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

THE BAND OF HOPE REVIEW

Of all unlikely publications to interest artist or collector a halfpenny monthly devoted to teetotalism might take first place. Not because of its price, nor because it was a monthly with a mission, for many cheap serials have attracted the support of artists who gave liberally of their best for the sake of the cause the publications championed. The Band of Hope Review is no esoteric pamphlet, but a perfect instance of a popular venture unconcerned, one would think, with art. It would be easy to claim too much for it; still the good work in its pages merits attention. It was started in 1861 as a folio sheet about the size of The Sketch, its front page being always filled by a large wood-engraving. The first full page, by H. Anelay, a draughtsman whose speciality was the good little boy and girl of the most commonplace religious periodicals, promises little enough. A series of really fine drawings of animals and birds by Harrison Weir commenced in No. 2. The third issue included a page by L. Huard, whose work occasionally found its way to the shilling magazines, although the bulk of it appeared in the mass of journals of the type of the London Journal, Bow Bells, etc. In the fifth number John Gilbert (not then knighted) appears with a fine drawing, The Golden Star; J. Wolf, honourably distinguished as an illustrator of animals, is also represented. For December 1862 John Gilbert provided a decorative composition of The Ten Virgins, that is somewhat unlike his usual type. In August 1865 Robert Barnes appears for the first time with admirably drawn boys and girls full of health and characteristically British. Afterwards one finds many of his full pages all vigorous and delightfully true to the type he represents. In August 1866 a group, Young Cadets, may be selected as a typical example of his strength and perhaps also of his limitations. In 1870 the falling off apparent everywhere is as noticeable in this unimportant publication as in those of far higher pretensions. Here, as elsewhere, the foreign cliché appears, or possibly the subjects were engraved specially, and were not, as was so often the case, merely replicas of German and French engravings. But all the same they are from oil-paintings, not from drawings made for illustration.

UNKNOWN

'LEISURE HOUR'
1864

ENOCH ARDEN

SIMEON SOLOMON

'LEISURE HOUR'
1866, p. 604

THE FEAST OF
TABERNACLES

SIMEON SOLOMON

'LEISURE HOUR'
1866, p. 540

THE DAY OF
ATONEMENT