Dodgson, Campbell: Catalogue of early German and Flemish woodcuts: preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum (Band 1): [German and Flemish woodcuts of the XV century] (London, 1903)

Part I.—Introduction.

29

these cases, but most of all when photography takes the place of

drawing, the modern engraver has to make his own line, drawing for

himself with the graver. Unlike the old-fashioned woodcutter, he

has to devote minute attention to the background, not cutting it

away altogether, hut reducing the black by careful work through all

gradations of grey to white. These gradations are lris method of and in result.

rendering colour and texture; he works in tones or tints even more

than in line. Lastly, and this is the most important difference of all,

such line as there is is white. Black lines will, of course, occur. In White line—

the high lights it is impossible to introduce any drawing at all except

in the form of black on white. The spaces between tlie white lines,

again, if they are sufficiently regular, will print as black lines, and

these may catch the eye more than the white. This is especially the

case where the wood-engraver has yielded to the temptation of

competing with the engraver on steel and imitating a technique

which is alien to his own material (see especially the work of the

wood-engravers influenced by Thurston). The line, liowever, which

gives the modern work its true clraracter is the line cut witlr the in modern—

graver, the line which prints white. White line, cut with the knife,

is to be found occasionally in the early woodcuts, especially in orna- and iu'.early

mental prints where a black background was desired for decorative work-

effect. There are a few well-known cuts by Flotner, Urs Graf, and

others, entirely designed in white on black. In less important cuts

and in places where it may easily be overlooked amidst the general

scheme of black on white, white line occurs far more often than is

generally supposed. The nearest equivalent, however, to modern

white line work—nearest, because it is also graver-work—is the

outline, shading, and cross-hatching in white which may be observed

in the mciniere criblee} Here the work was not on wood but on metal.

Mateeial of tiie Blocks—Wood oe Metal ?

The opinion associated especially with tlre names of Bumohr, Wood or
Bassavant, and Weigel, that a large number of the so-called woodcuts metal-
of the xv century, including many of the earliest and most primitive
in appearance, were really cut on soft metal, has now been almost
universally abandoned. The supposed grounds of this opinion, as
stated by Weigel, have been shown by Dr. Lippmann2 to be entirely
inconclusive.

Sixty-three cuts in the Collectio Weigeliana” were described as Aiieged
Metallschnitte. Willshire describes sixteen cuts in the British metal'cuts-
Museum collection as metal-cuts, and places them apart from wood-

1 See the Introduction to Dmsion B.

2 Bejpert. f. Kunstw. i, 222-232.