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Contributions from
The Museum of History and Technology:
Paper 11
Why Bewick Succeeded:A Note in the History of Wood Engraving
Jacob Kainen
| Page | |
| The Contemporary View of Bewick | 186 |
| Low Status of the Woodcut | 188 |
| Woodcut and Wood Engraving | 189 |
| Wood Engraving and the Stereotype | 197 |
WHY BEWICK SUCCEEDED:
By Jacob Kainen
A Note in the Historyof Wood Engraving
Thomas Bewick has been acclaimed as the pioneer ofmodern wood engraving whose genius brought this popularmedium to prominence. This study shows that certaintechnological developments prepared a path for Bewickand helped give his work its unique character.
The Author: Jacob Kainen is curator of graphicarts, Museum of History and Technology, in the SmithsonianInstitution's United States National Museum.
No other artist has approached Thomas Bewick(1753-1828) as the chronicler of English rusticlife. The little wood engravings which he turned outin such great number were records of typical scenesand episodes, but the artist could also give them socialand moral overtones. Such an approach has attractednumerous admirers who have held him inesteem as an undoubted homespun genius. The factthat he had no formal training as a wood engraver,and actually never had a lesson in drawing, made hisnative inspiration seem all the more authentic.
The Contemporary View of Bewick
After 1790, when his A general history of quadrupedsappeared with its vivid animals and its humorous andmordant tailpiece vignettes, he was hailed in termsthat have hardly been matched for adulation. Certainlyno mere book illustrator ever received equalacclaim. He was pronounced a great artist, a greatman, an outstanding moralist and reformer, and themaster of a new pictorial method. This flood ofeulogy rose increasingly during his lifetime and continuedthroughout the remainder of the 19th century.It came from literary men and women who saw himas the artist of the common man; from the pious whorecognized him as a commentator on the vanities andhardships of life (but who