Woodcut Engravings

Rudolf Cronau (1855–1939) was a German-American printer, illustrator and journalist. He was well known for his illustrations, articles and books about the American West. Cronau came to America in 1881 and traveled to Yellowstone National Park in 1882. His drawings are carefully detailed and finely rendered in a style that clearly displays the influence of his training in the German Romantic tradition of the Royal Academy. These woodcut engravings were published as collotypes in a book entitled “Von Wunderland zu Wunderland.” Below is a ca. 1885 woodcut etching of Mammoth Hot Springs by Cronau. We have 3 Cronau woodcut etchings available to order as fine-art prints, including this one of Mammoth Hot Springs.

 

A Brief History of Woodcut Engraving

The beginning of the art of wood-engraving in Europe, the time when paper was first laid down upon an engraved wood block and the first print was taken off, is unknown. The principal of making impressions by means of lines cut in relief upon wood was known to the ancients, who used engraved wooden stamps to indent figures and letters in soft substances like wax and clay, and possibly, to print colors on surfaces, as had been done from early times in India in the manufacture of cloth. Similar stamps were used in the middle Ages by notaries and other public officials to print signatures on documents, by Italian cloth-makers to impress colors on silk and other fabrics, and by the illuminators of manuscripts to strike outlines of initial letters.

It is more probable that the art began in the workshops of the goldsmiths, who were skilled in engraving. They were engravers who remained goldsmiths because the art of printing from metal plates was unknown. The goldsmiths were the artists of Europe during the two hundred years previous to the invention of wood-engraving.

Wood engraving became the Democratic Art because it accounted for the spread of images into modern life. The art was more connected with the popular life than any other art of the Renaissance. Wood engraving yielded to copperplate-engraving because the taste of the age forced it to abandon its own province, and to contend with its rival on ground where its peculiar powers were ineffective.

The wood engraving process was the first of the modern mass media, and in an age when images were comparatively scarce, their impact was magnified. Printed in relief from the raised areas left after the engraver gouged out the voids in the end-grain of boxwood blocks -- or from stereotypes or electrotypes of such blocks -- wood engravings were less expensive than prints produced by lithography or intaglio engraving on steel. They were also less costly than stereographic cards, the primary medium for disseminating photographs before the development of the halftone printing process. Wood engravings were the printed images most numerous in modest as well as elegant homes.

Douglas Woodward produced hundreds of landscape images of the United States, Europe, and the Holy Land for popular books and magazines in the decades following the Civil War. For the many thousands of Americans who were intensely curious about their newly reunited and westward-expanding nation and how it compared with its trans-Atlantic neighbors, his compositions provided welcome answers. The wood and steel engravings based on his drawings were so widely disseminated that near the end of the century he was termed one of the country's "best-known painters and illustrators" and, along with Thomas Moran (see above and below) and Harry Fenn, one of "the pioneers of American landscape illustration."

 

From the beginning of his fifty-year career as an artist, Woodward's goal was to be a painter in oils, the calling long viewed as the most significant and prestigious among the visual arts and, indeed, often still so regarded today. Yet to earn a living as a painter in the late 1860s and early 1870s was highly problematic compared to the opportunities afforded by the flourishing market for black-and-white illustrations. The demand for drawings to serve as the basis for wood engravings had increased dramatically since the advent in the 1850s of illustrated weekly newspapers such as Harper's Weekly and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. A number of artists some ten years older than Woodward, including Winslow Homer, Thomas Moran, William Ludwell Sheppard, John La Farge, and James D. Smillie, had already taken the illustrator's path.

The Practice of Wood Engraving

Box is the wood mostly used by modern wood-engravers; pear-tree, and other wood of a similar grain and fiber, being now only used in executing large cuts for posting-bills. In the time of Albert Durer, pear-tree appears to have been most generally employed. The original blocks of the ” Triumphs of Maximilian,” now preserved in the Imperial Library at Vienna, are all of pear-tree. In the time of Papillon, though box was preferred for small cuts requiring great delicacy in the execution, the wood of the apple, pear, and service tree, was still frequently employed. Papillon considered that the box brought from Turkey, though of larger size; was inferior in quality to that of Provence, Italy, and Spain. Next to box, Papillon preferred the wood of the service tree. In his time it appears to have been customary to engrave on the length-way, not on the cross section of the wood. The old wood-engravers, who chiefly used pear-tree and other wood of similar grain, appear to have used, for the purpose of cutting their outlines, a knife with a point slightly curved inwards, in the manner of what is termed a “Wharncliffe,” the old “jack-a-legs,” with a straight edge, is now nearly obsolute, both name and thing. This knife they held in the manner of a pen, and cut towards them, not from them, as is now the practice in using the graver. A figure of such a knife is frequently to be seen in old wood-cuts, together with that of a graver which was probably used in the execution of cross-hatchings.

Box, for the purposes of engraving, is sawn into slices, about three-quarters of an inch thick, which is the height of type, and the crossway of the wood. Sometimes, for the purpose of obtaining pieces of greater length, it is sawn obliquely. Such pieces, however, are not so good to engrave on as those of the same wood which are sawn directly across, in consequence of the obliquity of the grain impeding the equable action of the point of the tool; and rendering it extremely difficult to cut a clear line, in consequence of small portions tearing away at the sides. As the usual diameter of even the largest logs of box does not exceed five or six inches, it becomes necessary when a large block is wanted, to join several pieces together, and to do this properly, so that the joinings may not be perceptible in the impression, requires very great dexterity on the part of the person who prepares the block; indeed, the joining together of several pieces of box so as to form one large compact block of uniformly smooth and levelsurface, requires as much skill as the most delicate piece of cabinet-work. The largest block of this kind ever made or engraved, was the “View of London,” presented in 1843, by the proprietors of the ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS to their subscribers.

The best box is that which is of a yellow colour, like gold, throughout the whole surface, displaying neither specks of white nor reddish-coloured rings.  Such box being of a close grain, and uniformly dense and tenacious, allows of the lines being cut with the greatest clearness and precision, but is also the least liable to display unevenness at the surface, which is usually occasioned by inequality in the density of the several layers of the wood. Wood of a red colour usually wants tenacity, and cuts soft and short; and if it displays many distinct rings it is extremely liable to shrink irregularly, and to thus render it difficult to obtain a perfect impression. Wood confining whitish specks or streaks is apt to break away under the graver in such places. All kinds of box are subject to warp or turn up at the edges and become hollowed in the middle, but more especially such as have not been well seasoned. When a block has become slightly warped in the progress of engraving, it will generally return to a level on being kept for a day or two with its face downwards on a table or shelf. Sometimes, however, it can only be remedied by means of over-lays in printing, to bring up the hollow parts of the surface.

Some artists, before they commence their drawing, are accustomed to whiten the smooth surface of the block with a slight wash of flake white and gum-water; others merely rub the surface with a little finely-powdered Bath brick, mixed with pure water; rubbing it off perfectly clean when dry. The latter seems to be the least objection-able mode of preparing the slippery surface of the block for drawing on with a black-lead pencil, the usual instrument with which draw-ings on wood are made. All the lines which appear in a wood-cutaregenerally drawn on the block by the designer or draftsman in pencil,with the exception of what are technically called ” tints,” indicative of the atmosphere and the sky, such tints being merely washed in with Indian ink. The most faithful wood-engraving of an artist’s design is that in which the engraver has, without adding or diminishing, worked out a perfect facsimile; this, however, according to those who make drawings on wood, is but rarely effected, there being always some alterations or omissions made by the engravers, and invariably for the worse. Wood-engravers, however, deny the truth of the charge in its absolute extent; for, while they admit that a drawing is occasionally marred in their hands, they also insist that it is some-times mended. They also further allege, in their own justification, that an artist who has but little knowledge of the practice of wood-engraving, and no idea whatever of adapting his drawing to the purposes of printing, will frequently produce a design, which, though it may appear very pretty on the block, may yet take more time and pains to engrave than it is worth; and prove, after all, but an indifferent woodcut, which it may be very difficult to print well, even with the aid of overlays, by a hand-press, and utterly impossible to print decently at a steam-press. From the want of such knowledge in the designer, it frequently happens that wood-cuts, though carefully and elaborately engraved, yet appear very insipid when printed; and thus the engraver, who, closely adhering to the drawing, may have done for them all that his art could effect, is blamed for deficiencies which are entirely owing to the designer. For the production of a drawing that will print well and display the full power of wood-engraving, something more is required than the ability to make it on paper or on wood: to succeed—unless by chance—it is necessary that the designer should know how to manage his drawing, so that it may be capable of being properly printed; and he should always bear in mind that he is working for the press.

In the present day it is usual to have the subject completely drawn on the block, in all its details, and with the intended effect of light and shade; in the time of Papillon, however, it appears to have been customary with the French engravers to trace at first on the block merely the outlines of the subject from a finished drawing on paper, to which they referred for the details and the effect, as they proceeded with their work, just as a copperplate engraver refers to the drawing of his subject.

As the pencil-drawing on the block would be liable to become obliterated in the course of engraving, were it to remain quite exposed, it is customary for wood-engravers to cover all the block, except the part on which they may be actually employed, with a cap of paper ,fitting close and tied tightly round the edges. As the drawing on the block is apt to be injured by the breath, a kind of screen or shade, formed of a piece of card-board or stiff paper, covering the nostrils and mouth, and secured by a string passing behind the ears, is frequently worn by wood-engravers, in damp or frosty weather, when employed on fine work. They also usually wear a shade, both to protect the eyes, and to more particularly confine the view to the work before them.

As all the lines in an engraved wood-block are in relief, their extremities, both at the edges and in the middle of the subject, are ex-tremely liable to come off too heavy in printing, in consequence of the paper in such places being pressed not only on to, but, to a certain extent, down over them. In order to remedy this, when it is particularly desirable that certain parts should be lightly printed, and show the lines gradually declining till they become lost in the paper, the block is lowered in such places before the drawing is made on it; by which means the pressure of the platten or the cylinder on such places is reduced, and the desired lightness obtained. In vignette subjects where the edges are required to be light, the lowering of the block in such places is extremely simple ; lowering in the middle of the block, however, is not so easy an operation, and before it can be properly done, it is necessary to have the parts intended to be light sketched in as as a guide to the operator. For lowering a block in this manner, a tool something like a burnisher of a copperplate engraver is used. Sometimes also the lines in such places are lowered by means of a fine file, after the cut has been engraved on a perfectly flat surface. Though “lowering” ) has been claimed as a recent invention, it was known to the old wood-engravers : Papillon has described his method of lowering by scraping down the lines after the block  was engraved; and instances of lowering are frequent in Bewick’s works.

When a block has been damaged, or badly engraved, in any part, the injury may be repaired, if not extending over a large surface. This is effected by drilling the part out, and inserting a plug, on the face of which the defective portion of the subject is re-drawn or engraved.  Many instances of such repairs are perceptible in on wood-engravings, but in them the face of the plug is generally square. However well the repair may have been made, it is extremely difficult  to prevent the trace of it appearing, to a scrutinizing eye, like a white line round the plug, which is very liable to become loosened from the action of the press. Of a cut which has had a plug inserted it is generally advisable to take a cast, and to print from that, and not from the original block.

The tools which a wood-engraver employs to execute his work are extremely simple. They consist of gravers, to cut the lines defining the forms, and suggesting the idea of the varied tint and texture of his subject; and of chisels and gouges, to cut or scoop out the larger masses of wood where the subject has to appear white. The gravers are of two kinds—gravers simply so called, and “tint-tools.”

The gravers-proper are used to cut the various lines, straight, crooked, curved, or crossing, which define the forms of the different objects, and indicate their character and texture; tint-tools, which are thinner in the blade, and more acutely annular at the point than gravers-proper, are used to cut the parallel lines which constitute what is technically termed a tint. In the use of these tools, in clearly cutting the more delicate portions of his subject, is displayed the engraver’s skill; if in the adaptation of lines of all kinds to significantly convey as complete, an idea of his subject as his art will allow, he displays both a knowledge of pictorial effect, and the power of representing it by the means of wood-engraving, he is justly entitled to the name of an artist.

Most wood-engravers, when at work, are accustomed to place the block on a leather sand-bag, which at once affords a firm rest, and allows of the block being turned with facility in any direction, by the left hand, while the right is employed in cutting a line. Some, however, place the block on a kind of frame, on which it is moveable by means of a pivot. Of the comparative merits of those two modes of resting the block it is not easy to decide, seeing that each is adopted by some of the best wood-engravers of the time. Those who have been accustomed to the one mode rarely abandon it for the other; to us, however, the sand-bag appears the most preferable, as being the simplest, and affording the greatest facility of turning the block, and suiting it, by the motion of the left hand, to the action of the graver.