The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-05-31
lUitb T1lakers and Covers cf Literature.
INFLUENCE OF ILLUSTRATION
 IN MODERN LITERATURE.

It is always amusing to look back on old styles. whether of clothes or of art: and to go through the files of our maga zines for some fifteen years past. or ex. anime the illustrated books of that pe- riod, affords the finest kind of humor and a high degree of critical enjoyment. That was the fine epoch of American pictorial art when illustrators disdained the use of models and were above mere anatomical details. Those were the days, too. when the engraver was supreme, and publish CTS and artists fitted their inspiration to his limitations.
 To compare the illustrations of that time with modern efforts would be like looking at two views of Chicago-one taken in 1870. and the other few days ago. The art development is not less startling. At that time pictures were in- serted in the text because the publisher realized in a vague way that literature and art went hand in hand. and he in- tended to give the latter show for the sake of appearances if nothing else. If the book was one of travels. hc procured cuts which, with the aid of captions. gave one the impression of foreign scenes While he might pay reasonable sums for the text. 1t was only in rare instances that he paid much for his illustrations. He regarded the artistic possibilities of his book in much the same way that tho average city authorities regard the ar- tistic needs of their parks and streets.
 Only glance at the magazines of today and of twenty years ago is needed to show the immense advance along these lines. Just what started 1t would be dif- ficult to say. unless it was that the day at last came when the illustrator ceased to be the assistant of the sengraver. New processes gave the artist wider latitude, and coming back from study in Paris. he insisted on the value of drawing from the model and of going to nature for ev- cry detail. That this was an innovation is illustrated by an anecdote told on Abbey and his publishers. Abbey inform ing them that he did all his work from models. and they told him straightway to desist. as they wanted all their artists to work from the imagination.
 From then on conditions both of en- graving and illustration improved. until finally Gibson's clever sketches might be said to have made illustrating a profes- sion. He was at least responsible for 1t indirectly, for his success induced many others to go into it. and while they might have failed to initiate him successfully they worked industriously in the schools and finally developed a style of their own. The schools formed classes of illustration to AhOCt tAho uetuAhius Wltn tuS result Una the country today is filled with ilfustra- tors in every line. Increased competition better facilities for study and the large number of illustrated magazines have brought the standard up to a very high plane and publishers nowadays make a speciality of the art Feature of their out put.
 Those who read the magazines careless ly are apt to slight the illustrations which have cost so much money. time and study both on the part of the publisher and the artist. Illustrators are often sent abroad to make sketches to illustrate special ar ticies-articles which may appear only once. and which may appeal only to a limited class of readers. So exacting is the demand for accuracy and realism that illustrators often visit the scenes of fic- ton, and any kind of matter in the least scientific, such as many of the animal and nature studies which have been popular of late, must not only be artistic but also faultless from the standpoint of the nat uralist. This is particularly true of school book work. There was a time when only stock cuts were used to illustrate the text; but now artists are employed who are specialists on natural history, on landscape work or marine; and artists who are artists in the fine sense of the word are given those commissions which are adapted to their genius.
 The great mass of illustration, however. which the public is familiar with, is that displayed in the magazines and periodi- calls. There is hardly magazine nowa-