woodcut and wood engraving

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woodcut. Term applied to the technique of making a print from a block of wood sawn along the grain and also to the print so made. Although the term is often loosely used for any type of print made from wood, it refers specifically to those made from blocks in which the grain runs lengthways across the surface (as in a plank of wood). It can thus be distinguished from wood engraving, in which the print is made from wood sawn across the grain, which produces a surface that is harder to cut but capable of taking finer detail.

Woodcut is the oldest technique for making prints and its basic principles are simple. The design is drawn on a smooth block of wood (almost any wood of medium softness can be used—beech, pear, sycamore for example) and the parts that are to be white in the print are cut away with knives and gouges, leaving the parts that will print black standing up in relief. The block is then inked and the design printed on a sheet of paper (usually in a press, although it is possible to make a print using only hand pressure). Cutting blocks of any complexity is a highly skilled business and this part of the work has often been done by specialist craftsmen rather than the artist responsible for the design. Coloured woodcuts, generally made by using a separate block for each colour, have been particularly popular in Japan (see Ukiyo-e).

The origins of woodcut are obscure (the principle was employed in fabric printing in China at least as early as the 3rd century ad). There is evidence that woodcut prints as we know them were being produced in Europe in the 14th century, but the earliest surviving reliably dated example is perhaps the St Christopher (1423) by an unknown artist in the John Rylands Library, Manchester. Many of the earliest woodcuts were crude popular religious images designed to be sold at fairs and pilgrim shrines (see also block book), but in skilled hands the technique could produce much more sophisticated results. It was at its peak in the first 30 years of the 16th century, in both individual prints and book illustrations, with Dürer being the supreme master.

The connection between woodcut and the art of the book was very close at this time, as both used essentially the same method of printing and therefore could be readily combined. In block books, the text and image were cut on the same piece of wood, but in books printed from movable metal type, the woodcut blocks and the type were locked together in the press, so that text and illustration were inked and printed together. This procedure was much cheaper and simpler than illustrating with copperplate engravings, which had to be printed separately (a heavier press was required), and bound into the book afterwards. The earliest printed books had been produced to look like manuscripts, so woodcut illustrations were usually eschewed, but they became highly popular in the 1490s, the first great landmark being Hartman Schedel's Weltchronik (World Chronicle), published in Nuremberg in 1493, with illustrations by Michael Wolgemut. Although there was a vogue for the chiaroscuro woodcut in Italy, in general woodcut was used less there than in northern Europe. Nevertheless, there were some outstanding Italian achievements in the art, notably in Venice, for example the illustrations to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, published in 1499, and Jacopo de' Barbari's huge view of the city, published in 1500.

In spite of the versatility and relative cheapness of woodcut, during the 16th century it steadily lost ground to line engraving, which could produce finer detail and subtler effects. By about 1600 it was little used apart from jobbing work and ephemera—broadsheets, chapbooks, playbills, and so forth—although the Flemish printmaker Christoffel Jegher (1596–1652/3) produced some vigorous woodcut reproductions of Rubens's work. In the 18th century the technique was only sporadically employed by serious artists; Hogarth, for example, originally had his Four Stages of Cruelty (1751) produced as woodcuts, seeking a popular style and market, but he changed his plans and redid the designs on copper.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries there was a major revival of interest in the woodcut as a medium of original artistic expression. Now that photomechanical methods had taken over the reproductive functions of printmaking, all kinds of hand engraving could make a fresh start. The simplicity and directness characteristic of 15th-century prints was revived, with the difference that modern exponents of woodcut learned the craft themselves and cut their own designs on the block. Gauguin and Munch were the great pioneers in the 1890s, using the grain of the wood to create bold and vigorous textural effects, and they were followed by the German Expressionists (notably the members of Die Brücke), some of whom virtually hacked the design into the block.

woodcut and wood engraving prints made from designs cut in relief on wood, in contrast to copper or steel engraving and etching (which are intaglio ). The term woodcutting is loosely included within the wood-engraving process, from which, however, it can be distinguished. Woodcutting, the oldest method of printmaking, is accomplished using soft wood with a knife employed along the grain. Wood engraving, which developed in the 18th cent., is a technique using hard, end-grained wood worked with a graver or burin.

History

Woodcuts were used in ancient Egypt and Babylonia for impressing intaglio designs into unpressed bricks and by the Romans for stamping letters and symbols. The Chinese used wood blocks for stamping patterns on textiles and for illustrating books. Woodcuts appeared in Europe at the beginning of the 15th cent., when they were used to make religious pictures for distribution to pilgrims, on playing cards and simple prints, and for the block book which preceded printing. At that time the artist and the artisan were one, the same person designing the cut and carving the block. One of the first dated European woodcuts is a St. Christopher of 1423.

After the invention of the printing press, woodcuts, being inked in the same way as type, lent themselves admirably to book illustration. Albrecht Pfister first put them to this use c.1460. Other early woodcut illustrations are in the Bibles of the late 15th cent. and in the French Lyons edition (1493) of the works of Terence. The first Roman book with woodcuts appeared in 1467, but Venice became the center of Italian wood engraving. In the 16th cent. in France woodcuts frequently served to illustrate books of hours . The actual cutting was often performed by a specialist rather than by the designer.

In Germany, where the form was particularly well developed, Dürer and Hans Holbein the younger were the most eminent woodcut designers of the Renaissance. Dürer's Life of the Virgin (1509–10) and Great Passion (1510–11) and Holbein's Dance of Death (1523–26) are among the best-known works of these masters. Lucas Cranach the elder, Albrecht Altdorfer , and Hans Baldung also worked in wood engraving, employing a chiaroscuro technique originated by Jobst de Negker of Augsburg.

Decline and Revival

There was a decline in woodcutting with the increasing versatility and popularity of line engraving on metal. Even in the Netherlands, where woodcuts lasted longest, they were almost obsolete by the 18th cent. In England, however, Thomas Bewick popularized wood engraving. He brought to perfection the technique of white-line engraving, in which lines print white on a black background. Gustave Doré was the best-known French master in this medium in the 19th cent.

William Blake also made wood engravings for some of his best book illustrations (e.g., for Thornton's Vergil; 1821). The Victorian weeklies used numerous wood-engraved drawings as illustrations. Most famous of English wood engravers were John Swain and the Dalziel brothers. In the United States wood engraving was practiced from the 19th cent. by such masters as Alexander Anderson, William James Linton , and Timothy Cole .

As photographic technology advanced, photography and photographic processes slowly replaced woodcut as a means of book illustration and wood engraving for reproduction of oil paintings. In the 1890s in France a revival of woodcutting to produce original prints was initiated by Paul Gauguin , Edvard Munch , and Felix Vallotton , who cut their blocks themselves. Their influence on 20th-century expression in this medium was enormous. Derain , Dufy , and Maillol also made notable woodcuts. After World War II many artists in the United States, such as Leonard Baskin , Sue Fuller, and Seong Moy, explored new formal and technical possibilities in the medium of woodcutting.

Bibliography

See A. M. Hind, An Introduction to a History of Woodcut (1935, repr. 1963); D. P. Bliss, A History of Wood-Engraving (rev. ed. 1964); A. H. Mayor, Prints and People (1971).

woodcut. Term applied to the technique of making a print from a block of wood sawn along the grain and also to the print so made. Although the term is often loosely used for any type of print made from wood, it refers specifically to those made from blocks in which the grain runs lengthways across the surface (as in a plank of wood). It can thus be distinguished from wood engraving, in which the print is made from wood sawn across the grain, which produces a surface capable of taking finer detail. Woodcut is the oldest technique for making prints and its principles are very simple. The design is drawn on a smooth block of wood (almost any wood of medium softness can be used—beech, pear, sycamore for example) and the parts that are to be white in the print are cut away with knives and gouges, leaving the design standing up in relief. This is then inked and pressed against a sheet of paper. The origins of the technique are obscure (the principle was employed in fabric printing in China at least as early as the 3rd century ad). There is evidence that woodcuts as we know them were being produced in Europe in the 14th century, but the earliest surviving reliably dated example is perhaps the St Christopher (1423) by an unknown artist in the John Rylands Library, Manchester. Many of the earliest woodcuts were crude popular religious images designed to be sold at fairs and pilgrim shrines (see also Block Book), but in skilled hands the technique could produce much more sophisticated results. It was at its peak in the first thirty years of the 16th century, in both individual prints and book illustrations, with Dürer being the supreme master. Thereafter it lost ground to line engraving, which could produce subtler effects. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, however, there was a major revival of interest in the woodcut as a medium of original artistic expression. Gauguin and Munch were the great pioneers in the 1890s, using the grain of the wood to create bold and vigorous textural effects, and they were followed by the German Expressionists (notably the members of Die Brücke). The coloured woodcut, using different blocks for each colour, was particularly popular in Japan (see Ukiyo-e). See also Chiaroscuro woodcut.

woodcut Oldest method of printing, using designs carved into wood. The carving produces a negative image: the carved areas representing blank spaces while the flat areas retain the ink. Woodcuts were invented in China in the 5th century ad, and became popular in Europe in the Middle Ages.

wood·cut / ˈwoŏdˌkət/ • n. a print of a type made from a design cut in a block of wood, formerly widely used for illustrations in books. Compare with wood engraving. ∎  the technique of making such prints.

wood·cut·ter / ˈwoŏdˌkətər/ • n. 1. a person who cuts down trees or branches, esp. for fuel. 2. a person who makes woodcuts. DERIVATIVES: wood·cut·ting n.

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woodcutter •exploiter, goitre (US goiter), loiter, reconnoitre (US reconnoiter), Reuter •anointer, appointer, jointer, pointer •cloister, hoister, oyster, roister •accoutre (US accouter), commuter, computer, disputer, hooter, looter, neuter, pewter, polluter, recruiter, refuter, rooter, saluter, scooter, shooter, souter, suitor, tooter, transmuter, tutor, uprooter •booster, rooster •doomster • freebooter • sharpshooter •peashooter • six-shooter •troubleshooter • prosecutor •persecutor • prostitutor •telecommuter •footer, putter •Gupta • Worcester • Münster •pussyfooter • executor •contributor, distributor •collocutor, interlocutor •abutter, aflutter, butter, Calcutta, clutter, constructor, cutter, flutter, gutter, mutter, nutter, scutter, shutter, splutter, sputter, strutter, stutter, utter •abductor, conductor, destructor, instructor, obstructor •insulter •Arunta, Bunter, chunter, Grantha, grunter, Gunter, hunter, junta, punter, shunter •corrupter, disrupter, interrupter •sculptor •adjuster, Augusta, bluster, buster, cluster, Custer, duster, fluster, lustre (US luster), muster, thruster, truster •huckster • Ulster • dumpster •funster, Munster, punster •funkster, youngster •gangbuster • filibuster • blockbuster •semiconductor • headhunter •woodcutter •lacklustre (US lackluster)