FROM MR. FORD'S 'PINK FAIRY BOOK.'
BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. LONGMANS.
The principles of art represented by the drawings of Mr. Ford have little in common with those which determine the scheme of Mr. Millar's many illustrations. Vierge, and Gigoux, the master of Vierge, are the indubitable suggesters of his style, and the antitheses of sheer black and white, the audacities, evasions and accentuations of these jugglers with line and form, are dexterously handled by Mr. Millar. He has not invented his convention, he has accepted it, and begun original work within accepted limits. A less original artist would thereby have doomed himself to extinction, but Mr. Millar has a lively apprehension of romance, especially in an oriental setting, and interest in subject is incompatible with merely imitative work. Illustrations to 'Hajji Baba' (1895), and to 'Eothen,' show how dramatic and true to picturesque notions of the East are the conceptions, and the same vigour projects itself into themes of western adventure in 'Frank Mildmay' and 'Snarleyow.' But his right to be considered here is determined by the rapid visions of fairy romance realized in the pages of 'Fairy Tales by Q.' (1895), of 'The Golden Fairy Book' with its companions, and on the more concrete but not less sufficient drawings to 'The Book of Dragons,' and 'Nine Unlikely Tales for Children.'
FROM MR. MILLAR'S 'FAIRY TALES BY Q.'
BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. CASSELLS.
The pen-drawings of Mr. T. H. Robinson in the "Andersen" illustrated by the brother artists, show ability to realize not only the incidents and ideas of the stories, but also something of the national inspiration that is an element in all märchen. At times determinedly decorative, his work is generally in closer alliance with actuality than is the typical work of Mr. Charles or of Mr. W. H. Robinson. Character, action, costume, picturesque facts of life and scenery are suggested, and suggested with interest in the actual geographical and chronological circumstances of the stories, whether a poet's Denmark, the Arabia of Scheherazade, the Greece of Kingsley's 'The Heroes,' or the rivers and mountains of Carmen Sylva's stories determine the fact-scheme for his decorative invention. In addition to these vigorous and generally harmonious illustrations, the artist's drawings to 'Cranford,' 'The Scarlet Letter,' 'Lichtenstein,' 'The Sentimental Journey,' and 'Esmond,' prove his interest and inventive sense to be effective in realizing actual historical and local conditions. If Mr. W. H. Robinson is also an apt illustrator of legends and of folk-tales, whose setting demands attention to the facts of life as they were to story-tellers in far countries of once-upon-a-time, the more individual side of his talent is discovered in work of wilder and more intense fancy. Andersen's 'Marsh King's Daughter,' the Snow Queen with her frozen eyes, the picaresque mood of Little Claus, or the doom of proud Inger, are to his mind, and in illustrations to 'Don Quixote' (1897), to 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' and especially in the fully decorated volume of Poe's 'Poems,' the forcible conceptions of the text find pictorial expression.
Mr. A. G. Walker, though a sculptor by profession, claims notice as an illustrator of various children's books, notably 'The Lost Princess' (1895), 'Stories from the Faerie Queene' (1897), and 'The Book of King Arthur.' His pen-drawings are expressive of a thoughtful realization of the subject in its actual and moral beauty. The nobility of Spenser's conceptions, the remote beauty of the Arthurian legend, appeal to him, and the careful rendering of costume, landscape and the aspect of things, is only part of a scheme of execution that has as its complete intention the rendering of the 'mood' of the narrative. These drawings are realizations rather than illuminations of the text, and one appreciates their thoroughness, clearness, and dignity.
Miss Helen Stratton published some pleasant but not very vigorous drawings of children in 'Songs for Little People' (1896), and illustrations to a selection from Andersen suggested the later direction of her ability. This, as the copiously illustrated 'Fairy Tales from Hans Christian Andersen' (1899), and the large number of drawings contributed to Messrs. Newnes' edition of 'The Arabian Nights,' show, is in realizing themes less actual than those of Nursery Lyrics. A sense of drama in the pose and grouping of the multitudes of figures on the pages of the Danish and Arabian stories, and a sufficient care for the background, as the poet's eyes might have seen it behind the dream-figures that passed between him and reality, are qualities that give Miss Stratton's competent work imaginative value.
The work of Miss R. M. M. Pitman comes within the subject in her illustrations to Lady Jersey's fairy tale, 'Maurice and the Red Jar,' and to 'The Magic Nuts' of Mrs. Molesworth. But though their decorative intention and technique represent the forms of the artist's work, the spirit of fantasy that informs her illustrations to 'Undine' finds only modified expression. The symbolism of 'Undine' is wrought into decorations of inventive elaborateness. The technical ideal of Miss Pitman suggests study of Dürer's pen-drawing, and though at times there is too much sweetness and luxury in her representation of beauty, at her best she expresses free fancy with distinction not common in modern book-illustration.
Brief allusion only—where drawings of more definitely illustrative purpose over-crowd the available space—can be made to the numerous animal books, serious and comic. Mr. Percy J. Billinghurst's full-page designs to 'A Hundred Fables of Æsop,' 'A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine,' and 'A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals' deserve more than passing mention for their decorative and observant qualities and their enlivening humour. Another decorative draughtsman of animals for children's books is Mr. Carton Moore Park, who, since 1899, when the 'Alphabet of Animals' and 'The Book of Birds' appeared, has published seven or eight volumes of his strongly devised designs. One can hardly conclude without reference to Mr. Louis Wain, the cats' artist of twenty years' standing, and to Mr. J. A. Shepherd, chief caricaturist of animals; but while toy-book artists such as Mrs. Percy Dearmer, Mrs. Farmiloe, Miss Rosamond Praeger, Mr. Aldin, and Mr. Hassall (whose subject—the child—takes precedence of Zoological subjects) must be left unconsidered, the humourists of the Zoo can hardly be included.