FROM MR. WALTER CRANE'S 'GRIMM'S HOUSEHOLD STORIES.' BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. MACMILLAN.FROM MR. WALTER CRANE'S 'GRIMM'S HOUSEHOLD STORIES.'BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. MACMILLAN.
But whatever the subject, how strong soever his artistic admirations, he is always Walter Crane, unmistakable at a glance. Knights and ladies, fairies and fairy people, allegorical figures, nursery and school-room children, fulfil his decorative purpose without swerving, though not always without injury to their comfort and freedom and the life in their limbs. An individual apprehension that sees every situation as a conventional 'arrangement' is occasionally beside the mark in rendering real life. But when his theme touches imagination, and is not a supreme expression of it—for then, as in the illustrations to 'The Faerie Queene,' an unusual sense of subservience appears to dull his spirit—his humorous fancy knows no weariness nor sameness of device.
The work of most of Mr. Crane's followers belongs to 'the nineties,' when the 'Arts and Crafts' movement, the 'Century Guild,' the Birmingham and other schools had attracted or produced artists working according to the canons of Kelmscott. Mr. Heywood Sumner was earlier in the field. The drawings to 'Sintram' (1883) and to 'Undine' (1888) show his art as an illustrator. Undine—spirit of wind and water, flower-like in gladness—seeking to win an immortal soul by submission to the forms of life, is realized in the gracefully designed figures of frontispiece and title-page. Where Mr. Sumner illustrates incident he is 'factual'without being matter-of-fact. The small drawing reproduced is hardly representative of his art, but most of his work is adapted to a squarer page than this, and has had to be rejected on that account. Some of the most apt decorations in 'The English Illustrated' were by Mr. Sumner, and during the time when art was represented in the magazine Mr. Ryland and Mr. Louis Davis were also frequent contributors. The graceful figures of Mr. Ryland, uninterested in activity, a garden-world set with statues around them, and the carol-like grace of Mr. Davis's designs in that magazine, represent them better than the one or two books they have illustrated.
FROM MR. HEYWOODSUMNER'S 'UNDINE.' BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. CHAPMAN AND HALL.FROM MR. HEYWOOD SUMNER'S 'UNDINE.BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. CHAPMAN AND HALL.
Among those associated with the 'Arts and Crafts' who have given more of their art to book-decoration, Mr. Anning Bell is first. He has gained the approval even of the most exigent of critics as an artist who understands drawing for process. Since 1895, when the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' appeared, his winningart has been praised with discrimination and without discrimination, but always praised. Trained in an architect's office, widely known as the recreator of coloured relief for architectural decoration, Mr. Anning Bell's illustrations show constructive power no less than that fairy gift of seeming to improvise without labour and without hesitancy, which is one of its especial charms. In feeling, and in many of his decorative forms, his drawings recall the art of Florentine bas-relief, when Agostino di Duccio, or Rossellino or Mino da Fiesole, created shapes of delicate sweetness, pure, graceful—so graceful that their power is hardly realized. The fairy by-play of the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' is exactly to Mr. Anning Bell's fancy. He knows better than to go about to expound this dream, and it is not likely that a more delightful edition will ever be put into the hands of children, or of anyone, than this in the white and gold cover devised by the artist.
Of his illustrations to the 'Poems by John Keats' (1897), and to the 'English Lyrics from Spenser to Milton' of the following year—as illustrations—not quite so much can be said, distinguished and felicitous as many of them are. The simple profile, the demure type of beauty that he affects, hardly suit with Isabella when she hears that Lorenzo has gone from her, with Lamia by the clear pool
"Wherein she passionëdTo see herself escaped from so sore ills,"
"Wherein she passionëdTo see herself escaped from so sore ills,"
or with Madeline, 'St. Agnes' charmëd maid.' Mr.Anning Bell's drawings to 'The Pilgrim's Progress' (1898) reveal him in a different mood, as do those in 'The Christian Year' of three years earlier. His vision is hardly energetic enough, his energy of belief sufficient, to make him a strong illustrator of Bunyan, with his many moods, his great mood. A little these designs suggest Howard Pyle, and Anning Bell is better in a way of beauty not Gothic.
FROM MR. ANNING BELL'S 'KEATS.' BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. GEORGE BELL.FROM MR. ANNING BELL'S 'KEATS.'BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. GEORGE BELL.
So if Mr. Anning Bell represents the 'Arts and Crafts' movement in the variety of decorative arts he has practised, and in the architectural sense underlying all his art, his work does not agree with the form in which the influence of William Morris on decorative illustration has chiefly shown itself. That form, of course, is Gothic, as the ideal of Kelmscott was Gothic. The work of the 'Century Guild' artists as decorative illustrators ischiefly in the pages of 'The Hobby Horse.' Mr. Selwyn Image and Mr. Herbert Horne can hardly be included among book illustrators, so in this connection one may not stop to consider the decorative strength of their ideal in art. The Birmingham school represents Gothic ideals with determination and rigidity. Morris addressed the students of the school and prefaced the edition of 'Good King Wenceslas,' decorated and engraved and printed by Mr. A. J. Gaskin 'at the press of the Guild of Handicraft in the City of Birmingham,' with cordial words of appreciation for the pictures. These illustrations are among the best Mr. Gaskin has done. The commission for twelve full-page drawings to 'The Shepheardes Calendar' (Kelmscott Press, 1896) marks Morris's pleasure in Mr. Gaskin's work—especially in the illustrations to Andersen's 'Stories and Fairy Tales.' If not quite in tune with Spenser's Elizabethan idyllism, these drawings are distinctive of the definite convictions of the artist.
FROM MR. GASKIN'S 'HANS ANDERSEN.' BY LEAVE OF MR. GEORGE ALLEN.FROM MR. GASKIN'S 'HANS ANDERSEN.'BY LEAVE OF MR. GEORGE ALLEN.
These convictions represent a splendid tradition. They are expressive, in their regard for the unity of the page, for harmony between type and decoration, of the universal truth in all fine bookmaking. Only at times, Birmingham work seems rather heavy in spirit, rather too rigid for development. Still, judging by results, a code that would appear to be against individual expression is inspiring individual artists. Some of these—as Mr. E. H. New—have turned their attention to architectural and 'open-air' illustration, in which connection their work will be considered, and manyhave illustrated children's books. Their quaint and naïve fancy has there, at times, produced a portentous embodiment of the 'old-fashioned' child of fiction. Mr. Gere, though he has done little book-illustration, is one of the strongest artists of the school. His original wood engravings show unmistakably his decorative power and his craftsmanship. With Mr. K. Fairfax Muckley he was responsible for 'The Quest' (1894-96). Mr. Fairfax Muckley has illustrated and decorated a three-volume edition of 'The Faerie Queene' (1897), wherein the forest branches and winding ways of woodland and of plain are more happily conventionalized than are Spenser's figures. Some of the headpieces are especially successful. The artist uses the 'mixed convention' of solid black and line with less confusion than many modern draughtsmen. Once its dangers must have been evident, but now the puzzle pattern, with solid blacks in the foreground, background, and mid-distance—only there is no distance in these drawings—is a common form of black and white.
Miss Celia Levetus, Mr. Henry Payne, Mr. F. Mason, and Mr. Bernard Sleigh, are also to the credit of the school. Miss Levetus, in her later work, shows that an inclination towards a more flexible style is not incompatible with the training in Gothic convention. Mr. Mason's illustrations to ancient romances of chivalry give evidence of conscientious craftsmanship, and of a spirit sympathetic to themes such as 'Renaud of Montauban.' Mr. Bernard Sleigh's original wood-engravings are well known and justly appreciated. Strong in traditionand logic as is the work of these designers, it is, for many, too consistent with convention to be delightful. Perhaps the best result of the Birmingham school will hardly be achieved until the formal effect of its training is less patent.
The 'sixties' might have been void of art, so far as these designers are concerned, save that in those days Morris and Burne-Jones and Walter Crane, as well as Millais and Houghton and Sandys, were about their work. Far other is the case with artists such as Mr. Byam Shaw, or with the many draughtsmen, including Messrs. P. V. Woodroffe, Henry Ospovat, Philip Connard, and Herbert Cole, whose art derives its form and intention from the sixties. Differing in technical power and fineness of invention, in all that distinguishes good from less good, they have this in common—that the form of their art would have been quite other if the illustrated books of that period were among things unseen. Mr. Byam Shaw began his work as an illustrator in 1897 with a volume of 'Browning's Poems,' edited by Dr. Garnett. He proved himself in these drawings, as in his pictures and later illustrations, an artist with a definite memory for the forms, and a genuine sympathy with the aims of pre-Raphaelite art. Evidently, too, he admires the black-and-white of Mr. Abbey. He has the gift of dramatic conception, sees a situation at high pitch, and has a pleasant way of giving side-lights, pictorial asides, by means of decorative head and tailpieces. His illustrations to the little green and gold volumes of the 'Chiswick Shakespeare' are more emphatic than his earlier work, and in the decorations hispower of summarizing the chief motive is put to good use. There is no need of his signature to distinguish the work of Byam Shaw, though he shows himself under the influence of various masters. Probably he is only an illustrator of books by the way, but in the meantime, as the 'Boccaccio,' 'Browning,' and 'Shakespeare' drawings show, he works in black and white with vigorous intention.
Mr. Ospovat's illustrations to 'Shakespeare's Sonnets' and to 'Matthew Arnold's Poems' are interesting, if not very markedly his own. He illustrates the Sonnets as a celebration of a poet's passion for his mistress. As in these, so in the Matthew Arnold drawings, he shows some genuine creative power and an aptitude for illustrative decoration. Mr. Philip Connard has made spirited and well-realized illustrations in somewhat the same kind; Miss Amelia Bauerle, and Mr. Bulcock, who began by illustrating 'The Blessed Damozel' in memory of Rossetti, have made appearance in the 'Flowers of Parnassus' series, and Mr. Herbert Cole, with three of these little green volumes, prepared one for more important work in 'Gulliver's Travels' (1900).
The work of Mr. Woodroffe was, I think, first seen in the 'Quarto'—the organ of the Slade School—where also Mr. A. Garth Jones, Mr. Cyril Goldie, and Mr. Robert Spence, gave unmistakable evidence of individuality. Mr. Woodroffe's wood-engravings in the 'Quarto' showed strength, which is apparent, too, in the delicately characterized figures to 'Songs from Shakespeare's Plays' (1898), with their borders of lightly-strung field flowers.His drawings to 'The Confessions of S. Augustine,' engraved by Miss Clemence Housman, are in keeping with the text, not impertinent. Mr. A. Garth Jones in the 'Quarto' seemed much influenced by Japanese grotesques; but in illustrations to Milton's 'Minor Poems' (1898) he has shown development towards the expression of beauty more austere, classical, controlled to the presentment of Milton's high thought. His recent 'Essays of Elia' remind one of the forcible work of Mr. E. J. Sullivan in 'Sartor Resartus.' Mr. Sullivan's 'Sartor' and 'Dream of Fair Women' must be mentioned. His mastery over an assertive use of line and solid black, the unity of his effects, the humour and imagination of his decorative designs, are not likely to be forgotten, though the balance of his work in illustrations to Sheridan, Marryat, Sir Walter Scott, obliges one to class him with "character" illustrators, and so to leave a blank in this article.
Mr. Laurence Housman stands alone among modern illustrators, though one may, if one will, speak of him as representing the succession of the sixties, or as connected with the group of artists whose noteworthy development dates from the publication of 'The Dial' by Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon in 1889. To look at Mr. Housman's art in either connection, or to record the effect of Dürer, of Blake, of Edward Calvert, on his technique, is only to come back to appreciation of all that is his own. As an illustrator he has hardly surpassed the spirit of the 'forty-four designs, drawn and written by Laurence Housman,' that express his idea of George Meredith's 'Jumpto Glory Jane' (1890). These designs were the result of the appreciation which the editor, Mr. Harry Quilter, felt for Mr. Housman's drawings to 'The Green Gaffer' in 'The Universal Review.' Jane—the village woman with 'wistful eyes in a touching but bony face,' leaping with countenance composed, arms and feet 'like those who hang,' leaping in crude expression of the unity of soul and body, making her converts, failing to move the bishop, dying at last, though not ingloriously, by the wayside—this most difficult conception has no 'burlesque outline' in Mr. Housman's work, inexperienced and unacademic as is the drawing.
'Weird Tales from Northern Seas,' by Jonas Lie, was the next book illustrated by Mr. Housman. Christina Rossetti's 'Goblin Market' (1893), offered greater scope for freakish imagination than did 'Jane.' The goblins, pale-eyed, mole and rat and weasel-faced; the sisters, whose simple life they surround with hideous fantasy, are realized in harmony with the unique effect of the poem—an effect of simplicity, of naïve imagination, of power, of things stranger than are told in the cry of the goblin merchants, as at evening time they invade quiet places to traffic with their evil fruits for the souls of maidens. The frail-bodied elves of 'The End of Elfin Town,' moving and sleeping among the white mushrooms and slender stalks of field flowers, are of another land than that of the goblin merchant-folk. Illustrations to 'The Imitation of Christ,' to 'The Sensitive Plant,' and drawings to 'The Were-Wolf,' by Miss Clemence Housman,complete the list of Mr. Housman's illustrations to writings not his own, with the exception of frontispiece drawings to several books.
MERCURY GOD OF MERCHANDISE LOOK ON WITH FAVOURABLE EYES BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. KEGAN PAUL.MERCURY GOD OF MERCHANDISE LOOK ON WITH FAVOURABLE EYESBY LEAVE OF MESSRS. KEGAN PAUL.
To explain Mr. Housman's vision of 'The Sensitive Plant' would be as superfluous as it would be ineffectual. In a note on the illustrations he has told how the formal beauty, the exquisite ministrations, the sounds and fragrance and sweet winds of the garden enclosed, seem to him as 'a form of beauty that springs out of modes and fashions,' too graceful to endure. In his pictures he has realized the perfect ensemble of the garden, its sunny lawns and rose-trellises, its fountains, statues, and flower-sweet ways; realized, too, the spirit of the Sensitive Plant, the lady of the garden, and Pan, the great god who never dies, who waits only without the garden, till in a little while he enters, 'effacing and replacing with his own image and superscription, the parenthetic grace ... of the garden deity.'
Of a talent that treats always of enchanted places, where 'reality' is a long day's journey down a dusty road, it is difficult to speak without suggesting that it is all just a charming dalliance with pretty fancies, lacking strength. Of the strength of Mr. Housman's imagination, however, his work speaks. His illustrations to his own writings, fairy tales, and poems, cannot with any force be discussed by themselves. The words belong to the pictures, the pictures to the words. The drawings to 'The Field of Clover' are seen to full advantage in the wood-engravings of Miss Housman. Only so, or in reproduction by photogravure,is the full intention of Mr. Housman's pen-drawings apparent.
THE FIELD OF CLOVER By Laurence Housman, Engraved by Clemence Housman BE KINDLY TO THE WEARY DROVER & PIPE THE SHEEP INTO THE CLOVER BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. KEGAN PAUL.THE FIELD OF CLOVER By Laurence Housman, Engraved by Clemence HousmanBE KINDLY TO THE WEARY DROVER& PIPE THE SHEEP INTO THE CLOVERBY LEAVE OF MESSRS. KEGAN PAUL.
One may group the names of Charles Ricketts, C. H. Shannon, T. Sturge Moore, Lucien Pissarro, and Reginald Savage together in memory of 'The Dial,' where the activity of five original artists first became evident, though, save in the case of Mr. Ricketts and Mr. Shannon, no continuance of the classification is possible. The first number of 'The Dial' (1889) had a cover design cut on wood by Mr. C. H. Shannon—afterwards replaced by the design of Mr. Ricketts. Twelve designs by Mr. Ricketts may be said to represent the transitional—or a transitional—phase of his art, from the earlier work in magazines, which he disregards, to the reticent expression of 'Vale Press' illustrations. In 1891 the first book decorated by these artists appeared, 'The House of Pomegranates,' by Oscar Wilde. There was, however, nothing in this book to suggest the form their joint talent was to take. Many delightful designs by Mr. Ricketts, somewhat marred by heaviness of line, and full-page illustrations by Mr. Shannon, printed in an almost invisible, nondescript colour, contained no suggestion of 'Daphnis and Chloe.'
The second 'Dial'(1892) contained Mr. Ricketts' first work as his own wood-engraver, and in the following year the result of eleven months' joint work by Mr. Ricketts and Mr. Shannon was shown in the publication of 'Daphnis and Chloe,' with thirty-seven woodcuts by the artists. Fifteen of the pictures were sketched by Mr. Shannon and revised and drawn on the wood by Mr. Ricketts,who also engraved the initials. It is a complete achievement of individuality subordinated to an ideal. Here and there one can affirm that Mr. Shannon drew this figure, composed this scene, Mr. Ricketts that; but generally the hand is not to be known. The ideal of their inspiration—the immortal 'Hypnerotomachia'—seems equally theirs, equally potent over their individuality. Speaking with diffidence, it would seem as though Mr. Shannon's idea of the idyll were more naïve and humorous. Incidents beside the main theme of the pastoral loves of young Daphnis and Chloe—the household animals, other shepherds—are touched with humorous intent. Mr. Ricketts shows more suavity, and, as in the charming double-page design of the marriage feast, a more lyrical realization of delight and shepherd joys.
The 'Hero and Leander' of 1894 is a less elaborate, and, on the whole, a finer production. I must speak of the illustrations only, lest consideration of Vale Press publications should fill the remaining space at my disposal. Obviously the attenuated type of these figures shows Mr. Ricketts' ideal of the human form as a decoration for a page of type. The severe reticence he imposes on himself is in order to maintain the balance between illustrations and text. One has only to turn to illustrations to Lord de Tabley's 'Poems,' published in 1893, to see with what eager imagination he realizes a subject, how strong a gift he has for dramatic expression. That a more persuasive beauty of form was once his wont, much of his early and transitional work attests. But I donot think his power to achieve beauty need be defended. After the publication of 'Hero and Leander,' Mr. Shannon practically ceased wood-engraving for the illustration of books, though, as the series of roundel designs in the recent exhibition of his work proved, he has not abandoned nor ceased to go forward in the art.
FROM MR. RICKETTS' 'CUPIDE AND PSYCHES.' REPRODUCED BY HIS PERMISSION.FROM MR. RICKETTS' 'CUPIDE AND PSYCHES.'REPRODUCED BY HIS PERMISSION.
OF THE APPARITION OF THE THREE NYMPHS TO DAPHNIS IN A DREAM. FROM MESSRS. RICKETTS AND SHANNON'S 'DAPHNIS AND CHLOE.' (MATHEWS AND LANE.) REPRODUCED BY THEIR LEAVE AND THE PUBLISHERS'.OF THE APPARITION OF THE THREE NYMPHS TO DAPHNIS IN A DREAM.FROM MESSRS. RICKETTS AND SHANNON'S 'DAPHNIS AND CHLOE.' (MATHEWS AND LANE.)REPRODUCED BY THEIR LEAVE AND THE PUBLISHERS'.
'The Sphinx,' a poem by Oscar Wilde, 'built, decorated and bound' by Mr. Ricketts—but without woodcuts—was published in 1894, just after 'Hero and Leander,' and designs for a magnificent edition of 'The King's Quhair' were begun.Some of these are in 'The Dial,' as are also designs for William Adlington's translation of 'Cupide and Psyches' in 'The Pageant,' 'The Dial,' and 'The Magazine of Art.' The edition of the work published by the new Vale Press in 1897, is not that projected at this time. It contains roundel designs in place of the square designs first intended. These roundels are, I think, the finest achievement of Mr. Ricketts as an original wood-engraver. The engraving reproduced shows of what quality are both line and form, how successful is the placing of the figure within the circle. On the page they are what the artist would have them be. With the beginning of the sequence of later Vale Press books—books printed from founts designed by Mr. Ricketts—a consecutive account is impossible, but the frontispiece to the 'Milton' and the borders and initials designed by Mr. Ricketts, must be mentioned. As a designer of book-covers only one failure is set down to Mr. Ricketts, and that was ten years ago, in the cover to 'The House of Pomegranates.'
Mr. Reginald Savage's illustrations to some tales from Wagner lack the force of designs in 'The Pageant,' and of woodcuts in Essex House publications. Of M. Lucien Pissarro, in an article overcrowded with English illustrators, I cannot speak. His fame is in France as the forerunner of his art, and we in England know his coloured wood-engravings, his designs for 'The Book of Ruth and Esther' and for 'The Queen of the Fishes,' printed at his press at Epping, but included among Vale Press books.
FROM MR. STURGE MOORE'S 'THE CENTAUR.' REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF MR. RICKETTS.FROM MR. STURGE MOORE'S 'THE CENTAUR.'REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF MR. RICKETTS.
'The Centaur,' 'The Bacchant,' 'The Metamorphoses of Pan,' 'Siegfried'—young Siegfried, wood-nurtured, untamed, setting his lusty strength against the strength of the brutes, hearing the bird-call then, and following the white bird to issues remote from savage life—these are subjects realized by the imagination of Mr. T. Sturge Moore. There are few artists illustrating books to-day whose work is more unified, imaginatively and technically. It is some years since first Mr. Moore's wood-engravings attracted notice in 'The Dial' and 'The Pageant,' and the latest work from his graver—finer, more rhythmic in composition though it be—shows no change in ideals, in the direction of his talent. He has said, I think, that the easiest line for the artist is the true basis of that artist'swork, and it would seem as though much deliberation in finding that line for himself had preceded any of the work by which he is known. The wood-engraving of Mr. Sturge Moore is of some importance. Always the true understanding of his material, the unhesitating realization of his subject, combine to produce the effect of inevitable line and form, of an inevitable setting down of forms in expression of the thought within. Only that gives the idea of formality, and Mr. Moore's art handles the strong impulse of the wild creatures of earth, of the solitary creatures, mighty and terrible, haunting the desert places and fearing the order men make for safety. Designs to Wordsworth's 'Poems,' not yet published, represent with innate perception the earth-spirit as Wordsworth knew it, when the great mood of 'impassioned contemplation' came upon his careful spirit, when his heart leapt up, or when, wandering beneath the wind-driven clouds of March, at sight of daffodils, he lost his loneliness.
'The Evergreen,' that 'Northern Seasonal,' represented the pictorial outlook of an interesting group of artists—Robert Burns, Andrew K. Womrath, John Duncan, and James Cadenhead, for example—and the racial element, as well as their own individuality, distinguishes the work of Mr. W. B. Macdougall and Mr. J. J. Guthrie of 'The Elf.' Mr. Macdougall has been known as a book-illustrator since 1896, when 'The Book of Ruth,' with decorated borders showing the fertility of his designing power, and illustrations that were no less representative of a unique use of material, appeared.The conventionalized landscape backgrounds, the long, straightly-draped women, seemed strange enough as a reading of the Hebrew pastoral, with its close kinship to the natural life of the free children of earth. Their unimpassioned faces, unspontaneous gestures, the artificiality of the whole impression, were undoubtedly a new reading of the ancient charm of the story. Two books in 1897, and 'Isabella' and 'The Shadow of Love,' 1898, showed beyond doubt that the manner was not assumed, that it was the expression of Mr. Macdougall's sense of beauty. The decorations to 'Isabella' are more elaborate than to 'Ruth,' and inventive handling of natural forms is as marked. Again, the faces are de-characterized in accordance with the desire to make the whole figure the symbol of passion, and that without emphasis. Mr. J. J. Guthrie is hardly among book-illustrators, since 'Wedding Bells' of 1895 does not represent Mr. Guthrie, nor does the child's book of the following year, while the illustrations to Edgar Allan Poe's 'Poems' are still, I think, being issued from the Pear Tree Press in single numbers. His treatment of landscape is inventive, his rhythmic arrangements, his effects of white line on black, are based on a real sense of the beauty of earth, of tall trees and wooded hills, of mysterious moon-brightness and shade in the leafy depths of the woodlands.
Mr. Granville Fell made his name known in 1896 by his illustrations to 'The Book of Job.' In careful detail, drawn with fidelity, never obtrusive, his art is pre-Raphaelite. He touchesJapanese ideals in the rendering of flower-growth and animals, but the whole effect of his decorative illustrations is far enough away from the art of Japan. In the 'Book of Job' he had a subject sufficient to dwarf a very vital imaginative sense by its grandeur. In the opinion of competent critics Mr. Granville Fell proved more than the technical distinction of his work by the manner in which he fulfilled his purpose. The solid black and white, the definite line of these drawings, were laid aside for the sympathetic medium of pencil in 'The Song of Solomon' (1897). Again, his conception is invariably dramatic, and never crudely dramatic, robust, with no trace of morbid or sentimental thought about it. The garden, the wealth of vineyard and of royal pleasure ground, is used as a background to comely and gracious figures. His other work, illustrative of children's books and of legend, the cover and title-page to Mr. W. B. Yeats's 'Poems,' shows the same definite yet restrained imagination.
Mr. Patten Wilson is somewhat akin to Mr. Granville Fell in the energy and soundness of his conceptions. Each of these artists is, as we know, a colourist, delighting in brilliant and iridescent colour-schemes, yet in black and white they do not seek to suggest colour. Mr. Patten Wilson's illustrations to Coleridge's 'Poems' have the careful fulness of drawings well thought out, and worked upon with the whole idea realised in the imagination. He has observed life carefully for the purposes of his art. But it is rather in rendering the circumstance of poems, such as 'The AncientMariner,' or, in a Chaucer illustration—Constance on the lonely ship—that he shows his grasp of the subject, than by any expression of the spiritual terror or loneliness of the one living man among the dead, the solitary woman on strange seas.
Few decorative artists habitually use 'wash' rather than line. Among these, however, is Mr. Weguelin, who has illustrated Anacreon in a manner to earn the appreciation of Greek scholars, and his illustrations to Hans Andersen have had a wider and not less appreciative reception. His drawings have movement and atmosphere. Mr. W. E. F. Britten also uses this medium with fluency, as is shown by his successful illustrations to Mr. Swinburne's 'Carols of the Year' in the 'Magazine of Art' in 1892-3. Since that time his version of 'Undine,' and illustrations to Tennyson's 'Early Poems,' have shown the same power of graceful composition and sympathy with his subject.
OPEN-AIR illustration is less influenced by the tradition of Rossetti and of the romanticists of 'the sixties' than any other branch of illustrative art. The reason is obvious. Of all illustrators, the illustrator of open-air books has least concern with the interpretation of literature, and is most concerned with recording facts from observation. It is true that usually he follows where a writer goes, and studies garden, village or city, according to another man's inclination. But the road they take, the cities and wayside places, are as obvious to the one as to the other. The artist has not to realize the personal significance of beauty conceived by another mind; he has to set down in black and white the aspect of indisputable cities and palaces and churches, of the actual highways and gardens of earth. No fugitive light, but the light of common day shows him his subject. So, although Stevenson's words, that reaching romantic art one becomes conscious of the background, are completely true in application to the drawings of Rossetti, of Millais, Sandys and Houghton, these 'backgrounds' have had notraceable effect on modern open-air illustration. Nor are the landscape drawings in works such as 'Wayside Poesies,' or 'Pictures of English Landscape,' at the beginning of the style or styles—formal or picturesque—most in vogue at present. Birket Foster has no followers; the pensive landscape is not suited to holiday excursion books; and, though Mr. J. W. North is among artists of to-day, as a book-illustrator he has unfortunately added little to his fine record of landscape drawings made between 1864 and 1867. One cannot include his work in a study of contemporary illustration, though it is a pleasure passed over to leave unconsidered drawings that in 'colour,' in effects of winter-weather, of leaf-thrown light and shade amid summer woods and over the green lanes of English country, are delightfully remote from obvious and paragraphic habits of rendering facts.
With few exceptions the open-air illustrators of to-day began their work and took their place in public favour, and in the estimation of critics, after 1890. Mr. Joseph Pennell, it is true, had been making sketches in England, in France, and in Italy for some years; Mr. Railton had made some preliminary illustrations; Mr. Alfred Parsons illustrated 'Old Songs' with Mr. Abbey in 1889; and Mr. Fulleylove contributed to 'The Picturesque Mediterranean,' and published his 'Oxford' drawings, in the same year. Still, with a little elasticity, 'the nineties' covers the past activity of these men. The only important exception is Sir George Reid, President of the Royal Scottish Academy, much of whose illustrativework belongs to the years prior to 1890. The one subject for regret in connection with Sir George Reid's landscape illustrations is that the chapter is closed. He makes no more drawings with pen-and-ink, and the more one is content with those he has made, the less does the quantity seem sufficient. Those who know only the portraits on which Sir George Reid's reputation is firmly based will find in his landscape illustrations a new side to his art. Here, as in portraiture, he sees distinctly and records without prejudice the characteristics of his subject. He renders what he sees, and he knows how to see. His conception being clear to himself, he avoids vagueness and obscurity, finding, with apparent ease, plain modes of expression. A straight observer of men and of the country-side, there is this directness and perspicuity about his work, whether he paints a portrait, or makes pen-drawings of the village worthies of 'Pyketillim' parish, or draws Pyketillim Kirk, small and white and plain, with the sparse trees beside it, or great river or city of his native land.
But in these pen-stroke landscapes, while the same clear-headed survey, the same logical record of facts, is to be observed as in his work as a portrait painter, there is besides a charm of manner that brings the indefinable element into one's appreciation of excellent work. Of course this is not to estimate these drawings above the portraits of Sir George Reid. That would be absurd. But he draws a country known to him all his life, and unconsciously, from intimate memory, he suggests more than actual observation would discover.This identification of past knowledge with the special scrutiny of a subject to be rendered is not usually possible in portraiture. The 'portrait in-time' is a question of occasion as well as of genius.
The first book in which his inimitable pen-drawing of landscape can be properly studied is the illustrated edition of 'Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk, in the Parish of Pyketillim,' published in 1880. Here the illustrations are facsimile reproductions by Amand-Durand's heliogravure process, and their delicacy is perfectly seen. These drawings are of the Aberdeenshire country-folk and country, the native land of the artist; though, as a lad in Aberdeen, practising lithography by day, and seizing opportunities for independent art when work was over, the affairs and doings of Gushetneuk, of Smiddyward, of Pyketillim, or the quiet of Benachie when the snow lies untrodden on its slopes, were things outside the city of work.
It is as difficult to praise these drawings intelligibly to those who have not seen them, as it is unnecessary to enforce their charm on those who have. Unfortunately, a reproduction of one of them is not possible, and admirable as is the drawing from 'Royal Edinburgh,' it is in subject and in treatment distinct from the 'Gushetneuk' and 'North of Scotland' illustrations. The 'Twelve Sketches of Scenery and Antiquities on the Great North of Scotland Railway,' issued in 1883, were made in 1881, and have the same characteristics as the 'Gushetneuk' landscapes. The original drawings for the engraved illustrations in 'The Life of a Scotch Naturalist,' belonging to 1876—drawingsmade because the artist was 'greatly interested' in the story of Thomas Edward—must have been of the same delicate force, and the splendid volumes of plates illustrating the 'River Clyde,' and the 'River Tweed,' issued by the Royal Association for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Scotland, contain more of his fine work. It was this society, that, in the difficult days following the artist's abandonment of Aberdeen and lithography for Edinburgh and painting, gave him the opportunity, by the purchase of two of his early landscapes, for study in Holland and in Paris. There is something of Bosboom in a rendering of a church interior such as 'The West Kirk,' but of Israels, who was his master at the Hague, there is nothing to be seen in Sir George Reid's illustrations. They are never merely picturesque, and when too many men are 'freakish' in their rendering of architecture, the drawings of North of Scotland castles—well founded to endure weather and rough times of war—seem as real and true to Scottish romance as the "pleasant seat," the martlet-haunted masonry of Macbeth's castle set among the brooding wildness of Inverness by the fine words of Duncan and Banquo.
The print-black of naked boughs against pale sky, a snow-covered country where roofs are white, and the shelter of the woods is thin after the passing of the autumn winds—this black and white is the black and white of most of Sir George Reid's studies of northern landscape. To call it black and white is to stretch the octave and omit all the notes of the scale. Pure white of plastered masonry, or of snow-covered roof or field in the bleak winterlight, pure black in some deep-set window, in the figure of a passer-by, or in the bare trees, are used with the finesse of a colourist. Look at the 'Pyketillim Kirk' drawing in 'Johnny Gibb.' Between the white of the long church wall, and the black of the little groups of village folk in the churchyard, how quiet and easy is the transition, and how true to colour is the result. Of the Edinburgh drawings the same may be said; but, except in facsimile reproduction, one has to know the scale of tone used by Sir George Reid in order to see the original effect where the printed page shows unmodified black and white. In 'Holyrood Castle' the values are fairly well kept, and the rendering of the ancient building in the deep snow, without false emphasis, yet losing nothing of emphatic effect, shows the dominant intellectual quality of the artist's work.
HOLYROOD CASTLE. BY SIR GEORGE REID. FROM MRS. OLIPHANT'S "ROYAL EDINBURGH." BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. MACMILLAN.HOLYROOD CASTLE. BY SIR GEORGE REID. FROM MRS. OLIPHANT'S "ROYAL EDINBURGH."BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. MACMILLAN.
It does not seem as though Sir George Reid as an illustrator had any followers. He could hardly have imitators. If a man had delicacy and patience of observation and hand to produce drawings in this 'style,' his style would be his own and not an imitation. The number of artists in black and white who cannot plausibly be imitated is a small number. Sir George Reid is one, Mr. Alfred Parsons is another. Inevitably there are points of similarity in the work of artists, the foundation of whose black and white is colour, and who render the country-side with the understanding of the native, the understanding that is beyond knowledge. The difference between them only proves the essential similarity in the elements of their art;but that, like most paradoxes, is a truism. Mr. Parsons is, of course, thoroughly English in his art. He has the particularity of English nature-poets. Pastoral country is dear to him, and homesteads and flowering orchards, or villages with church tower half hidden by the elms, are part of his home country, the country he draws best. It is interesting to compare his drawings for 'The Warwickshire Avon' with the Scottish artist's drawings of the northern rivers. The drawings of Shakespeare's river show spring trees in a mist of green, leafy summer trees, meadowsweet and hayfields, green earth and blue sky, and a river of pleasure watering a pleasant country. If a man can draw English summer-time in colour with black and white, he must rank high as a landscape pen-draughtsman. Mr. Alfred Parsons has illustrated about a dozen books, and his work is to be found in 'Harper's Magazine,' and 'The English Illustrated' in early days. Two books, the 'Old Songs' and 'The Quiet Life,' published in 1887 and 1890, were illustrated by E. A. Abbey and Alfred Parsons. The drawings of landscape, of fruit and flowers, by Mr. Parsons, the Chippendale people and rooms of Mr. Abbey, fill two charming volumes with pictures whose pleasantness and happy art accord with the dainty verses of eighteenth-century sentiment. 'The Warwickshire Avon,' and another river book, 'The Danube from the Black Forest to the Sea,' illustrated in collaboration with the author, Mr. F. D. Millet, belong to 1892. The slight sketches—passing-by sketches—in these books, are among fortunate examples of abriefness that few men find compatible with grace and significance. Sketches, mostly in wash, of a farther and more decorated country—'Japan, the Far East, the Land of Flowers and of the Rising Sun, the country which for years it had been my dream to see and paint'—illustrate the artist's 'Notes in Japan,' 1895. In the written notes are memoranda of actual colour, of the green harmony of the Japanese summer—harmony culminating in the vivid tint of the rice fields—of sunset and butterflies, of delicate masses of azalea and drifts of cherry-blossom and wisteria, while in the drawings are all the flowers, the green hills and gray hamlets, and the temples, shrines and bridges, that make unspoilt Japan one of the perpetual motives of decorative art. Illustrations to Wordsworth—to a selected Wordsworth—gave the artist fortunate opportunities to render the England of English descriptive verse.
ELMS BY BIDFORD GRANGE. BY ALFRED PARSONS. REPRODUCED FROM QUILLER COUCH'S 'THE WARWICKSHIRE AVON.' BY LEAVE OF OSGOOD, McILVAINE AND CO.ELMS BY BIDFORD GRANGE. BY ALFRED PARSONS. REPRODUCED FROM QUILLER COUCH'S 'THE WARWICKSHIRE AVON.'BY LEAVE OF OSGOOD, McILVAINE AND CO.
It is convenient to speak first of these painter-illustrators, because, in a sense, they stand alone among illustrative artists. Obviously, that is not to say that their work is worth more than the work of illustrators, who, conforming to the laws of 'process,' make their drawings with brain and hand that know how to win profit by concession. But popularisers of an effective topographical or architectural style are indirectly responsible for a large amount of work besides their own. In one sense a leader does not stand alone, and cannot be considered alone. Before, then, passing on to a draughtsman such as Mr. Joseph Pennell, again, to Mr. Railton, or to Mr. New, whose successful andunforgettable works have inspired many drawings in the books whereby authors pay for their holiday journeys, other artists, whose style is no convenience to the industrious imitator, may be considered. Another painter, known for his work in black and white, is Mr. John Fulleylove, whose 'Pictures of Classic Greek Landscape,' and drawings of 'Oxford,' show him to be one of the few men who see architecture steadily and whole, and who draw beautiful buildings as part of the earth which they help to beautify. Compare the Greek drawings with ordinary archæological renderings of pillared temples, and the difference in beauty and interest is apparent. In Mr. Fulleylove's drawings, the relation between landscape and architecture is never forgotten, and he draws both with the structural knowledge of a landscape painter, who is also by training an architect. In aim, his work is in accord with classical traditions; he discerns the classical spirit that built temples and carved statues in the beautiful places of the open-air, a spirit which has nothing of the museum setting about it. The 'Oxford' drawings show that Mr. Fulleylove can draw Gothic.
Though not a painter, Mr. William Hyde works 'to colour' in his illustrations, and is generally successful in rendering both colour and atmosphere. He has done little with the pen, and it is in wash drawings, reproduced by photogravure, that he is best to be studied. Of his early training as an engraver there is little to be seen in his work, though his appreciation of the range of tone existing between black and white may have developed from working within restrictions of monotone, when the coloursense was growing strong in him. At all events he can gradate from black to white with remarkable minuteness and ease. His earliest work of any importance after giving up engraving, was in illustration of 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso,' 1895, and shows his talent already well controlled. There are thirteen illustrations, and the opportunities for rendering aspects of light, from the moment of the lark's morning flight against the dappled skies of dawn, to the passing of whispering night-winds over the darkened country, given in the verse of a poet sensitive as none before him to the gradations of lightness and dark, are realized. So are the hawthorns in the dale, and the towered cities. But it is as an illustrator of another towered city than that imagined by Milton, that some of Mr. Hyde's most individual work has been produced. In the etchings and pictures in photogravure published with Mrs. Meynell's 'London Impressions,' London beneath the strange great sky that smoke and weather make over the gray roofs, London when the dawn is low in the sky, or when the glow of lamps and lamp-lit windows turns the street darkness to golden haze, is drawn by a man who has seen for himself how beautiful the great city is in 'between lights.' His other work is superficially in contrast with these studies of city light and darkness; but the same love for 'big' skies, for the larger aspects of changing lights and cloud movements, are expressed in the drawings of the wide country that is around and beyond the Cinque Ports, and in the illustrations to Mr. George Meredith's 'Nature Poems.' The reproduction isfrom a pen drawing in Mr. Hueffer's book, 'The Cinque Ports.' There is no pettiness about it, and the 'phrasing' of castle, trees and sky shows the artist.