To Rossetti the illustration of literature meant giving beautiful form to the expression of delight, of penetration, that had kindled his imagination as he read. He illustrated the 'Palace of Art' in the spirit that stirred him to rhythmic translation into words of the still music in Giorgione's 'Pastoral,' or of the unpassing movement of Mantegna's 'Parnassus.' Not the words of the text, nor those things precisely affirmed by the writer, but the spell of significance and of beauty that held his mind to the exclusion of other images, gave him inspiration for his drawings. As Mr. William Michael Rossetti says: 'He drew just what he chose, taking from his author's text nothing more than a hint and an opportunity.' It is said, indeed, that Tennyson could never see what the St. Cecily drawing had to do with his poem. And that is strange enough to be true.
It is clear that such an ideal of illustration is for the attainment of a few only. The ordinary illustrator, making drawings for cheap reproduction in the ordinary book, can no more work in this mood than the journalist can model his style on the prose of Milton. But journalism is not literature, and pictured matter-of-fact is not illustration, though it is convenient and customary to call it so. However, here one need not consider this, for the decorative illustrator has usually literature to illustrate, and a commission to be beautiful and imaginative in his work. He has the opportunity of Rossetti, the opportunity for significant art.
The 'Classics' and children's books give greatest opportunity to decorative illustrators. Those who have illustrated children's books chiefly, or whose best work has been for the playful classics of literature, it is convenient to consider in a separate chapter, though there are instances where the division is not maintainable: Walter Crane, for example, whose influence on a school of decorative design makes his position at the head of his following imperative.
Representing the 'architectural' sense in the decoration of books, many years before the supreme achievements of William Morris added that ideal to generally recognized motives of book-decoration, Walter Crane is the precursor of a large and prolific school of decorative illustrators. Many factors, as he himself tells, have gone to the shaping of his art. Born in 1846 at Liverpool, he came to London in 1857, and there after two years was 'apprenticed' to Mr. W. J. Linton, the well-known wood-engraver. His work began with 'the sixties,' in contact with the enthusiasm and inspiration those years brought into English art. The illustrated 'Tennyson,' and Ruskin's 'Elements of Drawing,' were in his thoughts before he entered Mr. Linton's workshop, and the 'Once a Week' school had a strong influence on his early contributions to 'Good Words,' 'Once a Week,' and other famous magazines. In 1865 Messrs. Warne published the first toy-book, and by 1869-70 the 'Walter Crane Toy-book' was a fact in art. The sight of some Japanese colour-prints during these years suggested a finer decorative quality to be obtained with tint and outline, and in the use of black, as well as in a more delicate simplicity of colour, the later toy-books show the first effect of Japanese art on the decorative art of England. Italian art in England and Italy, the prints of Dürer, the Parthenon sculptures, these were influences that affected him strongly. 'The Baby's Opera' (1877) and 'The Baby's Bouquet' (1879) are classics almost impossible to criticise, classics familiar from cover to cover before one was aware of any art but the art on their pages. So that if these delightful designs seem less expressive of the Greece, Germany, and Italy of the supreme artists than of the 'Crane' countries by whose coasts ships 'from over the sea' go sailing by with strange cargoes and strange crews, it is not in their dispraise. As a decorative draughtsman Mr. Crane is at his best when the use of colour gives clearness to the composition, but some of his most 'serious' work is in the black-and-white pages of 'The Sirens Three,' of 'The Shepheardes Calendar,' and especially of 'The Faerie Queene.' The number of books he has illustrated—upwards of seventy—makes a detailed account impossible. Nursery rhyme and fairy books, children's stories, Spenser, Shakespeare, the myths of Greece, 'pageant books' such as 'Flora's Feast' or 'Queen Summer,' or the just published 'Masque of Days,' his own writings, serious or gay, have given him subjects, as the great art of all times has touched the ideals of his art.
FROM MR. WALTER CRANE'S 'GRIMM'S HOUSEHOLD STORIES.'
BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. MACMILLAN.
But whatever the subject, how strong soever his artistic admirations, he is always Walter Crane, unmistakable at a glance. Knights and ladies, fairies and fairy people, allegorical figures, nursery and school-room children, fulfil his decorative purpose without swerving, though not always without injury to their comfort and freedom and the life in their limbs. An individual apprehension that sees every situation as a conventional 'arrangement' is occasionally beside the mark in rendering real life. But when his theme touches imagination, and is not a supreme expression of it—for then, as in the illustrations to 'The Faerie Queene,' an unusual sense of subservience appears to dull his spirit—his humorous fancy knows no weariness nor sameness of device.