ENGLISH ILLUSTRATION.
It is in England alone, that illustration, like many other things, has been taken seriously. Ponderous volumes have been written about it, as well as clever essays. It seemed at first sight rather unnecessary to repeat what has been said so well by Mr. Austin Dobson, for example, in his chapter on modern illustrated books in Mr. Lang's "Library," especially as he has added a postscript to the edition of 1892 which is supposed to bring his essay up to that date. But there are other ways of looking at the matter, and I have tried not to repeat what Mr. Dobson has said, nor yet to trench upon the preserves of Mr. C. G. Harper and Mr. Hamerton, or Mr. Blackburn.
BY HUGH THOMSON. FROM “OUR VILLAGE” (MACMILLAN).
BY RANDOLPH CALDECOTT. FROM “THE ELEGY ON A MAD DOG” (ROUTLEDGE).
BY TURNER. FROM ROGERS’ “ITALY,” 1830.
It appears to me, that before discussing the English illustrators of to-day, it might be well to take a glance at the state of English illustration. English illustration has during the last twenty years suffered tremendously from over-writing and indiscriminate praise and blame. I suppose that among artists and people of any artistic appreciation, it is generally admitted by this time that the greatest bulk of the works of "Phiz," Cruikshank, Doyle, and even many of Leech's designs are simply rubbish, and that the reputation of these men was made by critics whose names and works are absolutely forgotten, or else, by Thackeray, Dickens, and Tom Taylor, whose books they illustrated, and who had absolutely no intelligent knowledge of art, their one idea being to log-roll their friends and illustrators. It is true, however, that some of Doyle's designs, like those in "Brown, Jones, and Robinson," were extremely amusing, though too often his rendering of character was brutal, as, for example, in the "Dinner at Greenwich" in the "Cornhill" Series. Technically, there is little to study, even in his most successful drawings. Leech's fund of humour was no doubt inexhaustible, but one cannot help feeling to-day that his work cannot for a moment be compared to that of Charles Keene. Some of his best-known designs, the man in a hot bath for instance, praised by Mr. Dobson may be amusing, but the subject is quite as horrible as a Middle Age purgatory. Leech was the successor in this work of Gillray and Rowlandson, and though his designs appealed very strongly to the last generation, they do not equal those of Randolph Caldecott, done in much the same sort of way. Though some of the editions containing the engravings from these men's drawings sell for fabulous prices, on account of their rarity, one may purchase to-day for almost the price of old paper, lovely little engravings after Birket Foster, and the other followers of the Turner school; while drawings after Sir John Gilbert, and later, Whistler, Sandys, Boyd Houghton, Keene, Du Maurier, Small, Shields, and the other men who made "Once a Week," "Good Words," and the "Shilling Magazine," really the most important art journals England has ever seen, can be picked up in many old book-shops for comparatively nothing. Of the best period of English illustration there are but few of the really good books that cannot be purchased for, at the present time, less than their original price. And only the works of one painter who did illustrate to any extent, Rossetti, command an appreciable value. For this, the fortunate possessors of his drawings have to thank Mr. Ruskin, who, himself, is by no means a poor illustrator. Some of his work in "Modern Painters," "Stones of Venice," "Examples of Venetian Architecture," is excellent, while his original drawings at Oxford are worth the most careful study. Many of Rossetti's designs are, it is true, very beautiful, and probably others were; one can see that from, the few which were never engraved. But the bulk of his drawings are certainly not so good as those which several people working in London are producing to-day.
