The Woodcut Tradition 



A LTHOUGH the woodcut is the oldest traditional print medium it was the 

 /A last to win respectability as an art form. It had to wait until the i88o's 

 JL A^ and 1890's, when Vallotton, Gauguin, Munch, and others made their 

 first unheralded efforts, and when Japanese prints came into vogue, for the initial 

 stirrings of a less biased attitude toward this medium, so long considered little more 

 than a craft. With the woodcut almost beneath notice it is understandable that 

 Jackson's work should have failed to impress art historians unduly until recent 

 times. Although he bore the brunt as an isolated prophet and special pleader be- 

 tween 1725 and 1754, his significance began to be appreciated only after the turn 

 of the 20th century, first perhaps by Martin Hardie in 1906, and next and more 

 clearly by Pierre Gusman in 1916 and Max J. Friedlander in 1917, when modern 

 artists were committing heresies, among them the elevation of the woodcut to 

 prominence as a first-hand art form. In this iconoclastic atmosphere Jackson's 

 almost forgotten chiaroscuros no longer appeared as failures of technique, for they 

 had been so regarded by most earlier writers, but as deliberately novel efforts in an 

 original style. The innovating character of his woodcuts in full color was also given 

 respectful mention for the first time. But these were brief assessments in general 

 surveys. 



If the woodcut was cheaply held, it was at least acceptable for certain lim- 

 ited purposes. But printing pictures in color, in any medium, was considered a 

 weakening of the fiber — an excursion into prettification or floridity. It was not 

 esteemed in higher art circles, except for a short burst at the end of the 18th cen- 

 tury in France and England. This was an important development, admittedly, 

 and the prints were coveted until quite recently. They are still highly desirable. 

 But while Bartolozzi stipple engravings or Janinet aquatints in color might have 

 commanded higher prices than Callots or Goyas, or even than many Durers and 

 Rembrandts, no one was fooled. The extreme desirability of the color prints was 

 mostly a matter of interior decoration: nothing could give a finer i8th century 

 aura. It was not so much color printing that mattered; it was late iSth century 

 color printing that was wanted, often by amateurs who collected nothing else. 



