English Illustration 'The Sixties': 1855-70 / With Numerous Illustrations by Ford Madox Brown: A. Boyd Houghton: Arthur Hughes: Charles Keene: M. J. Lawless: Lord Leighton, P.R.A.: Sir J. E. Millais, P.R.A.: G. Du Maurier: J. W. North, R.A.: G. J. Pinwell: Dante Gabriel Rossetti: W. Small: Frederick Sandys: J. Mcneill Whistler: Frederick Walker, A.R.A.: and Others

by Gleeson White

DARK BLUE

Although Dark Blue, a shilling monthly magazine, did not begin until March 1871, and ran its brief career until March 1873 only, it deserves mention here, because quite apart from its literary contributions which were notable, including as they did Swinburne's End of a Month, Rossetti's Down Stream, its earlier volumes contain at least two drawings that will be prized when these things are collected seriously. Besides, it has a certain cachet of its own that will always entitle it to a place. Its wrapper in colours, with three classically-attired maidens by a doorway, is singularly unlike that of any other publication; possibly F. W. L. would not be anxious to claim the responsibility of its design, yet it was new in its day, and not a bad specimen of the good effect of three simple colours on a white ground. Its serial, Lost, a Romance by J. C. Freund, was illustrated by F. W. Lawson, T. W. Perry, T. Robinson, and D. T. White; and its second serial, Take care whom you trust, by M. E. Freere and T. W. Ridley. A full-page drawing (they are all separately printed plates in this magazine), by Cecil Lawson, Spring, is far more interesting. Musaeus, by A. W. Cooper, a somewhat jejune representation of the Hero and Leander motive, and other illustrations by E. F. Clarke, W. J. Hennessey, M. Fitzgerald, D. H. Friston, S. P. Hall, J. A. H. Bird, are commonplace designs engraved by C. M. Jenkin; but The End of a Month, a study of two heads, by Simeon Solomon, and Down Stream, by Ford Madox Brown, (here reproduced from the original drawing on wood by kind permission of Mr. Frederick Hollyer), represent the work of two artists who very rarely appeared as magazine illustrators. The literature includes many names that have since become widely known, but the project failed, one imagines, to secure popular support, and so it must be numbered with the long list of similar good intentions.