Thomas Bewick - nature's engraver

What with digital photography and the wonders of modern computer-enhanced brightly coloured images , what sane person would rather have their book illustrated with black and white images, hundreds of years old?

Me, that's who! Yes, I know that monochrome is out and the dazzling visual experience is in but where, I ask, is the magic? Sure, children would far rather have gleaming, vibrant pictures to go alongside their favourite texts of nursery rhymes or folk tales but to me the images I remember from my old books seemed to speak of another and more mysterious world, one in which colour, if it existed at all (which I doubted) played no part.

Do not mistake me. I would be the last person to champion one form of book illustration over another. It is not possible to compare them. I love the way Quentin Blake brought Roald Dahl's extraordinary world to life in ways that were both astounding and hysterically funny. It is a classic of its genre. But for me the wood engraving has a mystique, a quality all of its own.

Maybe the apparent two-tone nature of the images sat comfortably alongside the light versus dark, good versus evil kind of stories they illustrated. But of course the stories like the pictures were not at all black and white. A glance at the wood engraving above reveals the skill of the art with a myriad layers of texture, shading and incredible detail, all carved into one small end of boxwood.

It comes from the hand of the master, Thomas Bewick, whose fascinating biography by Jenny Uglow I am currently reading. This country boy from just outside Newcastle-on-Tyne began a revolution in engraving that was to make it the pre-eminent art form for illustrating books for the following 150 years.

A genius in his depictions both of country life and the animal kingdon, Bewick's minutely observed woodcuts gave new life to the art. Not only was his attention to detail quite unprecedented, but he breathed life into his engravings of the natural world by the use of a simple new technique.

Up to the mid 18th century engravers had retained the edge of the block to serve as a border for the image - possibly this helped printers to define the space needed to accommodate it. Bewick was the first to abandon the practice, rounding the edges of his blocks so that the creature or scene depicted is no longer restrained on the page but seems almost about to leap beyond, or even out of, it.

If you like wood engravings you will know all this. If you are new to the form you might like to research the work of others in this field, such as Gill, Raverat, Pellew and the contemporary See-Paynton, to name but a very few of the many artists who made this beautiful and magical form so bewitching.

Below is one further image - Marsh Marigolds by Claughton Pellew. Notice the way a broken fence is used as a symbol of death amidst the springtime blooms.