Painting and illustration are broad, overlapping provinces. Paintings are (usually) made for walls, illustrations are (usually) printed on paper. There is no need to be pedantic. Illustrations don’t have to have an accompanying text: a Beerbohm caricature, a Rowlandson party at Vauxhall, a Picasso neoclassical nymph and satyr have enough story in them to count as illustrations. Hogarth’s theatrical moralities milked popular sentiment near dry. But at any time before the last peasant was driven from painted landscapes, and while nudes still needed classical passports, nearly all painting that was not topography or portraiture at least hinted at illustration.

LRB 8 September 2011 | PDF Download