BY DE NITTIS. PEN DRAWING FROM “PARIS ILLUSTRÉ.”
BY W. BUSCH. FROM “BALDUIN BAHLAMM” (MUNICH, BASSERMANN).
FROM ETCHING BY GOYA. FROM “CAPRICES.”
Following the classical tradition of Overbeck and Kaulbach, but changing it rather into mysticism and decadence through the influence of Böcklin, and probably the pre-Raphaelites in England, has been developed a school of mystical decorators who are unequalled, unappreciated and curiously unknown outside of their own country. The chief of these men is Max Klinger. Like his master, Böcklin, and like Schwabe in France, he brings both his mysticism and his drawing up to date, and makes no attempt to bolster up faulty design and incomplete technique by primitiveness, or quaintness, or archaism. For his illustrations Klinger usually makes an elaborate series of pen drawings, and then etches from these. The only example which I know of in England available for study is a copy of the Apuleius which is in South Kensington, and this is not by any means one of his most successful books, as the etchings are hard and tight, and the inharmonious decorations which surround the small prints in the text are crude and unsatisfactory. To know Klinger's work one must visit the Print Rooms in the Museums of Berlin and Dresden. Another group have devoted themselves to lithography. H. Thoma in this has been probably the most successful, but in the exhibition held this year in Vienna he was closely followed by Otto Greiner, W. Steinhausen, and Max Dasio. Their work may be seen in "Neue Lithographem," by Max Lehers, published in Vienna. Whether there are two or three men of the name of Franz Stuck who draw, or whether it is the same Franz Stuck who produces the mystic arrangements and the burlesques of them, the decorative vignettes and the absurd caricatures in "Fliegende Blätter," I do not know. I only do know that it is all very well worth study, and very amusing and interesting.
Busch and Oberländer, Meggendorfer, and Hengler, are names so well known that their mere mention raises a laugh, and that, if anything, is the mission of those artists: while Harburger's and Aller's marvellous studies of character, and René Reinecke's exquisite renderings in wash of fashionable life, marvellously engraved by Stroebel, can be seen every week printed in the pages of "Fliegende Blätter" and other papers. The works of Hackländer, published in Stuttgart, have been illustrated mainly by process by that clever band of artists of whom Schlittgen, Albrecht, Marold, Vogel, and others are so much in evidence. The German monthly magazines, like "Daheim," "Kunst für Alle," "Felz und Meer," "Die Graphischen Kunste," etc., are very notable, especially "Kunst für Alle," which seems to me to be about the best-conducted art magazine in the world. Altogether the arts of illustration and reproduction, and the business of publishing, in Germany are apparently in a most healthy condition. It could scarcely be otherwise, however, when we consider that one of the greatest illustrators in the world is still alive and at work there, as well as the most curious mystics, the most amusing comic draughtsmen, and the most conscientious and clever realists.
DEATH THE FRIEND.
LINE DRAWING BY RETHEL. REDUCED FROM A WOOD-ENGRAVING BY H. BURKNER.