John Baptist Jackson | Page 5

woodcut as an art form lay in the division of labor which the process permitted. Draughtsmen usually drew on the blocks; the main function of the cutter was to follow the lines precisely and carefully. Small room existed for individual style or original interpretation; there was little in the technique to distinguish one cutter from another. In spite of these limitations, gifted cutters could rise beyond the dead level of ordinary practice. As fine draughtsmen with a feeling for their materials they did not trace with the knife, they drew and carved with it. Their feeling for line and shape was sensitive, crisp, and supple. But although they created the masterpieces of the medium they suffered from the traditional contempt for their craft. Creative ability in a woodcutter was rarely recognized, and the art fell into gradual decline. By the time the 18th century opened it had been almost entirely abandoned as a means of creating and interpreting works of art, and had been relegated to a minor place among the print processes.
The attitude of the print connoisseur was clearly stated as early as 1762 by Horace Walpole:[6]
I have said, and for two reasons, shall say little of wooden cuts; that art never was executed in any perfection in England: engraving on metal was a final improvement of the art, and supplied the defects of cuttings in wood. The ancient wooden cuts were certainly carried to a great heighth, but that was the merit of the masters, not of the method.
[Footnote 6: Walpole, 1765 (1st ed. 1762), p. 3.]
William Gilpin in 1768 went even further. Describing the various contemporary print processes he omitted the woodcut entirely as not worthy of consideration. He acknowledged that "wooden cuts" were once executed by early artists but made no additional reference to the medium.[7]
[Footnote 7: William Gilpin, An Essay on Prints, London, 1781 (1st ed. 1768), p. 47. "There are three kinds of prints, engravings, etchings, and mezzotintos."]
As late as 1844 Maberly[8] cautioned print amateurs to steer clear of block prints:
Prints, from wooden blocks, are much less esteemed, or, at least, are, generally speaking, of greatly less cost than engravings on copper; and there are connoisseurs who may, perhaps, consider them as rather derogatory to a fine collection.
[Footnote 8: Maberly, 1844, p. 130.]
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 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. Linton, for example, is almost contemptuous in his references to the chiaroscuro woodcut:[9]
... The poorest workman may suffice for an excellent chiaroscuro. I do not depreciate the artistic value as chiaroscuros of the various prints here noted nor underestimate the difficulty of production; but my business has been solely with the not difficult knifecutting and graver cutting of the same.
[Footnote 9: Linton, 1889, p. 215. A woodcut in the German manner was far more difficult to manage than Linton imagined. Bewick tried to imitate the cross-hatched lines of a Duerer woodcut without success. He finally concluded (1925, pp. 205-207) that the old woodcutters had used two blocks, each with lines going in opposing directions, and had printed one over the other!]
The Chiaroscuro Tradition
The chiaroscuro woodcut was originally designed to serve a special purpose, to reproduce drawings of the Renaissance period. These were often made with pen and ink on paper prepared with a tint or with brush and wash tones on white or tinted paper. Highlights were made and modeled with brush and white pigment; the result had something of a bas-relief character. Neither line engraving nor etching was suited to reproducing these spirited drawings, but the chiaroscuro woodcut could render their effects admirably. Its nature, therefore, was conceived as fresh and spontaneous, as printed drawing, in fact.
Chiaroscuros were usually of two types, the German and the Italian. The Germans specialized in reproducing line drawings made on toned paper with white highlights. The woodcuts, however, could stand by themselves as black-and-white prints; the tones required separate printing. The typical German chiaroscuro was therefore from two blocks. The earliest dated print in this style is Lucas Cranach's Venus, with "1506" appearing on the black block. But the brown tint might have been added a few years later. Jost de Negker, working after drawings by Hans Burgkmair, cut blocks which are dated, on the black block at least, as early as 1508, and work by Hans Baldung and Hans Wechtlin appeared shortly after.
The Italian style originated with Ugo da Carpi, who in 1516 petitioned the Senate in Venice