William Harvey was one of Bewick’s apprentices; he did an immense quantity of work, which is always excellent. He soon gave up Bewick’s “white line,” and most of his wood engravings are like line engravings on copper. The engraving of the Death of Dentatus, after B. R. Haydon, is Harvey’s most celebrated piece of work. It shows every appearance and characteristic of a line engraving, but the black marks are in intaglio. It is a _tour de force_, and cannot but be considered as a waste of energy. It was engraved upon several blocks clamped together by an iron band, and prints of it can now and then be picked up at printsellers for two or three shillings, as it is seldom recognised as a wood engraving.
Luke Clennell also worked with and helped Bewick, and much of his early work is like that of his master. But, like Harvey, Clennell soon evolved a style of his own. He cut some of the beautiful little cuts, after Stothard, in Rogers’ “Pleasures of Memory.” No doubt the Bewick training had much influence for good over Clennell’s manner.
Charlton Nesbit followed Bewick closely for a time, and then, like his fellow apprentices, he worked out his own style. His work is very good and true, and he was particularly successful in his illustrations to Northcote’s _Fables_ and _Rinaldo and Armida_.
John Thompson was quite one of our greatest wood engravers. He worked well into the nineteenth century, and did an immense quantity of work. He engraved a celebrated set of illustrations to the _Vicar of Wakefield_, after Mulready, and was also very successful with those to Tasso’s _La Gerusalemme Liberata_ in 1826. His work is quite different from that of Bewick.
The nineteenth century in England was rich in numbers of excellent wood engravers, and a list of their names alone would be a long one. A proof of the high estimation in which the work of many of these artists was held is to be found in the fact that their services as engravers were freely sought by continental publishers of finely illustrated books.
J. B. Jackson, who introduced tone colour-printing, actually worked with J. M. Papillon in France in the eighteenth century. Then there were the Landells, Gray, Whimper, Wright, Folkard, and Green, and, quite late in the century, J. W. Whymper, Horace Harral, James Cooper, W. J. Linton, the Dalziels, and Swain. These two last have signed an immense quantity of excellent work, but they were large firms, and the greater part of their work was done by their workmen. Many of the artists of this time did most excellent work as designers for wood engravings, especially Sir John Millais, D. G. Rossetti, Fred. Walker, Fred. Sandys, Lord Leighton, Birket Foster, Sir E. Burne-Jones, G. du Maurier, and Cecil Lawson.