Book illustration

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

illustration of crowing rooster facing the rising sun with a man, dressed in nightcap and sleeping gown, leaning out the window. Background shows two small figures walking along a fenced road.
Illustration from "The House that Jack Built" in The Complete Collection of Pictures & Songs; engraving and printing by Edmund Evans, illustration by Randolph Caldecott (1887)
One of 12 illustrations in the 4th edition of Paradise Lost by John Milton, by John Baptist Medina, 1688

The illustration of

Gavarni.[1]

History

Book illustration as we now know it evolved from early European woodblock printing. In the early 15th century, playing cards were created using block printing, which was the first use of prints in a sequenced and logical order. "The first known European block printings with a communications function were devotional prints of saints."

Illumination with doodles and drawings, including an open-mouthed human profile, with multiple tongues sticking out. Copulata, "De Anima", f. 2a. HMD Collection, WZ 230 M772c 1485.

As printing took off and books became common, printers began to use woodcuts to illustrate them. Hence, "centers for woodblock playing-card and religious-print production became centers for illustrated books.[2] Printers of large early books often reused several times, and also had detachable "plugs" of figures, or the attributes of saints, which they could rearrange within a larger image to make several variations.[3]: 26–34  Luxury books were for a few decades often printed with blank spaces for manual illumination in the old way.

Unlike later techniques, woodcut uses

intaglio printing techniques of engraving and etching which became dominant by about 1560–1590, first in Antwerp, then Germany, Switzerland and Italy, the important publishing centres.[3]: 411–412  They remained so until the later 19th century. They required the illustrations to be printed separately, on a different type of printing press
, so encouraging illustrations that took a whole page, which became the norm.

Engraving and etching gave sharper definition and finer detail to the illustrations, and rapidly became dominant by the late 15th century, often with the two techniques mixed together in a single plate. A wide range of books were now illustrated, initially mostly on a few pages, but with the number of illustrations gradually rising over the period, and tending to use more etching than engraving. Particular kinds of books such as scientific and technical works,

children's books, and atlases now became very heavily illustrated, and from the mid-18th century many of the new form of the novel
had a small number of illustrations.

Illustration of "Evening Prayer" from the 1845 illuminated Book of Common Prayer, chromolithographed in blue, red, gold and green.

Luxury books on geographical topics and

colour printing became widely used before the mid-19th century, when several different techniques became successful. In East Asia colour printing with many different woodblocks was increasing widely used; the fully developed technique in Japan was called nishiki-e, and used in books as well as ukiyo-e
prints.

Lithography (invented by Alois Senefelder in 1798 and made public in 1818) allowed for more textual variety and accuracy. This is because the artist could now draw directly on the printing plate itself.[5]: 135 

New techniques developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries revolutionized book illustrations and put new resources at the disposal of artists and designers. In the early nineteenth century, the

offset lithography made color printing cheaper and less-time consuming for the artist. The process used a chemical process to transfer a photographic negative to a rubber surface before printing.[5]
: 190 

There were various artistic movements and their proponents in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that took an interest in the enrichment of book design and illustration. For example, Aubrey Beardsley, a proponent of both Art Nouveau and Aestheticism, had a great influence over book illustrations. Beardsley specialized in erotica and some of the best examples of his drawings were for the first English edition of Oscar Wilde's Salomé (1894).[5]: 191 

Contamination of historic books

In the 19th century, Paris green and similar arsenic pigments were often used on front and back covers, top, fore and bottom edges, title pages, book decorations, and in printed or manual colorations of illustrations of books. Since February 2024, several German libraries started to block public access to their stock of 19th century books to check for the degree of poisoning.[6][7][8][9][10]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "History of Book Illustration". Archived from the original on 2010-03-29.[ISBN missing]
  2. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
    p. 79.
  3. ^ 26–34, 247–252, 411–412.
  4. ISBN 0-30006883-2; Crone, G. R., review of Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. A Series of Atlases in Facsimile, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 130, No. 4 (December 1964), pp. 577–578, Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), Article DOI: 10.2307/1792324, JSTOR
  5. ^ .
  6. ^ dbv-Kommission Bestandserhaltung (December 2023). "Information zum Umgang mit potentiell gesundheitsschädigenden Pigmentbestandteilen an historischen Bibliotheksbeständen (hier: arsenhaltige Pigmente)" (PDF). www.bibliotheksverband.de (in German). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2024-03-17. Retrieved 2024-03-17. (6 pages)
  7. Universität Bielefeld. 2024. Archived
    from the original on 2024-03-11. Retrieved 2024-03-06.
  8. ^ "Werke aus dem 19. Jahrhundert: Arsenverdacht – Unibibliothek überprüft 15.000 Bücher". www.spiegel.de (in German). 2024-03-06. Archived from the original on 2024-03-17. Retrieved 2024-03-06.
  9. ^ dbv-Kommission Bestandserhaltung (2024-02-29). "Aktuelles: Information zum Umgang mit potentiell gesundheitsschädigenden Pigmentbestandteilen, wie arsenhaltigen Pigmenten, an historischen Bibliotheksbeständen". www.bibliotheksverband.de (in German). Retrieved 2024-03-06.
  10. ^ Pilz, Michael (2024-03-04). "Warum von grünen Büchern eine Gefahr ausgeht" [Why green books are dangerous]. Kultur > Arsen. Welt (in German). Archived from the original on 2024-03-04. Retrieved 2024-03-17.

Further reading

  • Douglas Martin, The Telling Line Essays On Fifteen Contemporary Book Illustrators (1989)
  • Jos Pennec, Émile Malo-Renault, graveur et illustrateur (1870–1938), Bulletin et Mémoires de la Société Archéologique et Histoire d'Ille-et-Vilaine (2004)
  • Edward Hodnett, Five Centuries of English Book Illustration (1988)
  • Maurice Sendak, Caldecott & Co.: Notes on Books and Pictures (1988)
  • Joyce Irene Whalley and Tessa Rose Chester, A History of Children's Book Illustration (1988)
  • Elaine Moss, Part of the Pattern (1986) [incl. interviews with illustrators]
  • John Lewis, The Twentieth Century Book: Its Illustration and Design (new ed. 1984)
  • H. Carpenter and M. Prichard, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature (1984)
  • Brigid Peppin and Lucy Micklethwaite, Dictionary of British Book Illustrators: The Twentieth Century (1983)
  • Alan Ross, Colours of War: War Art 1939–45 (1983)
  • Hugh Williamson, Methods of Book Design (3rd. ed., 1983)
  • Edward Hodnett, Image and Text: Studies in the Illustration of English Literature (1982)
  • Hans Adolf Halbey, Im weiten Feld der Buchkunst (1982) [on 20th century]
  • John Harthan, The History of the Illustrated Book: The Western Tradition (1981)
  • Pat Gilmore, Artists at Curwen (1977. Tate Gallery)
  • William Feaver, When We Were Young: Two Centuries of Children's Book Illustration (1977)
  • Illustrators [periodical] (1975 onwards)
  • Images [annual] (1975 onwards)
  • Donnerae MacCann and Olga Richard, The Children's First Books: A Critical Study of Pictures and Text (1973)
  • The Francis Williams Bequest: An Exhibition of Illustrated Books, 1967–71 [National Book League] (1972)
  • Frank Eyre, British Children's Books in the Twentieth Century (1971)
  • Walter Herdeg, An International Survey of Children's Book Illustration = special issue of Graphis; 155 (1971) [& subsequent surveys]
  • Diana Klemin, The Illustrated Book: Its Art and Craft (1970)
  • David Bland, A History of Book Illustration (2nd ed. 1969)
  • W. J. Strachan, The Artist and the Book in France (1969)
  • Bettina Hurlimann, Picture-Book World (1968)
  • Bettina Hurlimann, Three Centuries of Children's Books in Europe (1967)
  • Adrian Wilson, The Design of Books (1967)
  • Rigby Graham, Romantic Book Illustration in England, 1943–55 (1965. Private Libraries Association)
  • Bob Gill and John Lewis, Illustration: Aspects and Directions (1964)
  • Robin Jacques, Illustrators at Work (1963. Studio Books)
  • David Bland, The Illustration of Books (3rd. ed. 1962)
  • Lynton Lamb, Drawing for Illustration (1962)
  • Anders Hedvall and Bror Zachrisson, 'Children and their books', in Penrose Annual; 56 (1962), p. 59–66 & plates [incl. children's reactions]
  • John Ryder, Artists of a Certain Line: A Selection of Illustrators for Children's Books (1960)
  • Lynton Lamb, 'The True Illustrator', in Motif; 2 (1959 February), p. 70–76
  • John Lewis, A Handbook of Type and Illustration (1956)
  • John Lewis and John Brinkley, Graphic Design (1954)
  • James Boswell, 'English book illustration today', in Graphis; 7/34 (1951), p. 42–57
  • British Book Illustration 1935–45 [exhibition catalogue, National Book League] (1949)
  • John Piper, 'Book illustration and the painter-artist', in Penrose Annual; 43 (1949), p. 52–54
  • Lynton Lamb, 'Predicaments of illustration', in Signature; new series, 4 (1947), p. 16-27
  • Bertha E. Mahoney, Illustrators of Children's Books 1744–1945 (1947) [and periodic supplements]

External links