English Book-Illustration of To-day / Appreciations of the Work of Living English Illustrators, with Lists of Their Books

by R. E. D. Sketchley

The print-black of naked boughs against pale sky, a snow-covered country where roofs are white, and the shelter of the woods is thin after the passing of the autumn winds—this black and white is the black and white of most of Sir George Reid's studies of northern landscape. To call it black and white is to stretch the octave and omit all the notes of the scale. Pure white of plastered masonry, or of snow-covered roof or field in the bleak winter light, pure black in some deep-set window, in the figure of a passer-by, or in the bare trees, are used with the finesse of a colourist. Look at the 'Pyketillim Kirk' drawing in 'Johnny Gibb.' Between the white of the long church wall, and the black of the little groups of village folk in the churchyard, how quiet and easy is the transition, and how true to colour is the result. Of the Edinburgh drawings the same may be said; but, except in facsimile reproduction, one has to know the scale of tone used by Sir George Reid in order to see the original effect where the printed page shows unmodified black and white. In 'Holyrood Castle' the values are fairly well kept, and the rendering of the ancient building in the deep snow, without false emphasis, yet losing nothing of emphatic effect, shows the dominant intellectual quality of the artist's work.

HOLYROOD CASTLE. BY SIR GEORGE REID. FROM MRS. OLIPHANT'S "ROYAL EDINBURGH."
BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. MACMILLAN.

It does not seem as though Sir George Reid as an illustrator had any followers. He could hardly have imitators. If a man had delicacy and patience of observation and hand to produce drawings in this 'style,' his style would be his own and not an imitation. The number of artists in black and white who cannot plausibly be imitated is a small number. Sir George Reid is one, Mr. Alfred Parsons is another. Inevitably there are points of similarity in the work of artists, the foundation of whose black and white is colour, and who render the country-side with the understanding of the native, the understanding that is beyond knowledge. The difference between them only proves the essential similarity in the elements of their art; but that, like most paradoxes, is a truism. Mr. Parsons is, of course, thoroughly English in his art. He has the particularity of English nature-poets. Pastoral country is dear to him, and homesteads and flowering orchards, or villages with church tower half hidden by the elms, are part of his home country, the country he draws best. It is interesting to compare his drawings for 'The Warwickshire Avon' with the Scottish artist's drawings of the northern rivers. The drawings of Shakespeare's river show spring trees in a mist of green, leafy summer trees, meadowsweet and hayfields, green earth and blue sky, and a river of pleasure watering a pleasant country. If a man can draw English summer-time in colour with black and white, he must rank high as a landscape pen-draughtsman. Mr. Alfred Parsons has illustrated about a dozen books, and his work is to be found in 'Harper's Magazine,' and 'The English Illustrated' in early days. Two books, the 'Old Songs' and 'The Quiet Life,' published in 1887 and 1890, were illustrated by E. A. Abbey and Alfred Parsons. The drawings of landscape, of fruit and flowers, by Mr. Parsons, the Chippendale people and rooms of Mr. Abbey, fill two charming volumes with pictures whose pleasantness and happy art accord with the dainty verses of eighteenth-century sentiment. 'The Warwickshire Avon,' and another river book, 'The Danube from the Black Forest to the Sea,' illustrated in collaboration with the author, Mr. F. D. Millet, belong to 1892. The slight sketches—passing-by sketches—in these books, are among fortunate examples of a briefness that few men find compatible with grace and significance. Sketches, mostly in wash, of a farther and more decorated country—'Japan, the Far East, the Land of Flowers and of the Rising Sun, the country which for years it had been my dream to see and paint'—illustrate the artist's 'Notes in Japan,' 1895. In the written notes are memoranda of actual colour, of the green harmony of the Japanese summer—harmony culminating in the vivid tint of the rice fields—of sunset and butterflies, of delicate masses of azalea and drifts of cherry-blossom and wisteria, while in the drawings are all the flowers, the green hills and gray hamlets, and the temples, shrines and bridges, that make unspoilt Japan one of the perpetual motives of decorative art. Illustrations to Wordsworth—to a selected Wordsworth—gave the artist fortunate opportunities to render the England of English descriptive verse.

ELMS BY BIDFORD GRANGE. BY ALFRED PARSONS. REPRODUCED FROM QUILLER COUCH'S 'THE WARWICKSHIRE AVON.'
BY LEAVE OF OSGOOD, McILVAINE AND CO.

It is convenient to speak first of these painter-illustrators, because, in a sense, they stand alone among illustrative artists. Obviously, that is not to say that their work is worth more than the work of illustrators, who, conforming to the laws of 'process,' make their drawings with brain and hand that know how to win profit by concession. But popularisers of an effective topographical or architectural style are indirectly responsible for a large amount of work besides their own. In one sense a leader does not stand alone, and cannot be considered alone. Before, then, passing on to a draughtsman such as Mr. Joseph Pennell, again, to Mr. Railton, or to Mr. New, whose successful and unforgettable works have inspired many drawings in the books whereby authors pay for their holiday journeys, other artists, whose style is no convenience to the industrious imitator, may be considered. Another painter, known for his work in black and white, is Mr. John Fulleylove, whose 'Pictures of Classic Greek Landscape,' and drawings of 'Oxford,' show him to be one of the few men who see architecture steadily and whole, and who draw beautiful buildings as part of the earth which they help to beautify. Compare the Greek drawings with ordinary archæological renderings of pillared temples, and the difference in beauty and interest is apparent. In Mr. Fulleylove's drawings, the relation between landscape and architecture is never forgotten, and he draws both with the structural knowledge of a landscape painter, who is also by training an architect. In aim, his work is in accord with classical traditions; he discerns the classical spirit that built temples and carved statues in the beautiful places of the open-air, a spirit which has nothing of the museum setting about it. The 'Oxford' drawings show that Mr. Fulleylove can draw Gothic.

Though not a painter, Mr. William Hyde works 'to colour' in his illustrations, and is generally successful in rendering both colour and atmosphere. He has done little with the pen, and it is in wash drawings, reproduced by photogravure, that he is best to be studied. Of his early training as an engraver there is little to be seen in his work, though his appreciation of the range of tone existing between black and white may have developed from working within restrictions of monotone, when the colour sense was growing strong in him. At all events he can gradate from black to white with remarkable minuteness and ease. His earliest work of any importance after giving up engraving, was in illustration of 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso,' 1895, and shows his talent already well controlled. There are thirteen illustrations, and the opportunities for rendering aspects of light, from the moment of the lark's morning flight against the dappled skies of dawn, to the passing of whispering night-winds over the darkened country, given in the verse of a poet sensitive as none before him to the gradations of lightness and dark, are realized. So are the hawthorns in the dale, and the towered cities. But it is as an illustrator of another towered city than that imagined by Milton, that some of Mr. Hyde's most individual work has been produced. In the etchings and pictures in photogravure published with Mrs. Meynell's 'London Impressions,' London beneath the strange great sky that smoke and weather make over the gray roofs, London when the dawn is low in the sky, or when the glow of lamps and lamp-lit windows turns the street darkness to golden haze, is drawn by a man who has seen for himself how beautiful the great city is in 'between lights.' His other work is superficially in contrast with these studies of city light and darkness; but the same love for 'big' skies, for the larger aspects of changing lights and cloud movements, are expressed in the drawings of the wide country that is around and beyond the Cinque Ports, and in the illustrations to Mr. George Meredith's 'Nature Poems.' The reproduction is from a pen drawing in Mr. Hueffer's book, 'The Cinque Ports.' There is no pettiness about it, and the 'phrasing' of castle, trees and sky shows the artist.