John Baptist Jackson | Page 9

Zuccaro, Moro, Geeraerts, Van Dyck, Mytens, Lely, Kneller, Zoffany, and Van Loo, among others, native painters seemed crude and provincial. The list of foreign artists other than portraitists who visited England before 1750 for varying periods is also impressive.
If good native painters were rare in the first decades of the 18th century, good engravers or woodcutters were even rarer. Hogarth, whose earliest prints were produced in the 1720's, received his training from a silversmith.
Jackson's next move was toward the Continent.
Paris: Perfection of a Craft
Jackson arrived in Paris in 1725, his age 24 if we accept 1701 as his birth date. Here flourished a brilliant community of artists, craftsmen, dealers, and connoisseurs; woodcutting, etching, and line engraving were highly developed and the printing offices made extensive use of woodcuts for decoration and illustration. The woodcut tradition mimicked line engraving and was confined chiefly to tiny blocks wrought with the utmost delicacy. The main influence came from the 17th century-- in particular from the etchings and line engravings of Sebastien Le Clerc and from the etchings of Jacques Callot, whose simple system of swelling parallel lines, with occasional cross-hatchings, was adopted by both line engravers and woodcutters.
Le Clerc, whose style was influenced by Callot, had produced a vast number of illustrations involving subjects of almost every type; his designs, therefore, were ready-made for publishers who wanted good but low-priced illustrations. Woodcutters copied his engravings shamelessly, line for line. The overblown high Baroque style in ornament, swag, and cartouche was also drawn upon as a source for decorative cuts. In an attempt to imitate the full tonal scale of engraving, the woodcutters used heavier lines in the foreground to detach the main figures from the background, which was made up of more delicate lines. Background lines were often narrowed further by scraping down their edges, an operation that caused them to merge imperceptibly into the white paper. In this way, although the natural vigor of the woodcut suffered, an effect of space and distance was achieved. Because of the small scale this technique was difficult, especially when cross-hatching was added, and special knives as well as a phenomenal deftness were needed to work out these bits of jewelry on the plank grain of pear, cherry, box, and serviceberry wood.
Jackson's initial impression of the state of woodcutting in France is described in the Enquiry (p. 27):
From this Account it is evident that there was little Encouragement to be hoped for in England to a Person whose Genius led him to prosecute his Studies in the ancient Manner; which obliged Mr. Jackson to go over to the Continent, and see what was used in the Parisian Printing-houses. At his arrival there he found the French Engravers on Wood working in the old Manner; no Metal Engravers, or any of the same Performance on the end of the Wood, was ever used or countenanced by the Printers or Booksellers in that City. He tells us that he thought himself a tolerable good Hand when he came to Paris, but far inferior to the Performances of Monsieurs Vincent le Seur and Jean M. Pappillon....
Jackson admits benefiting from the friendship and advice of these woodcutters, then goes on to describe their work with a ruthless frankness. Le Sueur, he says, was a brilliant copyist of the line engravings of Sebastien Le Clerc but, because he was a line-for-line copyist, lacked skill in drawing. Papillon's father, also a woodcutter who copied Le Clerc, avoided cross-hatching, which Jackson considered an essential ingredient of the true style of black-and-white woodcutting; Papillon himself, while described as a draughtsman of the utmost accuracy, was criticized for making his work so minute that it was impossible to print clearly. Jackson says in the Enquiry (pp. 29-30):
If his Father neglected Cross Hatching, the Son affected to outstrip the le Seurs in this difficult Performance, and even the ancient Venetians, believing to have fixed a Non plus ultra in our Times to any future Attempts with Engraving on Wood.
... I saw the Almanack[17] in a horrid Condition before I left Paris, the Signs of the Zodiack wore like a Blotch, notwithstanding the utmost Care and Diligence the Printer used to take up very little Ink to keep them clean. I have chosen to make mention of these two Frenchmen as the only Persons in my time keeping up to the Stile of the ancient Engraving on Wood; and as they favoured me with their Friendship and Advice during my abode in Paris, I thought in Justice to their good Nature it was proper to give some Account of their Merit!
[Footnote 17: The Petit almanach de Paris, founded by J. M. Papillon in 1727 and illustrated with his woodcuts.]
Acknowledgment of friendship and merit in this vein, while entirely true (Papillon was minute to the point of exhibitionism,