PICTORI c.01
Hello and Welcome to Pictori the Podcast on which I try to talk stories from the history of Illustration. I am Anton Hallmann, an freelance illustrator from Germany, who is currently living in Stockholm in Sweden.
First of all, I hope you don’t mind my accent, if so, I am sorry. Second what will this be about, you may ask. I always wanted to know more about the history of it. But I have no link to art history whatsoever other than Curiosity. Therefore this podcast won’t be academic by any means.
Well, I love illustration and for my master degree i digged into the history of it. And the stories I read about were wonderful and fascinating.
My main aim with this podcast is to entertain you a bit with some of these stories. And maybe to improve my English.
All this would not be possible without the great art historians and researchers i read. Because Until a few years ago there was a lack of research. 1 But Good News: it is changing. Largely because of American historians, for example the first complete history of illustration 2, which was published by Susan Doyle, Jaleen Grove and Whitney Sherman in 2018. So of course I will provide you the sources of each topic or fact, so you can dive deeper into it, too. This podcast won’t be academic by any means.
The last thing I would like to address too, is that I will not tackle art history in general. Means I will not talk about cave paintings nor old masters. Personally I like to concentrate on Editorial and also book Illustration. Especially from the 19th century till today. We will jump around in time. So it won’t be a chronological thing.
But for today we beginn at the beginning.
We will have a look at the early 1800s, what had happened there and how the the word illustration transformed.
Because until that time Illustration meant something different. The word itself can be traced back till the 14th century. 3
The earliest meanings were mostly spiritual. You can also hear the similarity to „illumination“ and the latin origin „Illustrates“ translates „to make bright“. 4 So much enlightenment.
Within the 18th century 5 the term turned „to make something clear or evident to the mind“. But not that someone draws a picture to explain a topic, It was more used in the sense of „explanation“. The 1771 released Complete Family Bible 6 had the subtext: With a complete Illustration of all the difficult passages. Here you can easily swap illustration with explanation. At the same time some educators 7 (theological or philosophical) recommend pictures where words could not get. Due to that, we have a first connection between images and illustration. But still the word was not used as we use it today.
Around the same time something big happens in Europe and America. And that was the Industrial Revolution. During that time print became a powerful industry. And with its rise the technology rapidly improved. Just to give you a little overview: In 1710 the First multi-colour engraving was produced by the German Jakob Christoph Le Blon. He used yellow, red and blue plates. One of the first images he sold was the self-portrait of Anthony Van Dyck. But he got quickly into financial trouble, 8 because he sold prints for 10 shilling, but the production costs were around 1 Pound. But still his invention is the basis for modern colour printing. In 1796 the lithography was invented. And four years later the wooded frame on printing machines was replaced with an iron frame. And that meant three advantages: it was faster, could print larger sheets and lasted longer. And the last big change I like to mention is the use of a cylinder instead of a flatbed. Means even more pace. And All this led us to a massive amount of publications.
But let’s go back to our friend the word „illustration“. Do we know when it was first used with the meaning we know today? The answer is yes and no. The word was not fancy before the 1820s. The most common use at the beginning of the 19th century was to clarify or explain something. Now it might get a bit messy. Because every medium could take the action of illustration. 9 For example „the text illustrates the image“. That means the text explains what we see on the picture. As Frank Luther Mott 10 says about early 19th century pictures in books and newspapers:
„Do not call them illustrations. They did not illustrate the text. The text illustrated them.“
This is a complex relationship and I won’t get any deeper into the topic. But if you are interested in the etymology of the word in the 19th century I recommend Christopher Lukasiks essay: The Meaning of Illustration in Early Nineteenth‐Century America. 11 Also linked in the sources.
But which words were used to describe images with texts? Most common for books was the word „embellishments“, „ornaments“ or „engravings“. 12
We can trace „to illustrate“ with the meaning we know today, back to a couple specific way mentions around the 1830s. Well Yay, thats a start.
And to be a bit more precise: The Oxford English Dictionary 13 picks an magazine article from 1831. For the first mention in France I can only guess. I found a mention in Pichots „Voyage“ 14 from 1825 which translates to „series of prints accompanying a poem“. And there are examples in the French dictionary 15 of even earlier mentions from 1813 and 1816. But they do not provide a source, where they are exactly from. So I could not check on that. In Germany its our friend Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 16 who used the term „to illustrate“ in a letter to the painter Eugen Napoleon Neureuther in 1830. Goethe asks for a marginal drawings or vignettes for some of his ballads. And they turned out beautifully. 17
That is what happens linguistically. But what happens directly in print?
Well a so called pictorial turn happens.
Nearly simultaneously so called Penny Magazines 18 were published. In England, the United States, Germany and France. These magazines included few wood engravings or lithographs. And well, they were popular, to say the least. For the English Penny magazine 200.000 copies were produced. A Daily Newspaper had a few hundred or a thousand copies. Books for example were still a luxury good in 1830 and produced in editions of 5000 copies. 19
Illustrations made the magazines success, but ultimately these illustrations also paved its downfall. Because more illustrations were needed to compete with other publishers. But despite its boom, it was to expensive.
On the basis of these penny magazines a new type was born: The illustrated Magazine.
And now clear the stage for The newsagent Herbert Ingram. He noticed the effect of Illustrations on sales, thats why started to publish the Illustrated London News 20 in 1842, which therefore was the first pictorial newspaper in the world. And keep in mind, that the readers of that era were not used to the term „illustrated“ in the context of „an image supporting a text“. A completely new way of seeing, reading and also consuming started here.
An issue had 16 pages and 32 woodcuts. The first one was action packed. It had images of the Afghanistan war, the great fire of Hamburg, a train accident in France and a steamship explosion Canada.
You may ask what is the difference to previous magazines with images. And rightfully so.
The periodicals 21 before, from the 16th century until the early 1800s often only had inlays with pictures. These were mostly lithographs or wood cuts. ,But now it was possible to connect images and texts on one page, due to the hose of wood engravings. A far more detailed and superfine method.
The idea of presenting news in pictures was quickly spreading. There was the English Illustrated Magazine, the L’Illustration in France and the Leipziger illustrierte Zeitung in Germany. Or Harpers Weekly in the United States.
All this, the rise of illustrated newspaper, magazines and book were a financial success. Illustrations seemed to seduce the reader, they were powerful. And for some way to powerful.
Illustration was not seen all positive. 22 The supportive side connected illustration to high culture, great artists like William Hogarth did Illustrations. They argued, that through cheap art prints high culture could find its way to the working Class and it could educate on health Issues, christianity or other things. Thats a great thing. The counterpart did not see it that way. For John Ruskin even the best prints were guilty of falling short of the high art of engraving. He mainly criticised the results of the industrial production.
A second basis of attack was a prejudice against pictorial representation itself. The accusations were following:
It was vulgar and distracting from higher matters. This was a radical evangelical position
It was not intellectual. For the time written or verbal arts was seen way above pictorial arts. And how dare you to combine those.
That it turns back to a babyish reception. Because children need pictures, but not grown ups. 23 24 25
A couple of authors wrote it way more catchy. But what that meant for the Illustration industry, we will Hear in the next chapter of Pictori.
SOURCES:
Print Mag: Illustration History Gets the Care and Attention It Deserves, 2017
Merriam Webster Dictionary - “Illustration
Merriam Webster Dictionary - “Illustrates”
Picture World: Image, Aesthetics, and Victorian New Media, Rachel Teukolsky, Oxford University Press, 2020, p.149
see also p.149
Grammar Wars: Language as Cultural Battlefield in 17th and 18th Century England: Language as Cultural Battlefield in 17th and 18th Century England, Linda C Mitchell, Routledge, 2017, p.39 f
An Inquiry into William Blake’s Method of Color Printing, Robert N. Essick and Joseph Viscomi, IN: Blake Magazine, Volume 35, Issue 3, p.74
About Printmaking I recommend Britannica: Printmaking. Here you get a nice overview
Art for the Middle Classes: America's Illustrated Magazines of the 1840s, Cynthia Lee Patterson, Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2011, p.87
see also, p.88
The Meaning of Illustration in Early Nineteenth‐Century America, Christopher Lukasik, IN: A Companion to Illustration, John Wiley & Sons, 2019, chapter. 18
see also p.425
see Oxford English Dictionary - “Illustration” (needs a supscription)
“estampe, suite d'estampes accompagnant un poème”, Pichot, Voyage litt. et hist. en Angleterre, t. 1, p. 173, ibid., p. 207, also see here
see Encyclopédie Universelle - “Illustration”
letter to Eugen Napoleon Neureuther Nr. 47/218. 26. September 1830
Have a look at them here
History of Information - Exploiting New Technologies, Charles Knight Publishes "The Penny Magazine," the First Low Priced Mass-Circulation Magazine
For a little overview about that I recommend Britannica: Book Publishing
Picture World: Image, Aesthetics, and Victorian New Media, Rachel Teukolsky, Oxford University Press, 2020, p.149
See also BNA for some old issues
Illustrierte Periodika, Martina Lauster, 2005.
for whole paragraph see: The Lure of Illustration in the Nineteenth Century: Picture and Press, L. Brake, M. Demoor, Springer, 2009, p.5
and
Picture World: Image, Aesthetics, and Victorian New Media, Rachel Teukolsky, Oxford University Press, 2020, p.150
and
Zeichnung im Dienste der Literaturvermittlung: Moritz Retzschs Illustrationen als Ausdruck bürgerlichen Kunstverstehens, Viola Hildebrand-Schat, Königshausen & Neumann, 2004, p.378