ford madox brown - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

drawing but not to the etching which uses a much greater number of thinner, weaker
lines to try, unsuccessfully, to add shading and depth to the design. In the late 1830s
and early 1840s, as discussed previously, Retzsch’s outline style was at the height of
its popularity with British illustrators. However, by the mid 1840s the vogue for the
simplicity of outlines had begun to pass, and a new style, inspired by the German
revivalists' interest in medieval decorated pages, was beginning to replace it. 17 By
1850 the outline style had virtually disappeared from mainstream illustration and
Brown may well have wanted to adapt his earlier design to the new taste which
included a much greater degree of shading. A similar change can be noted in the
career of the illustrator John Franklin (fl. 1828-1868). In 1836 he produced
illustrations to Chevy Chase (Fig. 121) which revealed his absorption of Retzsch’s
outline technique in their simple, unshaded style. Six years later he designed another
set of illustrations for the same ballad (Fig. 122) but this time 'in place of the flowing
lines are rugged contours and carefully hatched shading.' 18 The same description
could be applied to Brown’s etching for The Germ and he never went back to the
unshaded outline style of his earlier Lear series.
Brown was so disappointed with the finished product that he made his signature
illegible and wrote in his diary 'the Etching for the Germ … cost me 31.6 & brought
me in nothing.' 19 Thus at a time when Brown was desperate for paying commissions
and a healthy artistic reputation his unfruitful first printed illustration was a costly
17 Brown designed his King Lear series in 1844, at the tale end of British book illustrators’ enthusiasm
for the outline style. However, the Art Union of London outline drawing competitions continued for
another two years showing that Retzsch’s style only gradually disappeared from fashion.
18 William Vaughan, German Romanticism and English Art , New Haven and London, 1979, p. 171.
19 Virginia Surtees, The Diary of Ford Madox Brown, New Haven and London, 1981, p. 72. Although
Brown does not specify whether he means shillings or pounds Angela Thirlwell believes it is most
likely to be 31 shillings and 6 pence, which would have been £1-11-6d, a considerable sum for an artist
who had only a small income (in correspondence with the present author 24.7.08).
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