The sobriety and decorum of Mr. New's architectural and landscape drawings are the antithesis of the flagrantly picturesque. I do not know whether Mr. Gere or Mr. New invented this order of landscape and house drawing, but Mr. New is the chief exponent of it, and has placed it among popular styles of to-day. It has the effect of sincerity, and of respectful treatment of ancient buildings. Mr. New does not lapse from the perpendicular, his hand does not tremble or break off when house-walls or the ridge of a roof are to be drawn. His is a convention that is frankly conventional, that confines nature within decorous bounds, and makes formality a function of art. But though a great deal of Mr. New's work is mechanical and done to pattern, so that sometimes little perpendicular strokes to represent grass fill half the pictured space, while little horizontal strokes to represent brick-work, together with 'touches' that represent foliage, fill up the rest except for a corner left blank for the sky; yet, at his best, he achieves an effective and dignified way of treating landscape for the decoration of books. Sensational skies that repeat one sensation to monotony, scattered blacks and emphasized trivialities, are set aside by those who follow Mr. New. When they are trivial and undiscriminating, they are unaffectedly tedious, and that is almost pleasant after the hackneyed sparkle of the inferior picturesque.
Mr. New's reputation as a book-illustrator was first made in 1896, when an edition of 'The Compleat Angler' with many drawings by him appeared. The homely architecture of Essex villages and small towns, the low meadows and quiet streams, gave him opportunity for drawings that are pleasant on the page. Two garden books, or strictly speaking, one—for 'In the Garden of Peace' was succeeded by 'Outside the Garden'—contain natural history drawings similar to those of fish in 'The Compleat Angler' and of birds in White's 'Selborne.' The illustrations to 'Oxford and its Colleges,' and 'Cambridge and its Colleges,' are less representative of the best Mr. New can do than books where village architecture, or the irregular house-frontage of country high-streets are his subject. Illustrating Shakespeare's country, 'Sussex,' and 'The Wessex of Thomas Hardy,' brought him into regions of the country-town; but the most important of his recent drawings are those in 'The Natural History of Selborne,' published in 1900. The drawing of 'Selborne Street' is from that volume.
Selborne Street
BY E. H. NEW.
FROM WHITE'S 'SELBORNE.'
BY LEAVE OF MR. LANE.
With Mr. New, Mr. R. J. Williams and Mr. H. P. Clifford illustrated Mr. Aymer Vallance's two books on William Morris. Their illustrations are fit records of the homes and working-places of the great man who approved their art. Mr. Frederick Griggs, who since 1900 has illustrated three or four garden books, also follows the principles of Mr. New, but with more variety in detail, less formality in tree-drawing and in the rendering of paths and roads and streams and sunshine, in short, with more of art outside the school, than Mr. New permits himself.
The open-air covers so much that I have little room to give to another aspect of open-air illustration—drawings of bird and animal-life. The work of Mr. Harrison Weir, begun so many years ago, is chiefly in children's books; but Mr. Charles Whymper, who has an old reputation among modern reputations, has illustrated the birds and beasts and fish of Great Britain in books well known to sportsmen and to natural historians, as also books of travel and sport in tropical and ice-bound lands. The work of Mr. John Guille Millais is no less well known. No one else draws animals in action, whether British deer or African wild beast, from more intelligent and thorough observation, and of his art the graceful rendering of the play of deer in Cawdor Forest gives proof that does not need words. Birds in flight, beasts in action—Mr. Millais is undisputably master of his subject. Many drawings show the humour which is one of the charms of his work.
