Bewick’s Thumbprint
The first mechanical process used for illustration was the woodcut, developed in the fourteenth or fifteenth century. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, however, copper or steel plate engraving became the norm. The drawback was that they required a different press to print compared to conventional type. Illustrations were printed separately from the primary text, often by a completely different printer. Sometimes these illustrations were hand colored after printing.
The example above comes from the 1811 edition of Thomas Aikenside’s Pleasures of the Imagination. It provides a good illustration of captioning practice at the turn of the eighteenth century. The dominant convention was to list the artist (del.) in the lower left corner. In this case, initial design was by Thomas Stothard. Following the normal western eye-path (left-to-right) the next information you encounter is the name of the engraver, I. Neagle (sculp.). Underneath both of these bits of authorizing information is an interpretive caption that states what the viewer should see in the illustration: “The Village Matron, round the blazing hearth, Suspends the infant-audience with her Tales, Breathing astonishment!”
Captions were laboriously engraved on the same plate as the image rather than typeset. The basic formula was simple however. The artist received priority, followed by the engraver, while the explanatory caption acted as a touchstone for interpretation. In the case of many eighteenth and nineteenth century engravers, the captioning was also often either ironic or allegorical. The play of the text and image created a sense of tension, supplied a moral, or created barbed satire— particularly in the work of George Cruikshank.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, as shown in this satirical engraving of Boney (Napoleon) from 1812, conventions began to destabilize. As both an artist and engraver with a distinctive style, more subtle forms of accreditation inform Cruikshank’s work. In the lower left, the publisher of the drawing is credited, and Cruikshank has initialed the lower left. The interpretive entitling caption “Boney Hatching a Bulletin or Snug Winter Quarters!!!” is dominant. Rather than just existing as an adjunct to the image, text became more prominent within the confines of the image itself.
But perhaps the most notable developments in reproductive and captioning practice at the turn of the nineteenth century come from Thomas Bewick, widely credited with the reintroduction of wood engraving as the standard practice for book illustration. Bewick’s most common signature was his engraved thumbprint.
Because wood blocks could be printed in a standard press, interpretive captions set in regular type became commonplace. In Bewick’s case, the captions were meant to be didactic—to instruct the viewer on the relationship between the animal or scene depicted, and their own ability for moral choice. Bewick also suggested that the best subject for moral instruction was nature; he had no use for aesthetic traditons. He was a rustic gentlemen who stood apart from the academys of art.
From these examples, it should be clear that the function of the caption in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was complex. It could authorize an image as an aesthetic object (with the stamp of the artist). It could amplify the image through humor or descriptive language. Or, a caption might instruct a reader in the “proper” way to read an image.
The basic conventions of captioning were developed in response to the problematic nature of reproductive technologies. Both the artist and artisan (engraver) sought credit for their works. However, in profound sense the deepest function of the caption was to teach people how to read images. Most often though, the captions were largely ignored by a public hungry for images. Bewick’s moralizing went largely ignored as city-dwellers began to collect his “art.”
