John Baptist Jackson | Page 7

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.]
[Illustration: Tailpiece in L'Histoire naturelle eclaircie dans une de ses parties principales, l'oryctologie, by D. d'Argenville, De Bure, Paris, 1755. This is one of the cuts Jackson made between 1725-1730. Actual size.]

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