"MERCURY AND THE WOODMAN." ILLUSTRATION FROM "BEWICK'S SELECT FABLES." BY THOMAS BEWICK (1784)
"And in art, painters and designers are vying with the poets and with each other in accommodating their work to his well-known matter-of-fact tastes and love of simple directness. Having discovered that the New Hero's ideal of pictorial representation is of that high dramatic and businesslike kind exemplified in the Bayeux tapestry, Mr. Caldecott, Mr. Walter Crane, Miss Kate Greenaway, Miss Dorothy Tennant, have each tried to surpass the other in appealing to the New Hero's love of real business in art—treating him, indeed, as though he were Hoteï, the Japanese god of enjoyment—giving him as much colour, as much dramatic action, and as little perspective as is possible to man's finite capacity in this line. Some generous art critics have even gone so far indeed as to credit an entire artistic movement, that of pre-Raphaelism, with a benevolent desire to accommodate art to the New Hero's peculiar ideas upon perspective. But this is a 'soft impeachment' born of that loving kindness for which art-critics have always been famous."
"THE BROTHER AND SISTER." ILLUSTRATION FROM "BEWICK'S SELECT FABLES." BY THOMAS BEWICK (1784)
It would be out of place here to project any theory to account for this more recent homage paid to children, but it is quite certain that a similar number of The Studio could scarce have been compiled a century ago, for there was practically no material for it. In fact the tastes of children as a factor to be considered in life are well-nigh as modern as steam or the electric light, and far less ancient than printing with movable types, which of itself seems the second great event in the history of humanity, the use of fire being the first.
"LITTLE ANTHONY." ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE LOOKING-GLASS OF THE MIND." BY THOMAS BEWICK (1792)
"LITTLE ADOLPHUS." ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE LOOKING-GLASS OF THE MIND." BY THOMAS BEWICK (1792)