied out the image of his soul. ”

“ We have now to introduce our artist as poet, so as to be able to give some examples of his work in this branch of art, since he himself has published nothing in the proper sense of the word. The poems breathe the same spirit and are distinguished by the same peculiarities as his drawings and prose criticisms. ”

“ But literature is a progressive art, and soon the writers of the age developed two marked tendencies of their own,--the tendency to realism, and the tendency to that preciseness and elegance of expression which marks our literature for the next hundred years.
RealismIn realism--that is, the representation of men exactly as they are, the expression of the plain, unvarnished truth without regard to ideals or romance--the tendency was at first thoroughly bad. ”

“ And these excursions, and a great many more, from the world of shapes into that of things, are what we shall deal with, when we come to Art, under the heading of representation and suggestion, or, as is usually said, of subject and expression as opposed to form. ”

“ All additions, all subtractions, character-groupings, emphasis, subordination, retardation and precipitation of the events of the plot, local color and diction—everything that makes the finished product a work of the imagination—is brought about through the selective power of the mood to be conveyed. Painting would furnish similar examples of the working of the imagination. ”