Illustrating America’s Newspapers
in the 19th Century

The first newspaper to display illustrations was the Illustrated London News, established by Herbert Ingram in 1842. Illustrations in newspapers quickly moved to America and on June 28, 1845 New York City’s Weekly Herald published the first full page of woodcut engravings, though a few individual illustrations had appeared earlier.
 Frank Leslie’s illustrated newspaper issued its first edition on December 15, 1855. It was the many drawings that appeared, on a timely basis for those times, that made it the benchmark for illustrations appearing in newspapers. A decade later the San Francisco Chronicle, the ”Voice of the West,” was founded by the de Young brothers, Charles and Michael, in time to cover the assassination of Abe Lincoln. The first illustration to appear in the Chronicle was a woodcut two columns wide, drawn by Charles C. Nahl, which depicted John Wilkes Booth’s flight from the presidential theater box. The drawing first appeared on April 25, 1865 and was repeated in the next day’s edition. Woodcuts continued in use for a number of years and, though they were rough and lacked detail, they were adequate until something better was developed.
 The first major development in newspaper publication was invention of the rotary, or “lightning,” press patented by Richard M. Hoe in 1847, which put the type and woodcuts on a revolving cylinder. This press, which was first used by the Philadelphia Public Ledger, could produce 8, 000 one-sided sheets per hour. With further improvements to the rotary press at the New York Tribune, however, they were soon able to print 18,000 two-sided sheets per hour. It was not long before the rotary press was combined with George Babcock and Stephen Wilcox’s “non-explosive boiler” and “stationary steam engine” to produce a steam operated printing press which could produce 30,000 two-sided sheets per hour, and the big city press was born. Still, these early presses had to rely upon rudimentary illustrations produced by woodcuts until the zincographic process was developed.
 For fifty-five years, from 1842 to 1897, newspapers were illustrated with sketches. Photographs, which were available, were considered too “stark and lacking in artistic quality” and editors of large city newspapers insisted upon maintaining a substantial art staff. They also employed photographers, but their primary function was to photograph anything and everything and the photos they produced were stored in huge archives, to be used only for reference by the art staff. In 1880 the first photograph appeared in a newspaper, but it was very poor quality and did little to promote the use of photographs. By the late 1890s it was decided that some images were better displayed as a photograph – such as the first photo of the moon’s craters taken through a telescope. By 1898 photographs occasionally appeared in newspapers across the country, and as the 19th century came to a close the Chronicle might have as many as a dozen photos in a single edition, a newspaper which could display dozens of images on a daily basis and more than one hundred in a Sunday edition. After the turn of the century photographs were increasingly used, but the art staff was still kept busy with events involving action, drawing ornate headings, and illustrating advertisements.
 The Chronicle, in early 1897, decided to host an art show and sale to support its charitable project. There was a  for donations of artwork and the Chronicle received sketches from newspaper staffs across the continent. In anticipation of the art show, scheduled for February 27, 1897, Chronicle writer John Bonner wrote an extensive article on the history of newspaper illustration from 1842 to 1897, and even included a treatise on the evolution of art in the United States prior to that date. His article appeared in the February 24 edition.

Introduction