Diagram. Design for a Picture, 1875.
With his usual kindness and enthusiasm he put aside his work—some modelling in clay which he had been studying under his friend M. Dalou, the French sculptor—and at once began a diagram, about seven feet by five feet, to suggest a picture in the simplest way. Without much consideration, without models, and in the limited area of his little studio in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, he set to work with a brush on the broad white sheet, and in about an hour produced the drawing in line of "Youth and Age" on the last page.
Diagram.
The horses were not quite satisfactory to himself; but the sentiment of the picture, the open air effect of early spring, the crisp grass, the birds' nests forming in the almost leafless trees, the effect of distance indicated in a few lines—and above all, the feeling of sky produced by the untouched background—were skilfully suggested in the large diagram.
Diagram. "The Lecturer."
On other occasions, and for the same lecture, he made several other diagrams, including one of the pursuit of a dog in a village, another of a lecturer and various heads in an audience. The reproductions are interesting to examine together as early work in a style in which he afterwards was famous—a style, which was not outline in the strict sense of the word, and which to a great extent was his own. It had little in common with Flaxman, it was not in the manner of Gillray, Cruikshank, Doyle, or Leech; nor in the more academic manner of his friend—and predecessor in children's books—Walter Crane.