John Baptist Jackson | Page 9

woodcutter and left the country to develop his
potentialities.
It must be remembered that in painting and engraving England was far
behind the continental countries, which could boast of centuries of
celebrated masters. The medieval period persisted in England until the
time of Henry VIII. Traditional religious subjects, so indispensable to
European art, were thereafter generally proscribed. There was no
fondness as yet for themes of classical mythology, and the new and
developing national tradition in painting had to form itself on the only
remaining field of pictorial expression, portraiture. Standards of style
were set by foreign artists who were lured to England to record its
prominent personages in a fitting manner. Beside such masters as
Holbein, 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,