THE DRAWINGS OF DANIEL VIERGE.—ORIGINALS AND REPRODUCTIONS.* CONCURRENTLY with the
publication of this handsome English version of Vierge's masterpiece of illustration, the original pen-and-ink drawings are on view for a few days in the exhibi- tion of which the particulars are given above, so that there is an opportunity for all students of black-and-white to see the actual work of one of the most original and influential artists in that medium, and at the same time by a direct comparison of these with the printed blocks to study the vexed question of process-reproduction. To complete the study, the original edition of the drawings should be referred to, as published by Bonhoure in Paris in 1882. In that first edition, the drawings were very considerably reduced ; in the present, some are of the original size, others reduced by half or quarter. The photo-engraver was in both cases Gillot ; the printer in the
• (1) Exhibition in the Hall of Barnard's Inn, Holborn ; open to the public from Friday, December 2nd, to Wednesday, December 7th.—(2.) Pablo de Segooi,, the Spanish Sharper ; translated from the original of Francisco de Quevedo-Villegas. Illustrated with one hundred and ten drawings by Daniel Vierge ; together with comments on them by Joseph Pennell, and an Essay on the Life and Writings of Quevedo by Henry Edward Watts. London : Fisher Unwin. 1S92.
first instance, Lahure ; in the second, Messrs. Unwin, of the Gresham Press. The text of the book may be dismissed from consideration in a word or two. It is a story of the " picaresque " or " Gil Bias " type, and poor at that. Its author is ranked by Mr. Watts as second after Cervantes among Spanish humourists ; but if second, be is no proxime accessit. He took Lucian for his model, that fountain-head of all the humourists, but though one could parallel episodes in this story from pieces like The Ass by that writer, there is little of poetry or fun to relieve in Quevedo the Hogarthian squalor of incident and treatment. But the text offered to the illustrator abundance of picturesque material in character, setting, dress, and situation, and his grotesque design gives a grace of art to the stuff that saves it. Let us deal, then, with the illustrator only.
Vierge is a Spaniard, born in 1851, and trained at Madrid under Madrazo and others. Since 1869 he has lived in Paris, working at the illustration of books, and papers like Le Monde Illustre and La Vie Modern. His drawings for Pablo sur- prised the artistic world in 1882, and at first or second hand have had so wide an effect on black-and-white draughtsmen, that they seem, like Shakespeare, to be fall of quotations. But the Pablo of 1882 was unfinished, because the artist was stricken with paralysis while it was in progress, losing his speech and the use of his right hand. With indomitable pluck he trained himself to draw with his left hand, and after a lapse of years the work was completed as we have it to-day. Not only so, but many of the original ninety illus- trations have been redrawn, and several replaced by others. The complete set of drawings is on view in Barnard's Inn, and for sale as a set, and they might fittingly be bought with public or private money to enrich a public collection.
When the two editions, the French and the English, are put side by side, it becomes clear at once how much, in this so-called mechanical method of reproduction, depends on skilled and artistic printing. The engraver—that is, the man who makes the photographic process-block and re-touches it by hand—was the same in both cases, namely Gillot, and the excellence of the result in blocks or parts of blocks here and there in both editions allows us to eliminate this source of variation, and to lay the burden of defects on the printer. Now, while the printing in the English edition is, perhaps, as good as can be done just now in this country, it is not nearly so good as that of the French. Partly, perhaps, it is due to a worse choice of paper ; but, anyway, the French work is much pleasanter in the quality and colour of its lines and blots, it has much more of the sweetness of wood-cut work than the harsher and poorer English printing. In many parts, moreover, of the latter, the finer pen-work of the background or of details has printed unduly heavy and thick ; and, in the case of effects depending on close hatching, as in shadow, it has at times even gone rotten through clogging of the ink. So, too, with the charac- teristic black patches, which come out too absolutely black, instead of having a play of colour in them. A dratights- man like Vierge urges printing to its utmost power, and even beyond its present powers. With a band-press and a skilled printer, it is possible to vary the weight of the black lines by altering the pressure in different parts of the block ; with steam-printing on a cylinder this is at present impossible ; and the effort to be made by printers is to devise some way out of the difficulty, as by moulding the surface printed. A close inspection of the plates will show one means by which the process-engraver tries to get over the difficulty. The faint or background parts will be found to be rendered often by a broken or dotted line. A glance at the originals will show that this represents a fine continuous line of the pen. Bat as the process-block does not reproduce those finer differences, the engraver cuts the line across to grey it down. The result, when on so large a scale as to be noticeable, is unpleasant, and can only be regarded as a makeshift. Another printing device, that of a mechanical ground or shade applied to parts of the block, is used, rather unfortunately, in the English book. So much, perhaps, is desirable by way of fault-finding, since its result may be to egg on the printers to greater achievements. The general effect is one of great brilliancy, and occasionally the results are technically remarkable, as in the rendering of the starved schoolmaster's cloak. In the figure of the beggar with the dog, on the other hand, the charm of one of Vierge's finest drawings has almost departed. The next question that a comparison suggests, is the merit of the two scales of reproduction. We are not told whether Vierge, in the first instance, drew with a view to the greater reduction ; or, in the second, approved of the less reduction. If he had no fixed idea in the matter, he can hardly have the credit Mr. Pennell gives him of keeping an eye constantly in drawing on what the engraved result would be. The larger scale, of course, shows more clearly a mul- titude of fine details of form and expression (it hardly, though the editor says so, makes the lines seem less fine). But it does, in a good many cases, give an effect more scattered and poorer in tone. Vierge relies for effect on spots of almost pure black and white on a rather equable grey produced by his line work. When this network of lines is formed by the bigger meshes of the new edition, the blacks, besides being themselves too black, tell with greater violence against the lighter ground, and remain isolated patches. The deeper grey of the closer printing plays up to them, and the picture is better pulled together. The mannerism of those patches has grown upon the artist, and in the later drawings they appear constantly in the cloaks of the figures, divided up by glaring white edges. This, again, is more obtrusive on a large scale. On the other hand, there are many miracles of minuteness that were almost beyond vision or clear printing in the French book. Take, for instance, the two mules and their masters on p. 81, a drawing given by Mr. Pennell of the original size. Even on this scale the distant mule and man are incredibly fine in workmanship, drawn freely and largely, and yet of microscopic proportions.
If we pass now from the technique of reproduction to the drawings themselves, this last example suggests their most obvious merit. They are wonders of craftsmanship, of execution. The author of them has an amazing power of eyesight, an amazing precision and docility of hand. He can lay a ground of parallel lines of the greatest fineness and closeness without a stumble or tremor, or control his line to the utmost subtlety and exactitude of curve, while pre- serving the appearance of flow and freedom. These qualities Mr. Pennell praises with the warmth to be expected from one who is himself so accomplished a craftsman. But he makes a huge jump when, using the ambiguous word " technique " to lump all artistic excellences under one head, he forthwith exalts the marvellous executant to the level of the greatest artists, if, indeed, he allows that there are any ea great. Subject, he says, is nothing, technique is everything, and it is for technique only that Rembrandt and Velazquez are reputed. He forgets that between the subject that is as yet nothing, and the manual execution there is a third term- design—and it is this that dignifies a subject, and inspires a technique, and ranges artists in their final order. Now, it is. when he is tried by this test that doubts come in about Vierge. At times his design is admirable, as in the mock death-bed scene and several others, but he is also capable of combining with his figures landscapes that are no better than tracings from photographs, and trees that have as much expression as cut paper. And these elements of realism and trick often come in to spoil a well-observed and contrived bit of drawing in the figures, human or animal, of the composition. You have on one page a portrait of himself, a poor enough rendering of a photograph ; on another, the head of a beggar or a mule that is a marvel of expression ; and the execution, always brilliant, varies in kind directly with the quality of design in the image. Mr. Pennell is most irritating when having, rightly enough, put Vierge on a pinnacle, he proceeds to assail the pinnacles that overpeer his idol's. Holbein's handling is " heavy and laboured beside his." This is the handling of that Holbein who. did the Windsor drawings. Albert Diirer, compared with him, " knew nothing of light and shade." How do we know 1 There is almost no light and shade in Vierge. There is an ingenious effect of dazzle, bat there is no approach attempted to truth of tone, shadows being quite capriciously used for decoration, and supplied to figures that tell as light objects against the sky that throws the shadow. This is one convention ; Diirer's was another. Raphael's Madonna di San Sisto is as "blatant a piece of shoddy commercialism as was ever produced." Let us put colour aside, for, as we know from the Blenheim picture, that could be bad enough, almost blatant. But " shoddy " and " commercial" seem pointless words in this connection, and that drawing, say, in the Print Room of a Madonna'shead by Raphael, remains an expression of
beauty beyond the scope of Vierge's art, and executed in a technique absolutely sufficient to its purpose. But perhaps it is Mr. Pennell's way of taking his pleasure to have a wild grievance against somebody or something; and if he taxes the pleasure he offers to the public in this book only by the amount of an impetuous preface, it is not for us to complain.
It may be added that, besides the Pablo drawings at Bar- nard's Inn, there are some others of various degrees of merit, but one or two of great beauty, executed with the brush in black-and-white ; and, in particular, a courtyard, with Spanish figures, and a flock of turkeys, that is as masterly in one technique as the Pablo drawings in another.
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