Except Mr. Abbey, no character-illustrator of the modern school has so long a record of work, and so visible an influence on English contemporary illustration, as Mr. Hugh Thomson. In popularity he is foremost. The slight and apparently playful fashion of his art, deriving its intention from the irresistible gaieties of Caldecott, is a fashion to please both those who like pretty things and those who can appreciate the more serious qualities that are beneath. For Mr. Thomson is a student of literature. He pauses on his subject, and though his invention has always responded to the suggestions of the text, the lightness of his later work is the outcome of a selecting judgment that has learned what to omit by studying the details and facts of things. In rendering facial expression Mr. Thomson is perhaps too much the follower of Caldecott, but he goes much farther than his original master in realization of the forms and manners of bygone times. Some fashions of life, as they pass from use, are laid by in lavender. The fashions of the eighteenth century have been so laid by, and Mr. Abbey and Mr. Thomson are alike successful in giving a version of fact that has the farther charm of lavender-scented antiquity.
When 'Days with Sir Roger de Coverley,' illustrated by Hugh Thomson, was published in 1886, the young artist was already known by his drawings in the 'English Illustrated,' and recognized as a serious student of history and literature, and a delightful illustrator of the times he studied. His powers of realizing character, time, and place, were shown in this earliest work. Sir Roger is a dignified figure; Mr. Spectator, in the guise of Steele, has a semblance of observation; and if Will Wimble lacks his own unique quality, he is represented as properly engaged about his 'gentleman-like manufactures and obliging little humours.' Mr. Thomson can draw animals, if not with the possessive understanding of Caldecott, yet with truth to the kind, knowledge of movement. The country-side around Sir Roger's house—as, in a later book, that where the vicarage of Wakefield stands—is often delightfully drawn, while the leisurely and courteous spirit of the essays is represented, with an appreciation of its beauty. 'Coaching Days and Coaching Ways' (1888) is a picturesque book, where types and bustling action picturesquely treated were the subjects of the artist. The peopling of high-road and county studies with lively figures is one of Mr. Thomson's successful achievements, as he has shown in drawings of the cavalier exploits of west-country history, illustrative of 'Highways and Byways of Devon and Cornwall,' and in episodes of romance and warfare and humour in similar volumes on Donegal, North Wales, and Yorkshire. Here the presentment of types and action, rather than of character, is the aim, but in the drawings to 'Cranford' (1891), to 'Our Village,' and to Jane Austen's novels, behaviour rather than action, the gentilities and proprieties of life and millinery, have to be expressed as a part of the artistic sense of the books. That is, perhaps, why Jane Austen is so difficult to illustrate. The illustrator must be neither formal nor picturesque. He must understand the 'parlour' as a setting for delicate human comedy. Mr. Thomson is better in 'Cranford,' where he has the village as the background for the two old ladies, or in 'Our Village,' where the graceful pleasures of Miss Mitford's prose have suggested delightful figures to the illustrator's fancy, than in illustrating Miss Austen, whose disregard of local colouring robs the artist of background material such as interests him. Three books of verses by Mr. Austin Dobson, 'The Ballad of Beau Brocade' (1892), 'The Story of Rosina,' and 'Coridon's Song' of the following years, together with the illustrations to 'Peg Woffington,' show, in combination, the picturesque and the intellectual interests that Mr. Thomson finds in life. The eight pieces that form the first of these volumes were, indeed, chosen to be reprinted because of their congruity in time and sentiment with Mr. Thomson's art. And certainly he works in accord with the measure of Mr. Austin Dobson's verses. Both author and artist carry their eighteenth-century learning in as easy a way as though experience of life had given it them without any labour in libraries.
FROM MR. HUGH THOMSON'S 'BALLAD OF BEAU BROCADE.'
BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. KEGAN PAUL.
Mr. C. E. Brock and Mr. H. M. Brock are two artists who to some extent may be considered as followers of Mr. Thomson's methods, though Mr. C. E. Brock's work in 'Punch,' and humorous characterizations by Mr. H. M. Brock in 'Living London,' show how distinct from the elegant fancy of Mr. Thomson's art are the latest developments of their artistic individuality. Mr. C. E. Brock's illustrations to Hood's 'Humorous Poems' (1893) proved his indebtedness to Mr. Thomson, and his ability to carry out Caldecott-Thomson ideas with spirit and with invention. An active sense of fun, and facility in arranging and expressing his subject, made him an addition to the school he represented, and, as in later work, his own qualities and the qualities he has adopted combined to produce spirited and graceful art. But in work preceding the pen-drawing of 1893, and in many books illustrated since then, Mr. Brock at times has shown himself an illustrator to whom matter rather than a particular charm of manner seems of paramount interest. In the illustrated Gulliver of 1894 there is little trace of the daintiness and sprightliness of Caldecott's illustrative art. He gives many particulars, and is never at a loss for forms and details, representing with equal matter-of-factness the crowds, cities and fleets of Lilliput, the large details of Brobdingnagian existence, and the ceremonies and spectacles of Laputa. In books of more actual adventure, such as 'Robinson Crusoe' or 'Westward Ho,' or of quiet particularity, such as Galt's 'Annals of the Parish,' the same directness and unmannered expression are used, a directness which has more of the journalistic than of the playful-inventive quality. The Jane Austen drawings, those to 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' and to a recent edition of the 'Essays of Elia,' show the graceful eighteenth-centuryist, while, whether he reports or adorns, whether action or behaviour, adventure or sentiment, is his theme, Mr. Brock is always an illustrator who realizes opportunities in the text, and works from a ready and observant intelligence.
FROM MR. C. E. BROCK'S 'THE ESSAYS OF ELIA.'
BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. DENT.