Frank Reynolds, R.I.

by A. E. Johnson

"CHACUN" WITH HIS "CHACUNE".
From "Paris and some Parisians"

If early inclinations were of more lasting duration than is their wont, it is likely that Frank Reynolds would now be known to fame as a painter of martial types and gory battlefields. With him the fascination which soldiers and all things military have for the boyish mind took the form of an intense eagerness to reproduce in colour and line the gay pageant of the march. The skirl of the fife and the tattoo of the drum inspired him with a desire, not to shoulder a gun, but to seize a pencil. There was a shop in Piccadilly

where water-colour sketches of military types might frequently be seen displayed to view, and to Reynolds junior a tramp thither of several miles from the far west of London was as nothing, could he but have the ecstatic joy of gazing, with nose flattened against the window-pane, upon these transcendent works of art, for an hour or more on end.

This early training, to be regarded as the sure foundation upon which the artist's later education was to rest, owed not a little, perhaps, of its effectiveness to its casual and desultory nature. The natural bent was allowed to reveal itself: development was gradual, and (as it were) automatic. Individuality was neither crushed nor cramped. On the contrary, it was given full play, and that the work of Frank Reynolds is invested with so definite a quality of personality is due in no small degree to the special circumstances of his youthful training.

Heatherley's, in Newman Street, London, was his only school. Here, for some time after his final abandonment of commerce for art as the serious business of his life, Reynolds was a close and persistent student. That conscientious care which presents itself to those who are cognisant of his method of work (and, indeed, to any intelligent critic of his finished drawings) as one of his most salient characteristics was a feature of his days of apprenticeship at Heatherley's. Delight at emancipation from uncongenial occupation was balanced by a sober ambition and a steady purpose. He lived laborious days, laying to heart the lessons of his craft, but he laboured always con amore.

BETHNAL GREEN.
From "Sunday Clothes"

In his student days at Heatherley's Frank Reynolds received much valuable help from Professor John Crompton. On the vital importance of drawing, the latter was especially insistent: this was the dominant note of his teaching, markedly made manifest in the work of his pupil. In the matter of draughtsmanship, few men have so sure a hand, an instinct so unerring.