The San Francisco call., 1896-02-23
NEWSPAPER ILLUSTRATION.

While newspaper illustration in America
Aas been subjected to a good deal of caustic
criticism the success achieved has been
sufficiently notable to induce the British to
Initiate the example. 1t Is not merely that
new papers have been started in London
to supply the popular demand for pictorial
news, but some of the oldest and most con-
servative journals of the city have begun
to make illustrations conspicuous feature
OF their work. The Times, it is true, has
shown no signs of adopting the new aid to
reporting, but the Ne,0s and the Chronicle
have frankly accepted 1t, and there can be
little doubt that within few years pictures
VIII be almost as common in the journals
OF England as in those OF this country.
1t is not without coed reason that the
London papers have begun to initiate our
example in this respect. Newspaper illus
tratlon has become a part OF modern re-
porting because it does much more effec
lively than the pen a considerable part of
the work of making known the news OF the
day. 1t conveys to the mind at glance
what could not be made so clear to the
average person by half column OF woros.
This is great saving in the time OF busy
people and does much to make the big
newspapers of to-day acceptable to men
and women whose occupations compel
them to hurry through the news as rapidly
a. possible and without any unnecessary
loss of time.
Moreover, this form Of illustration,
which began as a mere accessory to re-
porting and consisted of few hastily
sketched lines without shading or per-
spective, has rapidly developed to point
where it may be fairly called fine art.
The cheaper quality of the paper neces-
sarily used by widely circulated journals
does not permit illustrations to be brought
out as clearly as on the finer paper used in
magazines of the first rank, but in other
respects the pictures of the daily press are
hardly inferior to those of the most re-
nowned monthlies. In THE CALL, for ex.
ample, we have repeatedly published
illustrations of the pictures'of the leading
artists OF California, and on some of these
we might safely challenge comparison
with the pictures of any periodical that is
not distinctly an art publication.
The most notable development in news
paper illustration of late has been in the
direction Of cartoon work. Some of this
has been in the form of caricature, but
most of it has been designed simply to tell
story clearly, without any attempt at
distortion of either the face or the figure of
the persons portrayed. So successful has
been this work in the daily papers that the
weeklies published especially for cartoon
ing have almost lost their prestige. There
are no better cartoons published anywhere
at this time than those which appear in
the newspapers of San Francisco. In con-
ceptior, in composition, in excellence of
drawing and in the force and distinctness
of their meaning they rank even with
similar productions of the artists In the
greatest cities of the world. The success
achieved in this direction encourages the
most sanguine hopes for the art work of
the city generally. What the popular
taste has demanded our artists have
given, and when the popular demand is
for the higher, finer and more enduring
forms of art that also will be given with
an equal excellence.