Jackson and His Work

England: Obscure Beginnings

Little is known of Jackson’s early years. It is assumed that he was born in England about 1700, although many accounts, probably based upon Nagler, have him born in 1701. Papillon12 conjectures that he studied painting and engraving on wood with “an English painter” named “Ekwits,” but is not sure he remembers the name correctly. He believes this artist engraved most of the head pieces and ornaments in Mattaire’s Latin Classics, published by J. and R. Tonson and J. Watts in London, 1713, and remarks on similarities with Jackson’s style. Chatto13 believes these cuts were executed by Elisha Kirkall, interpreting the initials EK appearing on one of the prints to refer to this engraver rather than to “Ekwits.” He goes on to assume that Kirkall also engraved the blocks for Croxall’s edition of Aesop’s Fables, 1722, by the same publisher, and adds that Jackson was probably his apprentice and might have had some share in their execution. Most accounts of Jackson, taking Chatto’s word, note him as a pupil of Kirkall.

Linton14 believes that only Kirkall or Jackson could have made the cuts, “unless some Sculptor ignotus is to be credited with that most notable book of graver-work in relief preceding the work of Bewick.”

But it is doubtful that Jackson was a pupil of Kirkall. For this assumption we have the evidence of a curious and important little book, An Enquiry into the Origins of Printing in Europe,15 which because of a misleading title and an anonymous author has been overlooked as a reference source. It is a transcription of Jackson’s manuscript journal and was prepared for publication to coincide with

... I shall give a brief account of the State of Cutting on Wood in England for the type Press before he [Jackson] went to France in 1725. In the beginning of this Century a remarkable Blow was given to all Cutters on Wood, by an invention of engraving on the same sort of Metal which types are cast with. The celebrated Mr. Kirkhal, an able Engraver on Copper, is said to be the first who performed a Relievo Work to answer the use of Cutting on Wood. This could be dispatched much sooner, and consequently answered the purpose of Book-sellers and Printers, who purchased these sort of Works at a much chaper [sic] Rate than could be expected from an Engraver on Wood....

It does not seem reasonable that Jackson would learn the art of woodcutting from Kirkall and then refer to him as a famous engraver on copper and type metal. It is just as difficult to believe that Kirkall taught Jackson to work on metal, not wood.

The “EK” who engraved the blocks for Mattaire’s Latin Classics might very well have been Kirkall, whose style also might have had something in common with Jackson’s early work. But this would not necessarily indicate a definite influence. English pictorial relief prints for book illustration in the first decades of the 18th century had one characteristic in common; they were almost all done with the engraver’s burin on type metal or end-grain boxwood. They therefore showed elements of a “white-line” style as opposed to the black-line or knife-cut method commonly used in other countries. While it is likely that Jackson was an exception to the general rule in England (we have his word for it in the Enquiry, as we shall see), he was also deeply influenced by the prevailing English style of burin work on wood or type metal. If Papillon saw a similarity between Jackson’s cuts and those in the Latin Classics, it might have been because he was unfamiliar with other examples of English work and did not recognize a national style.

The initials “J. B. I.” appear on a small cut in the 1717 edition of Dryden’s plays, also published by Tonson. If this is an early piece by Jackson it would indicate that he might have been born earlier than 1701, although it is conceivable that he could have made it when he was sixteen.

This is the extent of the evidence, or rather lack of evidence, of Jackson’s early years in England. Nothing is certain except that woodblock work was at a

The main employment for knife cutters on wood was in making the popular prints, or illustrated broadsides, which had been sold in city and village throughout the country since the early 1600’s. Plank and knife could be used for these prints because of the generally large size of the pictures and the lack of sophistication of the audience. They are described by Bewick from his memories as a boy in the 1760’s:16

I cannot, however, help lamenting that, in all the vicissitudes which the art of wood engraving has undergone, some species of it are lost and done away: I mean the large blocks with the prints from them, so common to be seen, when I was a boy, in every cottage and farm house throughout the country. These blocks, I suppose, from their size, must have been cut on the plank way on beech, or some other kind of close-grained wood; and from the immense number of impressions from them, so cheaply and extensively spread over the whole country, must have given employment to a great number of artists, in this inferior department of woodcutting.... These prints, which were sold at a very low price, were commonly illustrative of some memorable exploits, or were, perhaps, the portraits of eminent men.... Besides these, there were a great variety of other designs, often with songs added to them of a moral, a patriotic, or a rural tendency, which served to enliven pictures would be a task.

Bewick adds that some of these popular woodcuts, although not the great majority, were very good. Since this was the main field for woodcutters, it is an interesting conjecture that Jackson might have been trained for this craft. As he matured, we can assume that he felt the urge to excel as a woodcutter and left the country to develop his potentialities.

It must be remembered that in painting and engraving England was far behind the continental countries, which could boast of centuries of celebrated masters. The medieval period persisted in England until the time of Henry VIII. Traditional religious subjects, so indispensable to European art, were thereafter generally proscribed. There was no fondness as yet for themes of classical mythology, and the new and developing national tradition in painting had to form itself on the only remaining field of pictorial expression, portraiture. Standards of style were set by foreign artists who were lured to England to record its prominent personages in a fitting manner. Beside such masters as Holbein, Zuccaro, Moro, Geeraerts, Van Dyck, Mytens, Lely, Kneller, Zoffany, and Van Loo, among others, native painters seemed crude and provincial. The list of foreign artists other than portraitists who visited England before 1750 for varying periods is also impressive.

If good native painters were rare in the first decades of the 18th century, good engravers or woodcutters were even rarer. Hogarth, whose earliest prints were produced in the 1720’s, received his training from a silversmith.

Jackson’s next move was toward the Continent.

Paris: Perfection of a Craft

Jackson arrived in Paris in 1725, his age 24 if we accept 1701 as his birth date. Here flourished a brilliant community of artists, craftsmen, dealers, and connoisseurs; woodcutting, etching, and line engraving were highly developed and the printing offices made extensive use of woodcuts for decoration and illustration. The

Le Clerc, whose style was influenced by Callot, had produced a vast number of illustrations involving subjects of almost every type; his designs, therefore, were ready-made for publishers who wanted good but low-priced illustrations. Woodcutters copied his engravings shamelessly, line for line. The overblown high Baroque style in ornament, swag, and cartouche was also drawn upon as a source for decorative cuts. In an attempt to imitate the full tonal scale of engraving, the woodcutters used heavier lines in the foreground to detach the main figures from the background, which was made up of more delicate lines. Background lines were often narrowed further by scraping down their edges, an operation that caused them to merge imperceptibly into the white paper. In this way, although the natural vigor of the woodcut suffered, an effect of space and distance was achieved. Because of the small scale this technique was difficult, especially when cross-hatching was added, and special knives as well as a phenomenal deftness were needed to work out these bits of jewelry on the plank grain of pear, cherry, box, and serviceberry wood.

Jackson’s initial impression of the state of woodcutting in France is described in the Enquiry (p. 27):

From this Account it is evident that there was little Encouragement to be hoped for in England to a Person whose Genius led him to prosecute his Studies in the ancient Manner; which obliged Mr. Jackson to go over to the Continent, and see what was used in the Parisian Printing-houses. At his arrival there he found the French Engravers on Wood working in the old Manner; no Metal Engravers, or any of the same Performance on the end of the Wood, was ever used or countenanced by the Printers or Booksellers in that City. He tells us that he thought himself a tolerable good Hand when he came to Paris, but far inferior to the Performances of Monsieurs Vincent le Seur and Jean M. Pappillon....

Jackson admits benefiting from the friendship and advice of these woodcutters, then goes on to describe their work with a ruthless frankness. Le Sueur, he LeClerc, avoided cross-hatching, which Jackson considered an essential ingredient of the true style of black-and-white woodcutting; Papillon himself, while described as a draughtsman of the utmost accuracy, was criticized for making his work so minute that it was impossible to print clearly. Jackson says in the Enquiry (pp. 29-30):

If his Father neglected Cross Hatching, the Son affected to outstrip the le Seurs in this difficult Performance, and even the ancient Venetians, believing to have fixed a Non plus ultra in our Times to any future Attempts with Engraving on Wood.

... I saw the Almanack17 in a horrid Condition before I left Paris, the Signs of the Zodiack wore like a Blotch, notwithstanding the utmost Care and Diligence the Printer used to take up very little Ink to keep them clean. I have chosen to make mention of these two Frenchmen as the only Persons in my time keeping up to the Stile of the ancient Engraving on Wood; and as they favoured me with their Friendship and Advice during my abode in Paris, I thought in Justice to their good Nature it was proper to give some Account of their Merit!

Acknowledgment of friendship and merit in this vein, while entirely true (Papillon was minute to the point of exhibitionism, and his cuts were often not adapted to clear printing), demonstrates the lack of tact that made powerful enemies for Jackson wherever he traveled. Papillon no doubt read the Enquiry, in which he was discussed at length, and the well-known Essay, with its aggressive tone and irresponsible claims. When Papillon’s Traité came out in 1766 he took the opportunity to put the English artist in his place. Certainly his account was colored by Jackson’s writings; there is no other explanation for this display of personal bitterness in a work published 36 years after the Englishman left Paris (pp. 327-328):

J. Jackson, an Englishman who lived in Paris for a few years, might have perfected himself in wood engraving, which he had learned, as I said previously on page 323, from an English painter, if he had been willing to follow my advice. As soon as he arrived in Paris he came to me asking for work; I gave him some things to execute for a few months in order to allow him to live, for which he repaid me with ingratitude by making a duplicate of a floral ornament of my design which he offered, before delivering the block to me, to the person for whom it was to be

Jackson, having been forced by poverty to leave Paris, where he could find nothing further to do, traveled in France; then, disgusted with his art, he followed a painter to Rome, after which he went to Venice, where, I am told, he married, and then returned to England, his native country.

Whether or not Jackson was unethical he was certainly an active competitor and many printers “supplied themselves amply with his cuts.” He must have produced an enormous amount of work during his five years in Paris because John Smith, in his Printers Grammar,18 says that Jackson’s cuts were used so widely and for so many years in Paris that they replaced the fashion of using “flowers,” or typographical ornaments, and that this style did not come into vogue again until the cuts were completely worn down through use.

This statement is not entirely true, but it is probable that Jackson’s woodcuts, more broadly executed than the typical French products, outlasted all others of the 1725-30 period. They were consistently re-used, and appeared, as far as they can be traced, well into the 1780’s.19

Elsewhere in the Traité, however, Papillon has a good word for Jackson’s abilities:20

Jackson, of whom I have already spoken, also engraved in chiaroscuro; I have a little landscape by him which is very nicely done.

It was inevitable that Papillon and Jackson should clash. The Frenchman’s notion of woodcutting was influenced, as we have seen, by copper plate engraving; he wanted, by incredible minuteness of cutting, to achieve approximately the same results. This was in keeping with the delicate French rocaille tradition on which Papillon was nurtured; to him any other contemporary style of book decoration was evidence of bad taste. Jackson, on his part, felt that this approach violated the essentially broad, vigorous nature of the woodcut and, in addition, made excessive demands on the printer. Since this impoverished beginner, and an Englishman at that, refused to take his earnest advice or to fall into the prevailing style, Papillon was enraged. After all, Jackson was working as an employee. But Papillon was not entirely blind. In a number of places in the Traité he made reference to other woodcutters who were working in Jackson’s style, and he recorded some of the works the Englishman illustrated during his five years in Paris.

Headpiece by J. M. Papillon for his Traité historique et pratique de la gravure en bois, Paris, 1766, vol. 3. This is an example of Papillon’s minute style, against which Jackson rebelled. Actual size. Enlarged view.

Jackson’s blossoming out as a maker of wallpaper after his return to England and his brash claims in this connection in the Essay, must also have irked Papillon, who knew the field as an expert; his father in 1688 had set up the first large printing house in France for wall hangings, and after his death in 1723 Papillon had inherited it. In 1740, he sold the business to the widow Langlois, but he had run the shop during Jackson’s residence in Paris and his former employee no doubt had learned a great deal by observing its operation. Yet here more than twenty years later was the upstart Englishman again, venturing into wallpaper manufacturing with an air of moral superiority, attacking all other products as unworthy. Jackson’s ridiculing of the Chinese style must have been particularly galling since

According to the Enquiry (pages 32-55 of this book will be drawn upon for the ensuing details of Jackson’s career), M. Annison, Director of the Imprimerie Royale, for whom Jackson produced many cuts, introduced him to Count de Caylus, collector, connoisseur, etcher, and the leading spirit in French engraving at the time. De Caylus had, in 1725, undertaken to direct the reproduction of drawings and paintings in the best French collections.21 Pierre Crozat, the famous collector, sponsored the publication of this ambitious work.

The drawings were reproduced in chiaroscuro while the paintings were rendered in black-and-white by a corps of engravers. The chiaroscuros were made by combining an etched outline, usually by de Caylus or P. P. A. Robert, with superimposed tones, mainly in green or buff, from one or two woodblocks cut in most cases by Nicolas Le Sueur, or under his direction. This was not a new printing method. Hubert (not Hendrick) Goltzius had first employed it in a set of Roman emperors after antique medallions in 1557.22 To reproduce drawings by Raphael, Parmigianino, and himself, Abraham Bloemart, as well as Frederick and Cornelius Bloemart in the early 1600’s, had used this combination extensively, and as described earlier, p. 11, Kirkall had used it between 1722 and 1724.23 The combination method produced rather feeble prints that lacked the vigor of straight woodblock chiaroscuro. The etched outline was thin and ineffective, and the tints were pallid so as not to overpower the drawing. Only Abraham Bloemart’s prints in this style were convincing, although Kirkall’s chiaroscuros, in their soft, over-modeled way, had individuality. But the Cabinet Crozat lacked distinction entirely. The chiaroscuros had a mechanical look, a fact not surprising when we remember that they were produced by a team of engravers—assembled, as it were,

Jackson tells us that he worked on some tint blocks, first from a drawing by Giulio Romano and later from a drawing by Raphael, Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter, the original modello for one of the famous tapestry cartoons. Count de Caylus, he says, liked the work and wanted to employ him further on the project, but Crozat rejected him flatly. De Caylus, according to Jackson, was embarrassed and distressed and offered recompense for the lost time and labor, but Jackson, not to be outdone in generosity by a nobleman, refused, explaining that the honor of knowing the Count and receiving his approbation more than made up for his lost effort.

Vincent Le Sueur objected to the combination method and withdrew early from the project. Possibly Jackson, who also disliked this method and was not known for his discretion, was considered by Crozat to be a disruptive element. Possibly his style of cutting was not retiring enough for Crozat’s tasteful French notion of chiaroscuro. This project, in any case, aroused the Englishman’s interest in the process. Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter, after Raphael, made about 1727, was probably Jackson’s first chiaroscuro woodcut. No doubt he produced it on his own and offered it as a plate for the publication, perhaps at the time he was commissioned to cut the tint blocks to be used in combination with de Caylus’ etching of this subject.

With both Papillon and the powerful Crozat against him, Jackson was finished in Paris. De Caylus urged him to go to Italy. Accordingly, in April 1730, he left Paris in the company of John Lewis, an English painter, and set out for Rome, where he expected to continue his studies in drawing and deepen his knowledge of art.

Jackson’s style was still being formed during his Paris period. Confined for the most part to initial letters, headbands, and tailpieces, his work differed from contemporary French cuts only in its technical handling, which was firmer and broader. Little of a more creative nature came his way, and the Paris stay therefore served as a useful interim during which he became adept in his craft. The necessity for keeping himself alive by cutting on wood developed his powers of invention

Tailpiece in Histoire générale de Languedoc, by Claude Vic and J. J. Vaissete, Paris, 1730, vol. 1. Note the even tone and clean cutting compared with Papillon’s light-and-dark contrasts and dainty cutting. Actual size.

Venice: The Heroic Effort

After leaving Paris, Jackson and Lewis journeyed to Marseilles, where Jackson became seriously ill and remained for six months, while Lewis continued to Genoa. Regaining his health, Jackson went on to Genoa and then to Leghorn, Pisa, and Lucca, arriving in Florence in January 1731. There, during a stay of several months, he discussed with the Grand Duke of Tuscany a reprinting of Vasari’s Lives of the Painters. Jackson was to make cuts for the headpieces, but the project was eventually dropped, and he continued to Bologna, where he remained a month chiefly in the company of the woodcutter G. M. Moretti, who showed him some original blocks cut by Ugo da Carpi for printing in chiaroscuro. He then proceeded to Venice, arriving “three Days before the Feast of the Ascension in 1731, and was highly surprized to find no one Engraver on Wood capable to do such poor Work, he has seen at Bolonia.” Jackson was amply supplied with strong recommendations from Florence, and on showing his work to leading printers was urged to settle in Venice, where a fine woodcutter capable of both designing and executing cuts was urgently needed. Here he also met Count Antonio Maria Zanetti, who was well-known as a chiaroscuro woodcutter besides being a collector and patron of the arts. Their first meeting is described in the Enquiry:

... very soon after his [Jackson’s] Arrival he had an Interview with Signior Antonio Maria Zannetti; from the Accounts he had heard from Mr. Marriette in France of this Man’s Work in Chiaro Oscuro, he expected to see some wonderful Performance, but Parturiunt montes nascetur ridiculus mus is a most applicable Proverb on this Occasion. I who have perused this grand Raccolta of Zannetti’s, must acknowledge that they are a trifling Performance, inferior to any Attempts of this Kind in our Times; and indeed it is no Wonder, when we come to know that this Man never used a Press, nor so much as a Hand Roll to print his Works with. Our Countryman says he had room to suspect he neither did cut or print these Works, which was confirmed by the poor Men who performed both. But such was the Vanity of this Author, that he told the Public in his Dedications that he was the Restorer of that lost Art, whereas he only drawed them on the Blocks, 24

Jackson undoubtedly disliked Zanetti’s soft and delicate treatment, so characteristic of 18th-century work, and considered his interpretation of Parmigianino and Raphael little short of sacrilege. Since Jackson was incapable of hiding his feelings a quarrel became inevitable. The first rift came when Zanetti let Jackson have for a few weeks a drawing by Parmigianino, the Venus and Cupid with a Bow, to be executed in four blocks. The print was done “intirely in Hugo’s [da Carpi’s] manner, with this Difference, that no Oscuro block has a Contour to resemble the original Drawing it was done from, which is seldom seen in Hugo’s works....” Zanetti, surprised by the fine quality of the first proof, proposed to pass it off on Mariette in Paris as an original da Carpi print. He even stained it and cut holes in it to give the impression of aged worm-eaten paper. At the same time Jackson executed another chiaroscuro, also based on a Parmigianino drawing, the Woman Standing Holding Jar on her Head. Zanetti, says the Enquiry—

... caressed the Author with the highest Expressions of Zeal for his Service, protesting he would communicate his Capacity to his Correspondents all over Europe, which would be the Means to advance his Fortune, especially amongst the English Quality and Gentry who travelled Italy. The intent of all those fine Promises was to get the two Sets of Blocks into his Hands, which he expected as a Present for the Use of the two original Drawings, from which these Prints were taken; but this not being complyed with, the Restaurati expressed a Resentment at this Refusal, and took all the Opportunities to distress the Undertakings of any Sort performed by Mr. Jackson, during fourteen Years Residence in Venice.

Zanetti was charged, in some obscure way, with obstructing Jackson’s work in cutting 136 blocks for the Istoria del Testamento Vecchio e Nuovo, popularly known as the Bibbia del Nicolosi,25 published by G. B. Albrizzi in 1737. We are informed that Filippo Farsetti, one of Jackson’s patrons, paid him for the whole set of cuts after rebuking Zanetti for interference.

The Englishman evidently was kept well occupied with preparing cuts for printers, among them Baglioni and Pezzana. For the latter he made 24 woodcuts for a quarto edition of a Biblia Sacra and an unspecified number of ornaments for a folio edition. Jackson was given a free hand to conceive and carry out the cuts as he pleased.

While working on these prints he began—

to consider on his favourite Work in Chiaro Oscuro, and by intervals examined what he had projected at Paris. He began first to make experiments with Tints, and having proved that Four Impressions could produce Ten positive Tints, besides Tratti and Lights; he resolved to try a large Piece from Rubens’s Judgment of Solomon, with an intent to prove what could be done with the Efforts of a Type Press before he launched into greater Expences with another Machine.

He wanted this press in his home, where he could experiment as he pleased without tying up workmen or equipment in Pezzana’s shop. It might have been professional delicacy that prompted him to ask Pezzana’s permission to have a private press built, or it might have been a bid for patronage from the generous and influential printer. In any event, Pezzana responded by having his carpenters build and install the press at his own expense. To avoid official registrations or craft suspicions, he had it registered as his own. The trial proofs of The Judgment of Solomon, printed from four blocks, pleased Jackson in every regard except vigor of impression. Unfortunately no edition was published, despite the dedication to Filippo Farsetti.

Finished in 1735, this woodcut was probably the first to translate a painting in a full range of tones. From the purely technical standpoint it was an incredible achievement. Jackson created a vivid approximation of a large and complex painting and at the same time produced a vigorous woodcut. From four superimposed woodblocks, with almost no linework, he was able to capture the full-blooded forms of Rubens. By keeping his means simple Jackson asserted the importance of his cutting and printing, the expressiveness of his drawing, and the fluidity of his tones. Obviously such a procedure required major decisions as to what to omit and what to stress; in other words it required interpretive abilities of a high order.

Evidently Jackson believed that his new chiaroscuro method required heavier pressure than the platen press was capable of. (On the usual wooden screw press

He found there were other means to be employed beside a Type Press, and having examined the Theory of his Invention put it in Practice, by erecting a Rolling Press of another Construction than what is used for printing Copper Plates.

Illustration in Biblia Sacra published by Hertz, Venice, 1740, vol. 1. Originally cut by Jackson for Albrizzi’s Istoria del Testamento Vecchio e Nuovo, Venice, 1737. Actual size. Enlarged view.

In Paris Jackson had suggested using a cylinder press for printing wood blocks. The gentlemen to whom the suggestion was made, Count de Caylus, Coypel, and Mariette, were sure that the enormous pressure would split the blocks. The Englishman, on the contrary, felt that the pressure, properly controlled by a chase, would hold the blocks together. Printing would be much more rapid and the exceptional vigor of the impression would suggest a hand drawing. The use of cylinder presses for chiaroscuro printing was already well known to experts. George Lallemand and Ludolph Businck, sometime between 1623 and 1640, had used not one but a series of six cylinders on three joined presses, with three printers simultaneously inking separate blocks with different tones. Impressions were then printed from each block in succession. Papillon26 described this press, and also another with a special chase designed at an unspecified date by Nicolas Le Sueur. Jackson’s prints show a much stronger impression than those of Businck or Le Sueur. No details of his press are known, although Thomas Bewick27 reported that Jackson as an old man had shown him a drawing of its construction.

Illustration for Albrizzi’s Istoria, in which it was cut No. 136. From Hertz’s Biblia Sacra, vol. 1. Actual size. Enlarged view.

The cylinder press of Jackson’s design was finished in 1735 and paid for by the income from prolonged sieges of work for printing offices. But the overwork and resulting exhaustion laid him low; a serious illness followed and for several months he was close to death. When he eventually regained his health he found that his cuts for Baglioni and Pezzana had been copied and mutilated by an engraver at Ancona. This pirate was encouraged by the head of a large printing establishment newly founded in Venice, who thereupon offered Jackson work at greatly reduced prices. He refused the offer. With hack woodcutters now stealing both his designs and his manner of cutting, and working at a far lower rate than he could afford, he found that the market for his higher priced work had almost entirely disappeared. He still received occasional commissions, among others the title page to a translation of Suetonius’ Lives of the Twelve Caesars, printed by Piacentini in Venice in 1738. His splendid design, which shows considerable burin work, is at odds with the crudity of the remainder of the book. Inferior hands reproduced in woodcut outline Hubert Goltzius’ medallion portraits of Roman emperors, originally executed in chiaroscuro (see p. 22). Stimulated, no doubt, by the combination of chiaroscuro and antiquity, Jackson produced a portrait of Julius Caesar in four tones of brown after Egidius Sadeler’s engraving of a subsequently lost painting attributed to Titian. This was not the only time Jackson translated a line engraving and added chiaroscuro modeling of his own. He did not make line-for-line copies. Jackson was interested in broad effects even when leaning heavily on the delicate linear conventions of line engraving. The lines, therefore, are firm and

The decided influence of line engraving was probably the result of his association in 1731 with G. A. Faldoni in Venice. Influenced by Claude Mellan, this engraver made use of swelling parallel lines to create tonal gradations. Jackson had first become interested in this technical method through Ecman’s woodcuts after Callot, and once Faldoni had strengthened the attraction he found kindred influences in the engravings of Villamena and Alberti, particularly the former, from whom he also acquired design ideas he later put to use in his wallpapers. Jackson’s discovery that he could to some extent use copper-plate techniques was not a reversion to the style of the Parisian group of Le Clerc copyists. Jackson used the line system as a means for creating forms in conjunction with tones; the Parisian woodcutters used it to imitate the delicate quality of line engraving. He had a formal aesthetic end in view; their purpose was to render realistic details in a decorative framework.

With opportunities for book illustration gone, Jackson was in a difficult position. His novel chiaroscuro experiments had consumed valuable time and had lost him his standing as a steady worker for printers. Near destitution and scouting around for fresh applications of the woodcut, he decided to make prints for wallpaper on his new press. It was a logical step for Jackson, not only because he knew something of the process but also because he could make use of the chiaroscuro blocks already prepared. Late in 1737 or early in 1738 he had his first samples ready and sent them to Robert Dunbar in London, together with his conditions for carrying on the trade in Venice. Negotiations dragged, and Dunbar died before they could come to terms, but the idea of using his skill and his machine for turning out wallpaper continued to occupy his mind as a possibility. But, for the time, the undertaking had to be laid aside while Jackson looked for more immediate means of employment.

At this juncture Joseph Smith befriended him. A merchant of long standing in Venice, who became the British consul there in 1745, Smith was a bibliophile, Descent from the Cross once in his possession is now in the National Gallery in London.

From Smith’s bronze statuette of Neptune, by Giovanni da Bologna, Jackson produced a chiaroscuro print in four blocks, in imitation, he asserted, of the prints of Andrea Andreani.28 In suggesting the influence of this master, Jackson did not refer to his technique or style but to his subject: in 1584-1585 Andreani had produced a chiaroscuro series after other statues by Giovanni da Bologna (B. XII, VI, 1-4).

The next work in Smith’s collection to be reproduced in chiaroscuro was Rembrandt’s Descent from the Cross. Jackson was evidently well satisfied with the results, and with good reason. It is an extremely effective print, with pale yellow lights and transparent shadows. The drawing is remarkable in its feeling for the Rembrandtesque style. The sky and other parts show English white-line burin work of the type found in Mattaire’s Latin Classics and Croxall’s Aesop’s Fables. The Enquiry says (p. 45):

As this Painting was extremely favourable for this sort of Printing, he endeavoured to display all his Art in this Performance, and the Drawing of Rembrandt’s Stile is intirely preserved in this Print; it is dedicated to Mr. Smith, who generously gave the Prints to all Gentlemen who came to Venice at that time in order to recommend the Talents of a Man whose Industry might please the curious, and at least be of some Use to procure him Encouragement to proceed in other Works of that Kind.

Encouragement soon came. Smith interested two of his friends, Charles Frederick and Smart Lethieullier, and the three proposed in 1739 the undertaking of a grand project in chiaroscuro, the reproduction of 17 huge paintings by Venetian masters. This was to be financed by subscription, says the Enquiry (p. 46):

the Proposals in French, and the Conditions expressed therein, were drawn up as they thought proper, without consulting the Difficulties that must attend an Enterprize that required some years to accomplish.

Their own subscriptions were no doubt generous but Jackson found that his total income from this form of financing, together with possible future sales, would hardly cover his expenses. Other hazards made his situation even worse. War broke out in Europe before he was halfway through, and many English gentlemen, his potential subscribers, left the country. This exodus meant financial disaster, but Jackson kept at his task. He should, he said, have gone to England for his own best interests but felt that he couldn’t disappoint his distinguished patrons.

The first print completed was after Titian’s St. Peter Martyr at the Dominican Church of Sts. Giovanni and Paolo. In coloring it is similar to the Rembrandt print, with gray-green sky, yellow lights, and cool brown shadows. While attractive and forceful, it is not as effective as the Rembrandt because Titian, with his greater range of color, presented a more complex problem. Most of the prints thereafter leaned to monochromes in either browns or greens. The St. Peter was finished in 1739 and in the same year five more prints were brought to completion.

In 1740 he produced the three sheets which made up Tintoretto’s Crucifixion in the Scuola di San Rocco.29 These were intended to be joined, if desired, to form one long print measuring about 22 × 50 inches.

Of the ten remaining subjects, the last, Jacopo Bassano’s Dives and Lazarus, was finished at the end of 1743, and the set of 24 plates (some paintings, as noted, were reproduced in three sheets and some in two) was published as a bound volume by J. B. Pasquali in Venice, 1745, under the title Titiani Vecelii, Pauli Caliarii, Jacobi Robusti et Jacobi de Ponte; opera selectiora a Joanne Baptista Jackson, Anglo, ligno coelata et coloribus adumbrata.

The Venetian prints were not merely an extension of chiaroscuro, they represented a daring effort to go beyond line engraving for reproducing paintings. Justification for this attempt is given in the Essay (p. 6):

... and though those delicate Finishings, and minute Strokes, which make up great Part of the Merit of engraving on Copper, are not to be found in those cut on Wood in Chiaro Oscuro; yet there is a masterly and free Drawing, a boldness of Engraving and Relief, which pleases a true Taste more than all the little Exactness found in the Engravings on Copper Plates ... and indeed has an Effect which the best Judges very often prefer to any Prints from Engravings, done with all that Exactness, minute Strokes of the Graver, and Neatness of Work, which is sure to captivate the Minds of those whose Taste is formed upon the little Considerations of delicately handling the Tools, and not upon the Freedom, Life and Spirit of the separate Figures, and indeed the whole Composition.

A novel device, embossing, was employed to give added strength to the prints. This development had been foreshadowed by earlier prints and pages of text which showed a slight indentation where the dampened paper received the impression. Embossing had probably first been used systematically by Elisha Kirkall in 1722-24, and by Arthur Pond in his chiaroscuros, made in 1732-36 in conjunction with George Knapton, after drawings by old masters. Jackson admired Pond’s work even though it combined etched outlines with two tone blocks printed from wood.30 Pond’s embossing was delicate and applied sparely only in certain forms, such as ruined columns, but Jackson’s sunken areas were heavier and franker, consciously intended to give an all-over effect. Since the paper could not be pressed out without weakening the embossing, it often took on the scarred and buckled look that characterizes the Venetian chiaroscuros.

The set had occupied him for 4½ years, during which he had planned, cut, and proofed 94 blocks.

No sooner was that ended, and a little Breathing required after that immense Fatigue, in the Year 1744 he attempted to print in Colours, and published six Landskips in Imitation of Painting in Acquarello.

Title page for Gajo Suetonio tranquillo, le vite de’dodici Cesari, Piacentini, Venice, 1738.

This new set, dedicated to Robert d’Arcy, British Ambassador to the Republic of Venice, was based on gouache paintings by Marco Ricci, probably done on goatskin or leather in his usual manner. For Jackson to make these color prints was a logical step, since his work had tended toward the full chromatic range even in the chiaroscuros, which “adumbrated” color. His new prints were all color—clear, sensitive, and tonally just. It is not surprising that he seized upon Ricci’s opaque watercolors. The paintings of the Venetian masters had darkened in ill-lit churches, the shadows had become murky, there were too many figures. But the Ricci paintings were small and clearly patterned, the color sparkled.

The original gouaches have not been located, but from other examples in the same manner, in Buckingham Palace and in the Uffizi, it is plain that Jackson took certain liberties. Ricci’s rather sharp colors were considerably modified and mellowed when they weren’t changed entirely: witness the two sets in different harmonies in the British Museum. Peter A. Wick (1955) believes it most likely that Jackson did not copy specific paintings, and suggests that details from Ricci’s etchings and gouaches were combined and freely amended to create Ricci-like designs.

Having determined his color scheme Jackson cut seven to ten blocks, each designed to bear an individual color which was to combine with others when necessary to form new colors. No outline block was used. To obtain variations from light to dark in each pigment Jackson scraped down the blocks with a knife; he thus lowered the surfaces slightly and created porous textures which would introduce the white paper or the underlying color. Examination of the prints clearly shows granular textures in the light areas. Scraping to lighten impressions was a common procedure in black-and-white printmaking, and was described by both Papillon and Bewick. In addition Jackson no doubt used underlays, that is, small pieces of paper pasted in layers of diminishing size on the backs of the blocks where the color was most intense. The pressure was therefore greatest in the deepest notes and lightest in the scraped parts. The copper plate press enabled Jackson to get good register without making marks on the blocks. The paper was dampened and fastened to the chase at one end. After each impression the next inked block was slid into the chase and printed wet into wet. Problems of register were eliminated because the sheets were held in place at all times, the blocks fitting the same form. No doubt the paper was sprinkled with water on the reverse side after

Although the Ricci prints were certainly the most ambitious and complexly planned prints of the century, the cutting is crisp and decisive and the effect fresh and unlabored. As in the Venetian set embossing is consciously applied. Most likely Jackson impressed the finished prints, specially redampened for the purpose, with one or two of the uninked blocks. Jackson interpreted Ricci’s qualities with great spirit, and in doing so he liberated the color woodcut from its old conventions. The “true”-color prints he produced in the medium preceded the Japanese, if not the Chinese.31 In Japan, it must be remembered, simple color printing in rose and green supplanted hand coloring in about 1741, and rudimentary polychrome prints can be dated as early as 1745, but, as Binyon32 puts it, “it was not until 1764 that the first rather tentative nishiki-ye, or complete colour-prints were produced in Yedo, and the long reign of the Primitives came to an end.”

In making his Ricci prints Jackson sought a method of color printing that would overcome the deficiencies of Jacob Christoph Le Blon’s three-color mezzotint process. Le Blon, a Frenchman born in Germany, had begun experimenting with color printing as early as 1705. His idea was to split the chromatic components of a picture into three basic hues—blue, red, and yellow—in gradations of intensity so that varying amounts of color, each on a separate copper plate, could be printed in superimposition to reconstitute the original picture. This was based upon a simplification of Newton’s seven primaries. Later, Le Blon added a fourth, black plate. Incredibly, this is the principle of modern commercial color printing, the only difference being that Le Blon did not have a camera, color filters, and the halftone screen at his disposal and had to make the separations by hand. Le Blon came to London in 1719, produced an enormous number of color prints, published his Coloritto, or the Harmony of Colouring in Painting in a very small edition about 1722 (it is undated), and shortly thereafter failed disastrously. About 1733 he returned to Paris, where he attracted a few followers. Most of his prints have disappeared, only about fifty being known at present.

The idea of full-color printing, then, was in the air, although later, in the Enquiry, Jackson took pains to state that he had not been following in the footsteps of the Frenchman, who, he claimed, had made serious mistakes.

The Curious may think that this Tentamine was taken from the celebrated Mr. le Blond; I must here take the Liberty to explain the Difference.... Numbers are convinced already, that the printing Copper-plates done with Fumo or Mezzotinto, are the most subject to wear out the soonest of any sort of Engraving on that Metal. Had this one Article been properly considered, le Blond, must have seen the impossibility of printing any Quantity from his repeated Impressions of Blue, Red, and Yellow Plates, so as to produce only Twenty of these printed Pictures to be alike. This is obvious to every one who has any Knowledge, or has seen the cleaning of Copper-plates after the Colour was laid on; the delicate finishing of the Flesh must infallibly wear out every time the Plate is cleaned, and all the tender light Shadowing of any Colour must soon become white in proportion as the Plate wears. The Nature of Impression being overlooked at first, was the principal Cause that Undertaking came to nothing, notwithstanding the immense Expence the Proprietors were at to have a few imperfect Proofs at best, since it is evident they could be no other. The new invented Method of printing in Colours by Mr. Jackson is under no Apprehension of being wore out so soon.... Whatever has been done by our English Artist, was all printed with Wood Blocks with a strong Relievo, and in Substance sufficient to draw off almost any number that may be required.

What Jackson neglected to mention was the difficulty of repeating transparent color effects with large planks of wood. Few existing impressions match each other and some prints are off register. What saved him was his fine color sense, his brilliance as a woodcutter, and his disinclination to make literal color reproductions.

The work that Jackson left behind became a part of the cultural heritage of Venice, valued on its own account as well as for its connection with the city. Zanetti33 describes the Venetian set and Zanotto,34 in his Guida of 1856, urges a visit to the Chiesa Abaziale della Misericordia, which evidently had on permanent exhibition a “perfectly unique collection of woodcuts in various colors by Jackson, quite unmatched.”

Gallo35 says that some of Jackson’s blocks found their way to the printing house of the Remondini and were used to strike off new impressions, after which they became the property of the Typografia Pozzato in Bassano. This might explain some of the inferior examples of the Venetian set which could hardly have come from the presses of Jackson or Pasquali.

Trial proof of the key block of center sheet of The Crucifixion, after Tintoretto. National Gallery of Art (Rosenwald Collection).

Trial proof of the key block of Christ on the Mount of Olives, after Bassano. National Gallery of Art (Rosenwald Collection).

England Again: The Wallpaper Venture

Jackson was married in Venice—whether to an Italian we do not know—and when he left the city in 1745 to return to England he took a family along. He mentions “an impoverish’d Family” in the Essay, but beyond this we know nothing of his personal life.

As soon as he arrived in England he was invited to work in a calico establishment, where he remained about six years. But making drawings to be printed on cloth failed to give him the scope he required. At the back of his mind was the passion to work with woodblocks in color. This led him to take a bold and hazardous step—to leave his position and attempt, obviously with little capital, the manufacture of wallpaper, not to please an established taste but to educate the public to a new type of product.

Wallpaper had come into popular use in England in the late 17th century, having been obtained from China by the East India Company. These hand-painted wall hangings, imported at great cost and in small quantities, were correspondingly expensive. The subjects were gay and fanciful—birds, fans, Chinese kiosks, pagodas, and flowers. Highly desired because they offered an escape from the heavy grandeur of the Baroque style, they were subsequently imitated by assembly-line methods. They fitted naturally into the developing rocaille style (corrupted into Rococo outside of France), and it is not surprising that they were also produced extensively in Paris. In England these imitations, which formed a substitute for expensive velvet and damask hangings, completely dominated the wallpaper field.

The first notice of Jackson’s venture appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine of February 1752.36 A letter signed “Y. D.” praised the editor “Sylvanus Urban” for attempting to revive the art of cutting on wood. It mentioned that this art was in decline for more than a century, but noted that—

Two of our countrymen, E. Kirkall and J. B. Jackson, ought to be exempted from this general charge; the former having a few years ago introduced the Chiaro Oscuro of Hugo de Carpi into England, though he met with no extraordinary encouragement for his ingenuity; and the art had died with him had not the latter attempted to revive it, but with less encouragement than his predecessor. Mr. Jackson, however, has lately invented a new method of printing paper hangings from blocks, which is very ornamental, and exceeds the common method of paper-staining (as it is termed) by the delicacy of his drawings, the novelty of his designs, and the masterly arrangement of his principal figures.

The next notice appeared in the London Evening Post of April 30-May 2, 1752:

New invented Paper Hangings, printed in Oyl, which prevents the fading or changing of the Colours; as also Landscapes printed in Colours, by J. B. Jackson, Reviver of the Art of printing in Chiaro Oscuro, are to be had at Dunbar’s Warehouse in Aldermanbury, London; or Mr. Gibson’s, Bookseller, opposite the St. Alban’s Tavern in Charles-street near St. James’s-Square, and no where else.

Several months afterwards, in the September 1752 issue of Gentleman’s Magazine, publication of the Enquiry into the Origins of Printing in Europe was announced.

The Enquiry is an odd book. It combines rewritten versions of two Jackson manuscripts, a study of the origins of printing in Europe and an autobiographical journal covering, we suppose, the years from about 1725 on. The writer, in his introduction, says that he had been attracted by the two notices mentioned and went to see Jackson, whom he already knew by reputation. As a “Lover of Art” he considered it his duty to acquaint the public with Jackson’s ideas concerning the origins of printing. These ideas, he felt, were an important contribution. After devoting half the little book to a rambling account of this subject, including a short history of woodcutting from Dürer onward, the author suddenly shifts to the journal. It is regrettable that he condensed it because we do not know what was F. Simonnetta of Parma”37 representing the battle fought near that city in 1738.

This print was to be in full color, 3 feet 6 inches long by 2 feet high, and was to serve as a specimen for a series of four of the same size, the others being “History, Pictures and Landscapes.” They were to be done by subscription:

No Money will be required of the Subscribers till the Prints are finished, and only at the Delivery. It is to be hoped the Curious and the Public will encourage this Undertaking, by a Man who has spent the greatest Part of his Life in searching after and improving an Art, believed by all to be lost, and has restored it to the Condition we now see it in his Works.

The only known copy of this battle picture, made from about seven blocks, is in the Print Room of the British Museum. It is a magnificent piece. Probably nothing with this breadth of handling had ever been done in woodcut before. The color is grave and beautifully harmonized, although the paper has deteriorated and the colors have darkened somewhat. The blocks were cut with ardor, almost fury; everything is brought to life with masterly assurance. Martin Hardie, who made the only previous comment on this print, which he could only surmise was Jackson’s, says:38 “Jackson’s supreme achievement is a large battle scene, with wonderful masses of rich colour superbly blended, reminiscent of Velasquez in breadth, in dignity, and in glory of tone.”

There were competitors in London, among them Matthias Darley, who produced papers in the Chinese style; Thomas Bromwich, who was patronized by Walpole; and Robert Dunbar, Jr., of Aldermanbury, who in addition sold Jackson’s papers. They lacked both Jackson’s gifts and his unreasonable standards but they produced more generally acceptable wallpaper with greater facility. These competitors did not work in oil colors, like Jackson. Transparent tints were too difficult to control, especially when applied with inking balls (composition rollers

Jackson’s business, therefore, did not prosper. In a last effort to stir up public interest he published, in 1754, his well-known little book, An Essay on the Invention of Engraving and Printing in Chiaro Oscuro, illustrated with eight prints in “proper colours.” It sold for two shillings and sixpence. The style was rather florid but his arguments were presented with such vigor that it is easy to see why critics have found it difficult to refrain from quoting at length. The main body of text is only eight pages long, with an additional eight pages of subsidiary descriptive material attached to the pictures.

On the title page appeared his favorite passage from Pascal, used previously on the title page of the Enquiry: “Ceux qui sont capables d’inventer sont rares: ceux qui n’inventent point sont en plus grand nombre, et par conséquent les plus forts.” The first few pages of the Essay enlarge on this theme:

It has been too generally the Fate of those who set themselves to the Inventing any Thing that requires Talents in the Discovery, to apply all their Faculties, exhaust their Fortune, and waste their whole Time in bringing that to Perfection, which when obtained, Age, Death, or Want of sufficient Supplies, obliges them to relinquish, and to yield all the Advantages which their Hopes had flattered them with, and which had supported their Spirits during their Fatigues and Difficulties, to others; and thus leave behind them an impoverish’d Family incapable to carry on their Parent’s Design, and too often complaining of the projecting Genius of that Father who has ruin’d them, tho’ he has enriched the Nation to which he belonged, and to which of Consequence he was a laudable Benefactor.

He proceeds in this bitter vein for a time, then brings into the open the main purpose of the book:

Another Reason perhaps is, that the Artist being totally engaged in the Pursuit of his Discovery, has but little Time to apply to the Lovers and Encouragers of Art for their Patronage, Protection, and Supplies necessary for the carrying on such a Design, or he has not Powers to set the Advantage which would result from it in a true Light; nor communicate in Words what he clearly conceived in Idea: for certainly there are Men enough, who from the mere Desire of increasing their Wealth, would give him that Assistance, which, like the artificial Heat of a Greenhouse, would bring that Art to a Ripeness, which would otherwise languish and die under the Coldness of the first Designer, and which in this Union of Riches and Invention would yield mutual Advantage to both.

There are besides this amongst the Great, without Doubt, many who would gladly lend their Patronage to rising Arts, if they knew their Authors....

He gives as example the Duke of Cumberland, who had just sponsored a tapestry plant at Fulham, and follows with an outline of the honorable traditions of the woodcut, pointing out that Dürer, Titian, Salviati, Campagnola, and other painters drew their work on woodblocks to be cut by woodcutters, and adds that “even Andrea Vincentino did not think it in the least a Dishonour, though a Painter, to grave on Wood the Landscapes of Titian.” He builds up to the statement that Raphael and Parmigianino drew on woodblocks to be cut in chiaroscuro by Ugo da Carpi.

After having said all this, it may seem highly improper to give to Mr. Jackson [he speaks of himself throughout in the third person] the Merit of inventing this Art; but let me be permitted to say, that an Art recovered is little less than an Art invented. The Works of the former Artists remain indeed; but the Manner in which they were done, is entirely lost: the inventing then the Manner is really due to this latter Undertaker, since no Writings, or other Remains, are to be found by which the Method of former Artists can be discover’d, or in what Manner they executed their works; nor, in Truth, has the Italian Method since the Beginning of the 16th Century been attempted by any one except Mr. Jackson.

We cannot help concluding that Jackson was falsifying here. Taking advantage of the public’s ignorance, he was puffing up his historical importance in order to sell wallpaper. If the cognoscenti complained that he had buried the chiaroscurists after da Carpi, he always had the explanation that others did not work in the Italian style, which he neglected to describe. Jackson knew what he was doing; he was not as ignorant of art history as Hardie and Burch have surmised, although Enquiry, published only two years earlier, he had shown familiarity with the prints of Goltzius, Coriolano, Businck, Nicolas and Vincent Le Sueur, Moretti, and Zanetti, all of whom had worked to some extent in the Italian manner.

Some writers have reacted strongly to this paragraph. Losing their sense of proportion, they have been led to the conclusion that Jackson was little better than a charlatan and that his work as a whole reflected his low ethics. In some instances his culpability has been magnified: Bénézit has even charged him with claiming to have invented color printing.

The worst result of Jackson’s insistence on re-inventing the Italian manner was that it made a major issue of what was at best a minor honor. It minimized such technical contributions as the following, which did not follow traditional recipes:

... Mr. Jackson has invented ten positive Tints in Chiaro Oscuro; whereas Hugo di Carpi knew but four; all of which can be taken off by four Impressions only.

This technical system was used for the Venetian chiaroscuros, the portrait of Algernon Sidney after Justus Verus, and others. He did not mention that he needed a greater range of tones because he was working after oil paintings, not drawings. The introduction of full color from a series of blocks to translate water colors is also mentioned in the Essay, but with no greater emphasis than in the Enquiry. Since his wallpaper was to be done in color as well as in chiaroscuro, and since the Essay included four plates in color, it is astonishing that Jackson failed to make stronger claims for his originality in this development.

He proceeded to describe his plan to replace wallpapers in the Chinese style with his papers, which, he stated, would have no “...gay glaring Colours in broad Patches of red, green, yellow, blue &c ... [with] no true Judgment belonging to it ... Nor are there Lions leaping from Bough to Bough like Cats, Houses in the Air, Clouds and Sky upon the Ground....”

He proposed, instead, to use as subjects many of the famous statues of antiquity; the landscapes of Salvator Rosa, Claude Lorrain, Poussin, Berghem, Wouwerman, the views of Canaletto, Pannini—

Copies of the Pictures of all the best Painters of the Italian, French and Flemish Schools, the fine sculptur’d Vases of the Ancients which are now remaining; in short, every Bird that flies, every Figure that moves upon the Surface of the Earth from the Insect to the human; and every Vegetable that springs from the Ground, whatever is of Art or Nature, may be introduced into this Design of fitting up and furnishing Rooms, with all the Truth of Drawing, Light, and Shadow, and great Perfection of Colouring.

This vast gallery of art and nature was to be printed in “Colours softening into each other, with Harmony and Repose....”

Even if we feel that Jackson was building up his project to attract attention, or that he was intoxicated by the idea of creating art on such a grand scale, there is still something wrong in his conceiving it in terms of wallpaper. What is certain is that Jackson was desperately anxious to create color prints. In the absence of art patrons, wallpaper was his only excuse for continuing as an artist. As a business venture it was absurd, even tragic. There is good reason to believe that Jackson lacked capital and rented the quarters for his business: his name does not appear in the Poor Rate Book of that period in the Borough of Battersea.

From a certain standpoint, this excursion by Jackson into wallpapers featuring Roman ruins and classical antiquity appeared to come at an appropriate time. Marco Ricci’s paintings as well as the somewhat later work of Pannini and Zuccarelli, and Guardi’s early ruin pieces, were already known. Ricci had visited England from 1710 to 1716. Zuccarelli had come twice, once in 1742 and again in 1751 to stay until 1773, becoming a foundation member of the Royal Academy; his classical landscapes with their glib charm had a comparatively good reception. But the strongest influence was undoubtedly that of Piranesi, whose powerful etchings brought to life as never before the ravaged stones of Imperial Rome and the Campagna. Their effect was widespread and electrifying, although it was not until the 1760’s that they developed their full force as an influence on English architecture and furniture design, and came to supersede the Palladian style brought to England by Inigo Jones at the beginning of the 17th century.

Jackson was too early; public taste was not yet ready for picturesque landscape or antique forms in wallpaper. But the style became dominant in the latter 18th century, particularly in England and France, and was also exported to America. While it is difficult to estimate the degree of Jackson’s influence in this development, 39 comments:

The use of wall-paper to imitate large architectural designs dates, as we have seen, from the days of J. B. Jackson. During the remainder of the century this style was used almost exclusively for decoration of the halls and staircases of great houses.

These papers covered rooms with landscape panoramas or with landscapes in Rococo scroll frames, relieved by decorative panels with busts, statuettes, and floral ornaments. As in preceding work, they were usually painted in opaque water colors. Most of the landscapes were loose transcriptions of designs by Pannini, Vernet, Lancret and other painters of architectural, scenic, and pastoral subjects. The treatment was generalized and superficial, the touch light and detached.

In this approach to wallpaper we see the basic ideas of Jackson, but with more emphasis on charm and elegance. Ironically, as years passed and original sources grew obscure, it became the tendency to attribute scenic papers in great houses to Jackson.40 If he was a failure as a pioneer in the field, he remained its most highly prized legend.

The Essay continued with a criticism of the current taste in wallpaper. Jackson enlarged on the lack of discrimination of persons who would prefer popular papers to his.

It seems, also, as if there was great Reason to suspect wherever one sees such preposterous Furniture, that the Taste in Literature of that Person who directed it was very deficient, and that it would prefer Tom D’Urfy to Shakespear, Sir Richard Blackmore to Milton, Tate to Homer, an Anagrammatist to Virgil, Horace, or any other Writer of true Wit, either Ancient or Modern.

He added that his prints, made in oil colors, would be permanent “whereas in that done with Water-Colours, in the common Way, Six Months makes a very visible Alteration in all that preposterous Glare, which makes its whole Merit....”

The Essay has eight plates, four of ancient statues in chiaroscuro and four of plants, animals, and buildings, in probably six colors. They were hastily done and no doubt had a rather fresh charm when published, but unfortunately the oil in the pigments was inferior, and every print in the book has darkened and yellowed

We do not know how large a working force Jackson had or how many of the projected plates he planned to assign to helpers or to carry out himself. Some of the decorative borders from four blocks, blue, red, yellow, and gray-green, he undoubtedly made and printed himself. They are heavy and rather fruity in effect but are incisively drawn and cut. Also bearing Jackson’s stamp are some ornamental frames with fruit and flowers in the same full range of colors.

An album ascribed to him, in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, contains drawings of flowers, foliage, details of ornament and hand-colored designs, and a proof of the woodcut for the title page to the Suetonius of 1738. Five of the drawings are signed or initialed by Jackson, with dates from 1740 to 1753. The designs, which might have been intended for calico or wallpaper, are poorly done and not at all in his style. The drawings are competent but cannot definitely be considered his, notwithstanding the signatures, since we do not know Jackson’s handwriting from other sources. The most that can be said for this album is that it probably comes from his workshop.

While producing wallpaper, Jackson still made efforts to attract sponsors for full editions of his earlier chiaroscuros. The Woman Meditating was dedicated to the Antiquarian Society of London. Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter, rejected by Crozat, we assume, was dedicated to Thomas Hollis, whom Jackson may have met in Venice. And the Venus and Cupid with a Bow was inscribed to Thomas Brand, lifelong companion of Hollis who later added to his name the latter’s patronymic. The Algernon Sidney has no dedication, but since Hollis was a Sidney specialist and edited the first one-volume edition of his works in 1769, there is a strong likelihood that the print had some connection with this liberal gentleman. Jackson made it either in Venice just before he left, or in England shortly after his arrival.

Robert Dunbar, Jr., who had inherited the wallpaper manufactory on his father’s death, went out of business late in 1754. In his possession was a quantity of Jackson’s papers, for which he was the main outlet. With this backlog of papers on hand, and no large distributor, Jackson’s venture collapsed. This happened Essay, and its author was never to have the opportunity to carry out his grandiose plans.

Jackson appealed to Hollis, who wrote to his former mentor, Dr. John Ward, professor of rhetoric at Gresham College and the head of a society founded by noblemen and gentlemen for the encouragement of learning:41

Dear Sir!—Do Me the Favour to accept these four prints of Jackson’s. They are no where sold, & will soon be scarce. When You consider their Merit, I am confident You will lament the hard Fate of the ingenious Artist; who, at this Time, in his old age, & in his own Country is unprotected unnoticed, and can difficultly support Himself against immediate distress & Ruin.

I am, with great Respect,

Dear Sir!

Your obliged affect humble Servant

T. Hollis

Bedford Street, February 10, 1755

We do not know the results of this appeal. In any case Jackson seems to have faded out as an artist. Little is known of his subsequent career up to the time more than twenty years later, when Bewick mentions meeting him in advanced age. In 1761 he made a drawing of Salisbury Cathedral for Edward Eaton, “bookseller at Sarum,” for a line engraving dedicated by Eaton to the Lord Bishop of Winchester. This large view included figures in the foreground in an attempt to give animation to the scene. Unfortunately the engraver, John Fougeron, was little more than an amateur. His execution was feeble and mechanical: Jackson’s drawing suffered so badly that its quality cannot be determined. This print was copied on a smaller scale in a steel engraving by J. B. Swaine, published by J. B. Nichols & Son in 1843, but it was hardly an improvement.

Bewick’s recollections of Jackson, written about forty years after their meeting in Newcastle, imply that Jackson stayed in that city for a period. The Town Clerk’s Office, however, has no record of his residence. The following passage from Bewick’s Memoir is the last evidence42 bearing on Jackson:

Several impressions from duplicate or triplicate blocks, printed in this way, of a very large size, were also given to me, as well as a drawing of the press from

If Bewick was correct in reporting that Jackson died while under the protection of Sir Gilbert Elliot, probably in a Poor Law institution, it is unlikely that the date could have been much later than 1777, the year in which Sir Gilbert died. This would place the meeting of both artists shortly before this time, when Bewick was in his early twenties (he was born in 1753). Sir Gilbert lived in Minto House, Roxburghshire, Scotland, but no evidence can be found for the supposition that Jackson died in the vicinity. No obituary has been discovered. The record of Jackson’s death, if it exists, probably lies in a parish register somewhere on the Scottish border.

Critical Opinion

In most histories of prints it was considered sufficient to note that certain artists worked in woodcut chiaroscuro; the quality of such work was rarely discussed. But Jackson was an exception: something about his prints aroused critics to defense or attack. The cleavage is absolute, strange for one who was presumably a mere reproductive artist. Nothing could show more clearly the unsettled nature of Jackson’s standing than a sampling of these opinions.

Horace Walpole in a letter, dated June 12, 1753, to Sir Horace Mann describing the furnishings in Strawberry Hill, commented:43

The bow window below leads into a little parlour hung with a stone-colour Gothic paper and Jackson’s Venetian prints, which I could never endure while they pretended, infamous as they are, to be after Titian, &c., but when I gave them this air of barbarous bas-reliefs, they succeeded to a miracle; it is impossible at first sight not to conclude that they contain the history of Attila or Tottila done about the very era.

Von Heinecken44 says they are “in the manner of Hugo da Carpi but much inferior in execution.” But Huber, Rost, and Martini45 noted Jackson’s independent approach:

Jackson’s prints, which are certainly not without merit, are in general less sought after by collectors than they deserve. His style is original and is concerned entirely with broad effects.

Baverel46 also had a high opinion of Jackson’s work. Describing the Venetian prints, he says that Jackson “had a skillful and daring attack, and it is regrettable that he did not produce more work.” Nagler’s47 criticism typifies the academic preconceptions of some writers on the subject of chiaroscuro:

Jackson’s works are not praiseworthy throughout in drawing, and also he was not thoroughly able to apply the principles of chiaroscuro correctly.... Yet we have several valuable prints from Jackson....

And Chatto48 remarks:

They are very unequal in point of merit; some of them appearing harsh and crude, and others flat and spiritless, when compared with similar products by the old Italian wood engravers.

With this verdict W. J. Linton49 disagrees, saying, “...Chatto underrates him. I find his works very excellent and effective. The Finding of Moses (2 feet high by 16 inches wide) and Virgin Climbing the Steps of the Temple (after Veronese), and others, are admirable in every respect....” Duplessis50 attacks the Venetian set heatedly and at length, yet he devotes more space to expounding Jackson’s deficiencies than to discussing the work of any other woodcut artist, even Dürer or da Carpi.

On the evidence we have, the new conception Jackson brought to printmaking was not fully understood until the 20th century. Pierre Gusman51 in 1916 probably first noted the technical distinction between Jackson’s work and earlier chiaroscuros.

He [Jackson] conceived his prints in a different way from the Italians, bringing in new aspects in accenting values and planes, because he did not reproduce drawings but interpreted paintings. The whites even show embossings in the paper to make the light vibrate, and a specially cut block is sometimes impressed to help in modeling the forms. Jackson, in short, very much the wood carver, combined the resources of the cameo with those of the chiaroscuro and produced curious works of combined techniques, but without equaling his predecessors, who were particularly remarkable for their simplicity of style and treatment.

One year later, in 1917, Max J. Friedländer52 commented that relief effects in block printing were not alien additions but natural consequences of the method. His main emphasis, we note, is on the Ricci prints.

A peculiarity of the color woodcut, which first was put up with as a characteristic of the technique but finally was enhanced and utilized fully as a means of expression, is the physical relief that stands out in thick and soft paper with the sharp pressure of die wood-blocks.... No one has employed the relief of the woodcut so consciously and artfully as the Englishman John Baptist Jackson in the eighteenth century, who, particularly in some landscapes, created most effective and richly colored sheets. He has gone so far as to express forms in “blind-printing,” entirely without bordering lines or contrasting colors, merely through relief pressing.

Anton Reichel’s important history of chiaroscuro, with its magnificent color plates in facsimile, appeared in 1926.53 He says of Jackson that his activity in chiaroscuro was “extraordinarily rich,” that he created broad approximations of his subjects which made him neglect details, but that these were “convincingly translated into the language of the woodcut.”

Five heroic landscapes after M. Ricci represent the artistic high point of his work, having a distinctive richness of color not previously attained by any other master of chiaroscuro. Each of the prints has a complete harmony of colors; the single color blocks—over ten can be counted in each print—which show in their separate tones the extraordinarily cultivated taste of the artist, give the composition a decorative effect far from any realistic imitation of nature.... The relief impressed with the blocks is so strong that, going beyond all other prior attempts of the kind, it represents an essential factor of the composition through its actual light-and-shadow effects.

Although by this time Jackson’s chiaroscuros were regarded with respect and his color prints were acknowledged to be of prime importance, some of the conservative wallpaper historians were still repelled by their vigor, which did not suit genteel notions of interior decoration. Sugden and Edmondson54 in 1925 certainly

Jackson’s bold claims to originality and merit are scarcely borne out by anything he is known to have achieved. That he had a vogue, however, seems certain, for apart from his “Essay” he has come down to us as a historical figure. To modern tastes in art many of his productions seem almost monstrous, and yet they were to some extent the expression of the time-spirit in which they were born.

Postscript

While Jackson had an influence on a small coterie, it did not prolong the life of the color woodcut. In Europe the medium did not survive his disappearance in 1755; no doubt it seemed to later artists intractable and lacking in nuance. The black-and-white woodcut, moreover, went into further decline and was almost entirely disregarded except for the rudest sort of work. Almost a century and a half were to pass before Gauguin and Munch swept aside old taboos and found exciting new possibilities for color in the woodcut process.

The lack of interest in the color woodcut was also the result of new techniques in the copper-plate media, techniques that could be adapted to color printing. In 1756 J. C. François introduced the crayon manner, an etching process that could imitate the effects of chalk and crayon drawings. During the following decades numerous technical variations were developed, the most popular being the pastel manner, the stipple, and the aquatint.

Of these methods only aquatint survived after early years of the 19th century. It was less limited than its companion processes and had wide application in rendering the effect of water-color wash. But color work in this medium, however attractive to a public that appreciated delicacy and charm, did not have mass appeal. The new audience created by the advancing Industrial Revolution wanted printed pictures of a less subtle type; they preferred imitations of sentimental,

In this situation Jackson suddenly appeared as the pioneer, as the father of printed pictures based upon paintings in oil or water colors. His intention had been translation rather than imitation and he would have abhorred the feeble new product, but this did not concern his successors—they were interested only in his technical principles. Moreover, in their naïveté, they imagined they were improving on Jackson because their prints were counterfeit paintings while his were not.

The earliest picture printers therefore, used wood engraving. Among them were Frederich W. Gubitz of Berlin, who began the revival about 1815; William Savage55 of London, a printer who published a book describing his project in 1822; and George Baxter of London, whose work dates from about 1830. All started with chiaroscuro and moved to full color from a large number of wood blocks, although in 1836 Baxter began printing his transparent oil colors over a base of steel engraving reinforced with aquatint. Only Baxter persevered and was rewarded by sensational popular success. His glassy and trivial prints with their high sweet finish enjoyed a vogue among collectors that lasted into the 20th century. In about 1860, however, he was driven from the market by the rise of a cheaper medium, chromolithography, which was responsible in the next few decades for a universal outpouring of popular bathos. This was picture printing in color geared for the mass audience.

It may seem an anticlimax to trace the color woodcut from Jackson to Baxter, and finally to chromolithography, but it is not irrelevant. Although spurned by the better artists, color had too popular an appeal to be ignored. It was inescapable that Jackson’s successful technical procedures should finally be adopted and corrupted in the area of commerce.

Woodcut artists up to Jackson, with few exceptions, had used color for one major purpose, to reproduce drawings in line and tone. By enlarging the conception of the color woodcut Jackson brought the primitive chiaroscuro phase of its 56 The way was open for the modern woodcut, although it was a long time in coming.

The range of Jackson’s work in tone and color exceeded that of all previous woodcutters and can be divided as follows: (1) chiaroscuros—after drawings, after paintings, after his own pen and ink drawings after paintings, interpretations of engravings and etchings, and interpretations of sculpture; and (2) full color—after paintings in gouache and after his own water colors. In addition he treated pictorial subjects in flat color areas without a key or outline block, a procedure used before him only by the 17th-century Chinese; and he combined burin work with knife cutting.

But Jackson’s reputation, in the long perspective, must rest upon his qualities as an artist. He had great distinction as a colorist but lacked originality as a designer and was dependent upon others, for the most part, for basic compositions. As an interpreter of these compositions, however, he was imaginative and forceful. He did not follow the example of most copper plate engravers and reproduce subjects faithfully; his conception of the woodcut as a frank medium precluded exact rendition. Except, possibly, for his first chiaroscuro, he always translated freely, with the aim of making good woodcuts rather than accurate representations of his subjects. Jackson’s work after others, in short, was consciously intended as artful approximation. This emphasis on the spirit rather than the letter, together with his novel techniques, often gave his prints a somewhat hybrid character—an ambiguous look that might serve to explain the uneasy feelings of many critics. But his largeness of feeling is unmistakable, and this is what finally places him among the masters.

The color woodcut is now an important form of printmaking. For this medium in the Western world, Jackson is the main ancestral figure.

Footnotes