FROM MISS WOODWARD'S 'TO TELL THE KING THE SKY IS FALLING.'
BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. BLACKIE.
The greater amount of Mr. Bedford's work for children consists of coloured illustrations to nursery-books, and, when the humour of half-penny paper journalism is supposed to be entertainment for babies, one may be thankful for the pleasant and peaceful drawings of this artist. Little Miss Muffet, Wee Willie Winkie, and the activities of town and country, are a relief from the jeunesse dorée, and the lethargy of the War Office as toy-book subjects, while 'The Battle of the Frogs and Mice'—though Miss Barlow's version of Aristophanes, with Mr. Bedford's effective decorations, is hardly a nursery-book—is a better child's subject than the punishable pretensions of other nations.
In work hitherto noticed, the child may be regarded as the central figure of the design, whether fact or fancy be set about his little personality. Besides the illustrators whose subject is childhood in some aspect or another, and those children's illustrators who pictorialize the wide imaginings of the national fairy tales, there are others in whose work the child figures incidentally, but not as the central fact. In this connection one may consider those draughtsmen who illustrate modern wonder-books with Zankiwanks, Krabs and Wallypugs.
Mr. Archie Macgregor should be classed, perhaps, among artists of the child in wonderland, but the personalities of Tomakin and his sisters, though Judge Parry sets them forth in prose and in verse with his usual high spirits, are not the illustrator's first care. 'Katawampus,' 'The First Book of Krab,' and 'Butterscotia,' have made Mr. Macgregor's robust and strongly-defined drawings familiar, and, within the limits of the author's hearty imagination, his droll and unflagging representations of adventures, ceremonies and humours, are extremely apt. Children, goblins, animals and queer monsters are drawn with unhesitating spirit and humour, and with decorative invention that would be even more successful if it were less fertile in devising detail. More fortunate in rendering action than facial expression, without the mystery that is the atmosphere of the magical fairy-land, the fact and fancy of Mr. Macgregor are so admirably illustrative of Judge Parry's text that one is almost inclined to attribute the absence of glamour to the artist's strong conception of the function of an illustrator.
Mr. Alan Wright's work, again, is inevitably associated with the invention of an author, though Mr. Farrow's 'Wallypug' books have not all been illustrated by one artist. Mr. Wright's drawings are proof of an energetic and serviceable conception of all sorts of out-of-the-way things. His humour is unelaborate, he goes straight to the fact, and, having expressed its extraordinary and fantastic characteristics, he does not linger to develop his drawing into a decorative scheme. Apparently he draws 'out of his head,' whether his subject is fact or extravagance. The three small humans who figure in 'The Little Panjandrum's Dodo,' and the ambassador's son of 'The Mandarin's Kite,' are as briefly sketched as the whimsicalities with whom they consort.
Mr. Arthur Rackham's illustrations to 'Two Old Ladies, Two Foolish Fairies, and a Tom-Cat' (1897), and to 'The Zankiwank and the Bletherwitch' show inspiriting talent for nursery extravaganza. The children, whirled from reality into a phantasmagoria of adventure, are deftly and happily drawn, the fairies have fairy grace, and the rout of hobgoblins and grotesques fill their parts. Drawing real animals, Mr. Rackham is equally quick to note what is characteristic, and his facility in realizing fact and magic finds expression in the illustrations to 'Grimm's Fairy Tales' (1900). This is the most important work of Mr. Rackham as a child's illustrator, and if the drawings are somewhat calculated to impress the horrid horror of witches and forest enchantments on uneasy minds, the charm of princesses and peasant maids, the sagacious humour of talking animals and the grotesque enlivenment of cobolds and gnomes are no less vividly represented. That Mr. Rackham admires Mr. E. J. Sullivan's scheme of decorative black-and-white is evident in these drawings, but not to the detriment of their inventive worth.
