Page:Chats on old prints (IA chatsonoldprints00haydiala).pdf/193

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are to be found many fine examples of wood engraving, among many names the work of Frank French, G. Kruell, Henry Wolf, F. S. King, T. Johnson, Wellington, Bernstrom, Anderson, and Van Ness. But too often there is the indication of the machine used for producing elaboration of tint-work in the background and in the sky. The attempt to be overfine, and the strain to compete with the halftone process block resulted in the decadence of the art of wood engraving carried on under conditions unfitted for its use.

Pannemaker fils, trained in his father's studio at Paris in the art of wood engraving, and himself a leader of the new interpretative school, contributed a magnificent specimen of wood engraving to the Century (vol. xvii.). It is a marvellous translation into black and white of the celebrated portrait known as the Red Pope by Velasquez in the Doria Gallery at Rome. This is something more than mere mechanical rendering of line for line, it reproduces in the language of wood engraving the same sensation that the original master conveyed with his pigments, and there is little lost in the translation from the golden bowl to the silver.

In conclusion, we take two typical examples of the modern school of American wood engravers, Mr. Elbridge Kingsley and Mr. Timothy Cole. They are both interpretative artists who bring true appreciation and gain inspiration from their subjects and convey them to the wood block. The one works in the open air and derives his inspiration directly from Nature, the other works with no less inspired manner