its help being probably those of Gillot, at Paris, in the early ’eighties.
The next stage was to be the invention of some means of reproducing
wash drawings. To do this it was necessary for the surface of the
block to be so broken up that every tone of the drawing should be
represented thereon by a grain holding ink enough to reproduce it.
This was finally accomplished by the insertion of a screen, in the
camera, between the lens and the plate—the effect of which was to
break up the whole surface of the negative into dots, and so secure,
when printed on a zinc plate and etched, an approximation to the
desired result. Half-tone blocks (as they were called) of this nature
(see Process) were used in the Graphic from 1884 and the Illustrated
London News from 1885 onwards, the methods at first in favour
being those of Meisenbach and Boussod Valadon and Co.’s phototype.
Lemercier and Petit of Paris, Angerer and Göschl of Vienna, and F.
Ives of Philadelphia also perfected processes giving a similar result,
a block by the latter appearing in the Century magazine as early as
1882. Processes of this description had, however, been used for
some years before by Henry Blackburn in his Academy Notes.
During the decade 1875–1885, however, the main body of illustration was accomplished by wood-engraving, which a few years earlier had achieved such splendid results. Its artistic qualities were now at a rather low ebb, although good facsimile engravings of pen-drawings were not infrequent. The two great illustrated periodicals already referred to during that period relied more upon pictorial than journalistic work. An increasing tendency towards the illustration of the events of the day was certainly shown, but the whole purpose of the journal was not, as at present, subordinated thereto. The chief illustrated magazines of the time, Harper’s, the Century, the English Illustrated, were also content with the older methods, and are filled with wood-engravings, in which, if the value of the simple line forming the chief quality of the earlier work has disappeared, a most astonishing delicacy and success were obtained in the reproduction of tone.
Perhaps the most notable and most characteristic production of the time in England was colour-printing. The Graphic and the Illustrated London News published full-page supplements of high technical merit printed from wood-blocks in conjunction with metal plates, the latter sometimes having a relief aquatint surface which produced an effect of stipple upon the shading; metal was also used in preference to wood for the printing of certain colours. The children’s books illustrated by Randolph Caldecott, Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway at this time are among the finest specimens of colour-printing yet seen outside of Japan; in them the use of flat masses of pleasant colour in connexion with a bold and simple outline was carried to a very high pitch of excellence. These plates were generally printed by Edmund Evans. In 1887 the use of process was becoming still more general; but its future was by no means adequately foreseen, and the blocks of this and the next few years are anything but satisfactory. This, it soon appeared, was due to inefficient printing on the one hand, and, on the other, to a want of recognition by artists of the special qualities of drawing most suitable for photographic reproduction. The publication of Quevedo’s Pablo de Segovia with illustrations by Daniel Vierge in 1882, although hardly noticed at the time, was to be a revelation of the possibilities of the new development; and a serious study of pen-drawing from this point of view was soon inaugurated by the issue of Joseph Pennell’s Pen Drawing and Pen Draughtsmen in 1889, followed in by C. G. Harper’s English Pen Artists of To-day and in 1896 by Walter Crane’s Decorative Illustration of Books. At this time also the influence of Aubrey Beardsley made itself strongly felt, not merely as a matter of style, but, by the use of simple line or mass of solid black, as an almost perfect type of the work most suitable to the needs of process. Wider experience of printing requirements, and finer workmanship in the actual making of the blocks, in Paris, Vienna, New York and London, soon brought the half-tone process into great vogue. The spread of education has enormously increased the demand for ephemeral literature, more especially that which lends itself to pictorial illustration; and the photograph or drawing in wash reproduced in half-tone has of late to a great extent ousted line work from the better class of both books and periodicals.
Improvements in machinery have made it possible to print illustrations at a very high speed; and the facility with which photographs can now be taken of scenes such as the public delight to see reproduced in pictures has brought about an almost complete change in pictorial journalism. In addition, reference must be made to an extraordinary increase in the numbers and circulation of cheap periodical publications depending to a very large extent for popularity on their illustrations. Several of these, printed on the coarsest paper, from rotary machines, sell to the extent of hundreds of thousands of copies per week. It was inevitable that this cheapening process should not be permitted to develop without opposition, and the Dial (1889–1897) must be looked on as a protest by the band of artists who promoted it against the unintelligent book-making now becoming prevalent. Much more effective and far-reaching in the same direction was the influence of William Morris, as shown in the publications of the Kelmscott Press (dating from 1891). In these volumes the aim was to produce illustrations and ornaments which were of their own nature akin to, and thus able to harmonize with the type, and to do this by pure handicraft work. As a result, a distinct improvement is to be found in the mere book-making of Great Britain; and although the main force of the movement soon spent itself in somewhat uninspired imitations, there can be no doubt of the survival of a taste for well-produced volumes, in which the relationship of type, paper, illustration and binding has been a matter of careful and artistic consideration. Under this influence, a notable feature has been the re-issue, in an excellent form, of illustrated editions of the works of most of the famous writers.
In France the general movement has proceeded upon lines on the whole very similar. Process—especially what was called “Gillotage”—was adopted earlier, and used at first with greater liberality than in England, although wood-engraving has persisted effectively even up to our own time. In the various types of periodicals of which the Revue Illustrée, Figaro Illustré and Gil Blas Illustré may be taken as examples, the most noticeable feature is a use of colour-printing, which is far in advance of anything generally attempted in Great Britain. A favourite and effective process is that employed for the reproduction of chalk drawings (as by Steinlen), which consists of the application of a surface-tint of colour from a metal plate to a print from an ordinary process block.
In Germany, Jugend, Simplicissimus, and other publications devoted to humour and caricature, employ colour-printing to a great extent with success. The organ of the artists of the younger German schools, Pan (1895), makes use of every means of illustration, and has especially cultivated lithography and wood-cuts, using these arts effectively but with some eccentricity. Holland has also employed coloured lithography for a remarkable series of children’s books illustrated by van Hoytema and others. The Viennese Kunst und Kunsthandwerk is an art publication which is exceptionally well produced and printed.
Illustration in the United States has some few characteristics which differentiate it from that of other countries. The later school of fine wood-engraving is even yet in existence. American artists also introduced an effective use of the process block, namely, the engraving or working over of the whole or certain portions of it by hand. This is generally done by an engraver, but in certain cases it has been the work of the original draughtsman, and its possibilities have been foreseen by him in making his drawing. The only other variant of note is the use of half-tone blocks superimposed for various colours. (E. F. S.)
ILLUSTRES, the Latin name given to the highest magistrates
of the later Roman Empire. The designation was at first
informal, and not strictly differentiated from other marks of
honour. From the time of Valentinian I. it became an official
title of the consuls, the chief praefecti or ministers, and of the
commanders-in-chief of the army. Its usage was eventually
extended to lower grades of the imperial service, and to pensionaries
from the order of the spectabiles. The Illustres were
privileged to be tried in criminal cases by none but the emperor
or his deputy, and to delegate procuratores to represent them
in the courts.
See O. Hirschfeld in Sitzungsberichte der Berliner Akademie (1901), p. 594 sqq.; and T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders (Oxford, 1892), i. 603-617.
ILLYRIA, a name applied to part of the Balkan Peninsula extending along the eastern shore of the Adriatic from Fiume to Durazzo, and inland as far as the Danube and the Servian Morava. This region comprises the modern provinces or states of Dalmatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro, with the southern half of Croatia-Slavonia, part of western Servia, the sanjak of Novibazar, and the extreme north of Albania. As the inhabitants of Illyria never attained complete political unity its landward boundaries were never clearly defined. Indeed, the very name seems originally to have been an ethnological rather than a geographical term; the older Greek historians usually wrote of “the Illyrians” (οἰ Ἰλλυρίοι), while the names Illyris (Ἰλλυρίς) or less commonly Illyria (Ἰλλυρία) came subsequently to be used of the indeterminate area inhabited by the Illyrian tribes, i.e. a region extending eastward from the Adriatic between Liburnia on the N. and Epirus on the S., and gradually shading off into the territories of kindred peoples towards Thrace. The Latin name Illyricum was not, unless at a very early period, synonymous with Illyria; it also may originally have signified the land inhabited by the Illyrians, but it became a political expression, and was applied to various divisions of the Roman Empire, the boundaries of which were frequently changed and often included an area far larger than Illyria properly so called. Vienna and Athens at different times formed part of Illyricum, but no geographer would ever have included these cities in Illyria.
