Page:Contemporary English woodcuts.djvu/17

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because they have been less often exhibited or reproduced than her little pastoral landscapes, her "Nativity," or her subjects from old ballad poetry, which have been so justly praised. Miss Gribble and Miss Pilkington are among the other women artists who practise wood engraving with zeal and success, the former is now turning her attention to book illustration, in which English engravers of the modern school have hitherto achieved smaller results than their contemporaries in France.

All these artists alike, however diverse their vision, their taste or their accomplishment may be, use the wood block and the graver or knife in a strictly orthodox manner as the medium and tools with which to express themselves directly. They cut their lines or spaces as they go on; they design in terms of wood engraving, instead of reproducing in another medium a design which has been already produced as a picture or a drawing. The few specimens given here of their original work on the wood will lead collectors, I hope, to enquire for others, and to realise more fully than they do that woodcuts, as well as etchings or lithographs, can be taken seriously as prints worth choosing and buying, whether to be cherished in the portfolio or to be framed on the wall.