We have printed in this book many letters from distinguished artists expressing their satisfaction with our rendering of their drawings. with one object—to place beyond all doubt that if wood engravings were produced under the conditions named, the results would always prove satisfactory.
We have a letter before us from Sir Edward Burne-Jones, in which he says: “I was quite unprepared for such fidelity.”
By the introduction of the various “processes“ by which artists’ drawings are nowadays made applicable for reproduction, the days of wood engraving are practically over, and we have to bow to the new light which we had long felt would come; and we necd hardly say that, for the reproduction of good pen work, with the new process by line etching, the results are perfect.
Also, when we look at the reproductions of tint drawings by such men as William Small, De Haenen, the Pagets, Caton Woodville, W. L. and C. Wyllie, Edgar Bundy, Jacomb Hood, and many other artists of distinction, by the half-tone process, and when we think (beyond all this fine artistic work) of the vast mass of wonderful illustration given to the public, weck by weck, of every conceivable class of subject, direct from the camera, in which the draughtsman has no part at all, and this work is generally of singular beauty aud truth—we feel that our occupation is gone. In saying
