FELIX OF THE "LAPIN AGILE".
From "Paris and Some Parisians"
FRANK REYNOLDS. V.
Looking through these inimitable sketches of Paris and Parisians, one indulges a fond hope that some day Frank Reynolds will produce a companion set of drawings illustrative of London life. It is answered, perhaps, that Paris affords a unique opportunity such as the artist would hardly find at home; but the supposition is due, of course, only to the familiarity of our immediate surroundings and the difficulty which invariably arises, in consequence, of focussing them to their true proportions. Needless to say, Frank Reynolds has already worked the rich vein of Cockney life to a considerable extent, but his essays in this direction only increase the desire to see an exhaustive pictorial commentary from his pencil and pen upon the men and manners of our own city. Such quaint humour as is contained in his study of "Sunday Clothes at Bethnal Green" ([page 17]), suggests what possibilities the subject presents.
Incidentally, it may be remarked, apropos of this drawing, that the London coster (whom he knows and loves) has provided some of his most admirable studies from life. To that class belongs the sympathetic study which faces [page 1] in the present volume. The broad humours of Whitechapel could scarcely fail to appeal irresistibly to an artist of Reynolds' peculiar temperament, and few men have depicted them with such relish or—thanks to his rare gift of restraint—with such fidelity and truth.
To a certain extent, Frank Reynolds has already recorded contemporary manners in England, and especially in London, in his well-known series of "Social Pests," though it would perhaps be more correct to say that he has pilloried therein the more extravagant of our social freaks. Probably the delighted recognition with which these ruthless analyses of character were hailed was due to the satisfaction which attends the exhibition of a proper object of satire meeting with its just deserts.
THE WARRENER.
Exhibited at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, 1907.
No ridicule could be more serene, nor yet more biting, than that with which the artist touches off the desperate efforts to attract attention of the rowdy group of callow youths whom he names, with a flash of inspiration, "The Dare-Devils" ([page 10]). Of "The Suburbanite," to the writer's mind perhaps the most subtly accurate character-study of all, the artist speaks in terms of apology. It is hardly fair, he contends, to include in a gallery of pests the bulwark of the nation!