In the 21st century we take the mass reproduction of color images for granted and why wouldn't we?
Illustration is woven into the fabric of our daily lives.
But historically speaking. This is a relatively new phenomenon.
So where and when does the history of Illustration begin?
We don't know precisely when but certainly by the 3rd century
The Chinese had developed a working form of printing using carved wood blocks and even with the little
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pictorial evidence that has survived it's easy to see just how successful the process was.
In medieval Europe we knew absolutely nothing of this.
Illuminated manuscript painstakingly produced by the hands of monks and the embroidered narrative of the Bayeux tapestry
undoubtedly functioned as early examples of illustrative art but they could not be reproduced for mass consumption.
So from a European perspective, it's the year
1440 Which signals the true beginning of the art of illustration.
Because this was the year in which the first printing press was invented and built by German
Johannes Gutenberg and the importance of this not just in terms of illustration
but in the advancement of civilization
can't be overestimated.
Gutenberg's machine worked on similar principles to the Chinese woodblock method and could only print in monochrome
but it could churn out 3,000 pages a day.
The woodcut isn't the easiest medium to work in but it was the only way to reproduce pictures in printed form
and consequently most of the images seem crude to contemporary eyes.
But quickly more capable artists across
Renaissance Europe were seduced by the medium if only because it broadcasts their talents to a far bigger audience.
And nobody did it better than Albrecht Durer.
Durer was one of the great Northern European painters
But it would be another 500 years before work as fine as this watercolor could be reproduced.
But he accepted the challenge of woodcut illustration and the print process and produced a massive body of biblical and classically themed
illustrations which were widely distributed as printed material.
For the first time ordinary people could see and understand the meaning of the pictures
even if the great majority of them couldn't read or write.
This constitutes the beginning of illustration as an education medium.
Unfortunately Talents such as Durer's don't come along every day and pretty soon there followed an apparently endless supply of
comparatively inept image makers
usually producing primitive illustration for use in religious and to a lesser extent
political propaganda.
There were some exceptions and later Baroque artists such as Rubens brought dignity back to the process
even if strictly speaking it was art not illustration.
Some refinements were made in the technical execution of illustration and at the forefront of this refinement
was English illustrator wood engraver and natural history author ThomasBewick.
In the late 1700s he produced many images of rural life and is best known for his book a history of British Birds.
His work is technically excellent and precise and if it lacks emotion and imagination that'sno bad thing in wildlife illustration.
William Hogarth was cast in a similar mould to Durer, equally at home creating canvases, or illustrations for print.
Of course painted works such as this could still not be reproduced
but in Hogarth's case the lack of color didn't mean a lack of character.
His illustrations give an unflinchingly frank picture of life in the late seventeen hundreds in Britain
and he used his talents not merely to record life, but to make social comment and criticism.
This is an image from his series The Rake's Progress
which documented the rise corruption and ultimate destruction of a young gentlemen in London society and
the whole series constitutes one of the greatest achievements in narrative illustration.
There were others who used illustration to express their opinions.
These were the early political
cartoonists and at their forefront was James Gillray.
Gillray] was and still is
celebrated for his acerbic political satires. This image of prime minister William Pitt and
Napoleon carving up the planet is iconic for any cartoonist.
Although engraved in monochrome some copies such as this were hand colored and considered desirable collectible
objects if you could afford one.
Even by the 18th Century Japan and China still favored the woodblock method of printing
and unlike the fussier cross-hatched approach of the west their images had stayed strongly minimalist and aesthetically driven.
Katsushika Hokusai was easily the most accomplished of the Japanese artists and illustrators of this period. He understood
and worked in harmony with the limitations as well as the possibilities of the woodblock method.
Hokusai illustrated many books with a remarkable clarity of line and a compositional skill not found in the west
and when it came to the use of color he seems to have predicted the future with a profound influence on a number of illustrators
especially in the area of comic books.
He's now considered rightly to be the father of what has come to be called Manga, but his influential reach is much wider than that.
In 1796 a Alois Senefelder - a German just like Gutenberg - invented the lithographic printing press.
Instead of scratching away at a piece of wood
lithographs were made from chemically etching into stone and most
Importantly the process could incorporate color which could be added separately in repeated print runs to obtain a full-color effect.
Not everyone was impressed by this.
French artist Honoré Daumier stuck to his oil paints and with great success.
But he's far better known for his abilities as a cartoonist and caricaturist.
His comic images show extreme
sophistication and subtlety and although he also engraved it's his use of lithography to obtain
naturalistic sensitively shaded results which gives his work its distinctive light touch.
Gustave Doré a was a contemporary of Daumier's and also French although most of his work was produced in England.
And like Daumier he scorned color printing in favor of oils and given what he was capable of he had a point.
But just like Daumier. It's his illustration work which sets him apart.
Dore''s book illustrations took the art of etching and engraving to spectacular new heights of visual sophistication.
And it wasn't just his technique and eye for anatomy which singled him out.
He was effectively the first fantasy
illustrator and much of what he produced almost two hundred years ago still resonates in all forms of fantasy
Alongside the huge imaginative strides being made by Dore and others was the growth of
illustration as an educational medium.
Painstakingly accurate images were created which could record the natural world from the exotic to the commonplace.
Photography had been invented in the 1830s
but as yet the results were nothing to get excited about and certainly no rival for colour illustration.
One of the best and most successful of the wildlife artists was Edward Lear
but it's for his children's illustration and nonsense verse
he is rightly best remembered. Lear stands alone as an illustrator who pushed at the outer edges of what
illustration could be when it wasn't being
representational and it's this that makes his work positively visionary in its radical approach.
It would be another 60 years before others would run with the same idea.
At precisely the same time
1865
Lewis Carroll's alice in Wonderland was first published and it featured and was effectively defined by the
illustrations of John Tenniel.
This was work of astonishing creative imagination
but stylistically it fell into line with the cross-hatching tonal tradition
generally expected of illustrators comical or otherwise.
Nevertheless Tenniel's visualization of both Alice books remains the template lodged in our minds.
Tenniel was also one of a number of British illustrators contributing to the newly founded satirical magazine Punch.
Punch was extremely popular and featured humorous social and political
illustrations which like Daumier's may have been produced to make you laugh, but the standards of precision and detail were quite remarkable.
By the middle of the 19th century
newspapers were commonplace throughout Europe and
illustration was used to give a pictorial boost and sense of reality to the stories from
executions and murders through to major rail and mine tragedies.
Bloody conflicts such as the American Civil war were invariably illustrated to add drama to news items.
This was also the first war to be photographed, but capturing actual conflict was the job of the illustrator
for the time being at least.
What is widely recognized as the first iconic comic character appeared in Britain in
1867
Aly Sloper] was the creation of husband and wife team Charles Ross and Marie Duval.
Sloper first appeared in Judy magazine, one of Punch's rivals and
such was his popularity that by the 1880s he had his own comic.
By now the lithographic process had been
transformed to finally enable the capturing and printing of any image in whatever medium
So a mawkishly sentimental painting such as this by sir John Millais could be hijacked if enough money changed hands
Into a mawkishly sentimental ad for soap such as this.
It has to be said the victorians had a boundless appetite for the sentimental
and we can see this nowhere better than in the deluge of sickly sweet and poorly drawn greeting cards
which flooded the high street in the wake of full-color printing.
The freedom of expression that the new technology offered, led to a massive rise in illustration generally
but most conspicuously in children's books and
suddenly the likes of Walter Crane Kate Greenaway and Randolph Caldecott
could apply their visual talents to the telling and retelling of stories unencumbered by technical limitation.
Not every illustrator was seduced by color or for that matter of the brighter side of life.
Audrey Beardsley's brief career was exclusively monochrome and although irrefutably
beautiful in aesthetic terms he was happiest when illustrating strictly adult themes which kept him a largely underground phenomenon.
But some of his work did surface in mainstream publishing in magazines such as the Savoy and Yellow Book.
Many magazines, journals and periodicals
flourished through the late1800s across Europe and to a lesser extent in the States.
We've already mentioned Punch
But America had its own equivalent in Puck magazine. As a new country the Americans were late for the party
but the colorful and incredibly well drawn work of Joseph Keppler and
Victor Gilliam set a standard that few in Europe could hope to compete with.
Color posters of all kinds were everywhere in developed societies
and unlike the Millais painting some started using far more graphic eye catching techniques to entice the public.
Alphonse Mucha was of course the best-known of these and rightly so.
But there were others who added to the creative progression of illustration as a globally popular art form.
And you can see that there was much more variety of graphic approach than had previously been possible and
as the 19th century became the 20th century there was no doubt that the seemingly unstoppable
growth of illustration in all its forms was going to be a major influence on our daily lives.
And that's where we'll pick up the threads of the story in part two of the art of illustration