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By Howard Simon
Starting with 16th-century woodcuts by way of Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein, the chronological presentation positive aspects works through Goya, Hogarth, Blake, Morris, Doré, Toulouse-Lautrec, Beardsley, and different masters. a short textual content introduces every one part, and the amount concludes with a global roster of recent artists, classified by way of state. All that's most sensible and extraordinary within the box of representation seems to be the following, during this vast publication of sketches, engravings, woodcuts, and lithography.
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Additional resources for 500 years of illustration : from Albrecht Dürer to Rockwell Kent
Example text
A Modern Midnight Conversation’ WILLIAM HOGARTH. Plate VII from The Rake’s Progress WILLIAM HOGARTH. ‘Beer Street’ WILLIAM HOGARTH. Portrait of Simon Lord Lovat WILLIAM BLAKE 1757-1827 IT IS difficult to reconcile the figure of William Blake with the England of his time. George the Third was king, and the ways of commerce and the need for expansion held full sway. In their tradesman’s prosperity, the newly wealthy Britons looked abroad for culture and art. The popular English portraitists were those who could render the faces of the blunt English squires and their angular ladies in the soft, flattering style of the Italians.
Comparatively little type appeared to explain the pictures. Perhaps the chief reason for this lack of text was the difficulty encountered in cutting the type on the wood block. A glance at the page of the Biblia Pauperum, most famous of the block books, will show that this work was intended for the diffusion of knowledge rather than of art. And it will be observed that these block books were in no way influenced by the high degree of conscious decoration already at its full flower in the Renaissance manuscripts.
THOMAS ROWLANDSON. Illustration from The Dance of Life THOMAS ROWLANDSON. ‘Doctor Syntax Reading His Tour’ THOMAS ROWLANDSON. ‘The Advertisement For A Wife’, illustration from Doctor Syntax THOMAS ROWLANDSON. Illustration from The Dance of Life THOMAS ROWLANDSON. ‘Doctor Syntax Setting Out in Search of A Wife’ GEORGE CRUIKSHANK 1792-1878 MAKE US laugh or you starve; give us fresh fun, we have eaten up the old and are hungry.