Tate Britain

Attentive readers will recall that I have been wondering about how wood engravers of the 19th century managed to extract black line on white ground pictures from a medium which is essentially white line on black ground, with the Dalziel brothers being master craftsmen of same. See, for example, references 1 and 2.

I had thought that a visit to the print room at the British Museum might be the way forward, thinking that a visit there would be the same relaxed affair as visiting the print room at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge was near sixty years ago. But I was quite wrong: getting to visit the British Museum for such a purpose was quite a performance. Happily, I thought to check out the Tate Britain who held quite a good selection of these engravings - and visiting them was quite straightforward. A few emails to make an appointment and a couple more to list what it was that I wanted to see, booked my visit to the gallery and I was all set.

A rather cold day as it happened, but dry. I arrived at Epsom Station to find that the cold had kept the usual indigent away, but there was an otherwise respectable lady sitting on the country platform with her luggage and with a newspaper folded over her head, perhaps to protect her hairdo from the breeze, perhaps to keep her head warm.

To Vauxhall to pull a Bullingdon there and go the long way to the Tate, that is to say via Lambeth Bridge, thus avoiding the cycle lane complications at both end of Vauxhall Bridge.

Make my way to the Atterbury Street entrance, which turns out to be about as far from Prints & Drawings room as you can be. Which meant that I went through Rothko's Seagram murals, given to the Tate in 1969 and housed next to the Turners of the Turner Collection. Where several people were just sitting, soaking up the atmosphere, rather as I might in a cathedral. So while I do not yet see it, given that a lot of people clearly do, perhaps it is time I gave it a try. Having them here certainly seems a more likely proposition than hanging them in a fancy restaurant in New York. The one above, reasonably representative of the set is called 'Red on Maroon' and was painted in 1959. Seemingly 'influenced by the atmosphere of a library designed by the Italian artist Michelangelo (1475–1564)'.

The Prints & Drawings room turned out to be light and airy with plenty of purpose built, not very old, brown wood - that is to say desks to sit at and stands on which to put the works to be viewed. And apart from the young lady in charge, I had the place to myself. The only catch being that I was only allowed an hour or so, and what with their clock being winter time rather than summer time, I only got to look at six of the nine engravings selected (and snapped above), selected to try and be reasonably representative of what was done. With some of it, say second from right in the bottom row, much more like what the new wave did in the first half of the twentieth century, say fifty years later, by which time wood engraving for illustrating books, magazines and newspapers had more or less died out. Illustrations for books, magazines and newspapers being what the Dalziel workshop - not to say factory - turned out. This extinction event being nicely summarised in an article in the 'Art Libraries Journal' at reference 5. With one big difference being that in the 19th century wood engravers usually engraved other people's drawings and paintings, with, for example, the originals of four of those snapped above being by Millais; in the 20th century the engravers mostly did their own thing.

Various sizes, all somewhere between the modern A4 and A5, mostly nearer the smaller A5 than the larger A4.

Viewing helped along by a fine magnifying glass, a two to three inch affair with a black Bakelite handle, the sort of thing you used to be able to buy in opticians. This one was on loan and might have been bought from the Russian shop in Holborn at a time when the Russians were keen to earn hard currency with good quality, cheap optical stuff, that is to say, stuff involving lenses. To which end they may have co-opted the services of suitable engineers from East Germany.

Notes to be taken with a pencil rather than any kind of pen. Engravings - which were not under glass, which was good - were not to be touched or moved.

Various other snippets follow.

Sir John Everett Millais, Bt. - The Wise Virgins - 1864. An illustration to 'The Parables of our Lord' engraved by the Dalziel Brothers. Something about the wise ones remembering to put enough oil in their lamps. Bing offers various alternative pictures - some rather lurid - and Wikipedia offers an explanation, at reference 7.

Contrary to what I had thought, there was not all that much cross hatching work, that is to say laboriously cutting out the white between close packed cross hatched lines. Plenty of hatching, with the lines going just the one way, with cutting the white lines not being that different to drawing the black lines. But hatching with which the engraver could evoke great subtlety of tone - say in the dark robes, second from the left in the top row - or in the mountains, third from the left in the top row. Where something darker was needed, the usual thing seemed to be stippling rather than attempting to replicate the cross hatching of a pencil drawing or of a copper or steel engraving.

Nor was there much in the way of anchors in the interior of the engravings, by which I mean clear patches of black or white with clean boundaries. Patches which can be used as spring boards for the rest of the design. Indeed, there was very little solid black at all.

Unsurprisingly, black lines were used to define the boundaries of mostly white objects against a mostly white background. But cutting away the white to make these black lines must have been very awkward in places.

Engravers of this generation seemed to have trouble with faces. While hands and feet looked well enough on the paper, not so clever under the magnifying glass.

In places, there were more or less irrelevant rural cameos in the background. Just like you get in Italian paintings of the Renaissance. For example, the painting featured at reference 8.

The engravings are mostly signed in black line on white. Sometimes the signatures were carefully executed, sometimes carelessly. Perhaps it depended how tired the engraver was by that point.

All in all, one could see how it could all be done. But how on earth could one keep it up, hour after hour, day after day? And what about proper lighting and proper spectacles?

For the purposes of taking notes, I had made small reproductions on paper, perhaps three times smaller than the originals, the production of which had introduced horizontal striping. No doubt an image processing buff could explain what was going on here. 

Maybe I shall be back at some point to finish off.

From there onto the cheese shop at Seven Dials, an uphill run which made me think that I was fitter than I was before the plague, where for once I took some Stilton as well as my usual Lincolnshire Poacher. The Hafod of the last occasion (at reference 6) being declined on this occasion.

It now being lunchtime, I thought long and hard about taking a fish finger sandwich at 'Lowlander', a bar with a Belgian flavour in Drury Lane at which Cable & Wireless once used to entertain me, in the margins of very important business meetings. In the end I desisted and settled for another Bullingdon to take me back to Waterloo.

Aldwych was in a bit of a state and I managed to miss the entrance to the new southbound cycle lane across Waterloo Bridge, which meant that I held a bus up in the motor vehicle lane for maybe as much as 30 seconds. The driver soon worked out that, having made the mistake, that there was not much that I could do apart from pedal, and settled down behind me.

Cycle manners for the day generally quite good, with just a few Deliveroo drivers jumping the lights. Plus one rather plump and rather plain young lady: perhaps she was cross with the world and needed to take it out on something.

The record, such as it is, my having forgotten to take my telephone with me on this occasion, suggests that I did not stop at the Half Way House, Raynes Park, the Blenheim or anywhere else on the way home. Perhaps supplies there were known to be in good shape.

PS: the next morning: it being the time of month when I look at my credit card, I find that the record, such as it was, was quite wrong. I took a snack at Gail's and a beverage at the Half Way House, both at Earlsfield. Not very impressed at Gail's, where the nearest thing to a sandwich they had also had a great deal of savoury goo. OK at first touch, but one had had enough of it by the last. I remember the offering in the branch in the vicinity of Tate Modern suiting me rather better, but that must be a few years ago now and I dare say things have moved on since then. In which case, moved downhill. Perhaps yet another chain with a good idea which has expanded too fast for the quality control team to keep up.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/09/a-queen-of-egypt.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/09/fake-127.html.

Reference 3: The Brothers Dalziel: A record of fifty year's work in conjunction with many of the most distinguished artists of the period 1840-1890. With selected pictures by, and autograph letters from... - Methuen - 1901.

Reference 4: https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain. 

Reference 5: Nineteenth Century Wood Engraving: its commercial decline - Jan Conway - 2016.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/09/hafod.html.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Ten_Virgins.

Reference 8: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2012/11/jigsaw-2-series-2.html.