ILLUSTRATION FROM
"THE WONDER CLOCK."
BY HOWARD PYLE
(HARPER AND BROTHERS. 1894)
ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE WONDER CLOCK." BY HOWARD PYLE. (HARPER AND BROTHERS)
It is no overt dispraise to say of Miss Kate Greenaway that few artists made so great a reputation in so small a field. Inspired by the children's books of 1820 (as a reference to a design, "Paths of Learning," reproduced on [p. 9] will show), and with a curious naïvety that was even more unconcerned in its dramatic effect than were the "missal marge" pictures of the illuminators, by her simple presentation of the childishness of childhood she won all hearts. Her little people are the beau-idéal of nursery propriety—clean, good-tempered, happy small gentlefolk. For, though they assume peasants' garb, they never betray boorish manners. Their very abandon is only that of nice little people in play-hours, and in their wildest play the penalties that await torn knickerbockers or soiled frocks are not absent from their minds. Whether they really interested children as they delighted their elders is a moot point. The verdict of many modern children is unanimous in praise, and possibly because they represented the ideal every properly educated child is supposed to cherish. The slight taint of priggishness which occasionally is there did not reveal itself to a child's eye. Miss Greenaway's art, however, is not one to analyse but to enjoy. That she is a most careful and painstaking worker is a fact, but one that would not in itself suffice to arouse one's praise. The absence of effort which makes her work look happy and without effort is not its least charm. Her gay yet "cultured" colour, her appreciation of green chairs and formal gardens, all came at the right time. The houses by a Norman Shaw found a Morris and a Liberty ready with furniture and fabrics, and all sorts of manufacturers devoting themselves to the production of pleasant objects, to fill them; and for its drawing-room tables Miss Greenaway produced books that were in the same key. But as the architecture and the fittings, at their best, proved to be no passing whim, but the germ of a style, so her illustration is not a trifling sport, but a very real, if small, item in the history of the evolution of picture-books. Good taste is the prominent feature of her work, and good taste, if out of fashion for a time, always returns, and is treasured by future generations, no matter whether it be in accord with the expression of the hour or distinctly archaic. Time is a very stringent critic, and much that passed as tolerably good taste when it fell in with the fashion, looks hopelessly vulgar when the tide of popularity has retreated. Miss Greenaway's work appears as refined ten years after its "boom," as it did when it was at the flood. That in itself is perhaps an evidence of its lasting power; for ten or a dozen years impart a certain shabby and worn aspect that has no flavour of the antique as a saving virtue to atone for its shortcomings.
ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE WONDER CLOCK." BY HOWARD PYLE. (HARPER AND BROTHERS)
It seems almost superfluous to give a list of the principal books by Miss Kate Greenaway, yet for the convenience of collectors the names of the most noteworthy volumes may be set down. Those with coloured plates are: "A, Apple Pie" (1886), "Alphabet" (1885), "Almanacs" (from 1882 yearly), "Birthday Book" (1880), "Book of Games" (1889), "A Day in a Child's Life" (1885), "King Pepito" (1889), "Language of Flowers" (1884), "Little Ann" (1883), "Marigold Garden" (1885), "Mavor's Spelling Book" (1885), "Mother Goose" (1886), "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" (1889), "Painting Books" (1879 and 1885), "Queen Victoria's Jubilee Garland" (1887), "Queen of the Pirate Isle" (1886), "Under the Window" (1879). Others with black-and-white illustrations include "Child of the Parsonage" (1874), "Fairy Gifts" (1875), "Seven Birthdays" (1876), "Starlight Stories" (1877), "Topo" (1878), "Dame Wiggins of Lee" (Allen, 1885), "Stories from the Eddas" (1883).
Many designs, some in colour, are to be found in volumes of Little Folks, Little Wideawake, Every Girl's Magazine, Girl's Own Paper, and elsewhere.
