There is no artist now devoting himself to book-decoration who has been truer to the ideals of his art than Mr. Charles Robinson. From the time when he proved himself the ideal illustrator of Stevenson’s “Child’s Garden of Verses” to the present he has aimed always at treating the book as an harmonious whole from cover to cover, providing decoration or illustration just where the scheme seemed to call for it. This unity of treatment may be noted particularly in his more recent books, “The Sensitive Plant,” “The Four Gardens,” “The Happy Prince,” and “The Big Book of Nursery Rhymes.” But Mr. Robinson is a man of original if delicate imagination, as well as an exquisite interpretative artist, and the double-page drawing given here, The Dream, will show him graphically illustrating his own fanciful vision—carrying out his pictorial ideas in a book of his own creation. “A Dream of St. Nicholas in Heaven” is a sort of allegory on the modern aspect of maternity.
A wonderful contrast is the robust interpretative imagination of Mr. Edmund J. Sullivan, one of the greatest book-illustrators we have ever had, as he is one of the finest living draughtsmen on the page. His virility of mind and manner have found Carlyle wonderfully inspiring, and in the “Sartor Resartus” drawings shown here, as in the still greater “French Revolution” series, his certainty of expressive effect is extraordinary. Mr. Sullivan’s pictorial sense of character and incident is explicit also in the Goldsmith illustrations.
Mr. W. Russell Flint, a very talented designer of rich pictorial imagination and fine colour-sense, has, within the last few years, come into the front rank of book-illustrators, and he has done this through the medium of a number of beautiful books issued from the Riccardi Press. Things of real beauty are many of the illustrations to the “Song of Solomon,” “Marcus Aurelius,” “Le Morte D’Arthur,” Kingsley’s “Heroes” (one of which is reproduced here), and the “Canterbury Tales.” Mr. Flint adapts his expressive style artistically to the varying styles of the books, and in his colour-schemes he gauges the powers of the reproductive process to a nicety.
Poetry, fantasy, and romance are seen pictorially interpreted here by a group of artists who, though severally distinctive in conception and manner, are linked by the common aim of imaginative expression in orderly design for the purpose of page-decoration. Perhaps nothing more characteristic of Mr. Edmund Dulac’s graces of invention in design and colour could be shown than the charming frontispiece to his “Princess Badoura,” with its engaging orientalism. His versatility is well seen in the Poe drawings. If Beardsley ever lent Miss Jessie King the decorative influence of his line she has made it all her own, as evidenced in these three exquisite and original designs suggested by old romances. Tennyson and Browning have furnished happy inspirations for the delicate art of Miss Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale; while Mr. Dion Clayton Calthrop shows with graphic charm how thoroughly he is at home in Fairyland—being himself the most reliable of guides. Mr. Maxwell Armfield has given all lovers of Hans Andersen a new joy in his charming coloured illustrations to the immortal stories, while in his “Flower Book” and “Sylvia’s Travels” he shows a fascinating fancy; but here we see him only in two distinguished little woodcuts. Mr. W. Graham Robertson is as delicious as ever in his Blake-like simplicity of expression and design, whether illustrating his own books or those of that kindred spirit of fantasy, Mr. Algernon Blackwood. Mr. Byam Shaw’s fecundity of illustrative invention is well represented, if not the wide range of his fertility, which is from Shakespeare and Boccaccio to Flora Annie Steele in Akbar’s India. Mr. Vernon Hill is a designer of remarkable imagination, and he makes an ideal illustrator of “Ballads Weird and Wonderful.” Imaginatively expressive and decorative, also, with the best influences, perhaps, of the “sixties,” are Mr. Gerald Metcalfe’s illustrations to Coleridge. So, too, but in a manner of their own, are Mr. Harry Clarke’s to the “Ancient Mariner” and Mr. John P. Campbell’s designs for the “Celtic Romances.” In this same category we may include the illustrative drawings of Miss Dorothy Payne, Mr. Harold Nelson, Mr. Lee Hankey, Mr. A. Garth Jones, Mr. Monro S. Orr, Miss Beatrice Elvery, and Mr. J. D. Batten. Mr. R. T. Rose, however, must stand by himself. The three drawings here show his strong individuality, but I wish it had been possible to represent his high-water mark in the beautiful designs for the Book of Job.
There are no more facile and prolific illustrators than Mr. Hugh Thomson and Messrs. C. E. and H. M. Brock, and all of them are most at home in the humours of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. So we have Mr. Thomson sympathetically illustrating Jane Austen and Mrs. Gaskell, as well as picturesque highways and byways; while Mr. C. E. Brock shows us what pictorial suggestion he has found in the “Essays of Elia,” a subject, by the way, that might supply an essay in itself; and Mr. H. M. Brock’s multifarious illustration is represented also by clever designs for essays, Leigh Hunt’s and Douglas Jerrold’s. Humorous character, besides, we get from Mr. Frank Reynolds in his vivacious “Pictures of Paris,” and his delightful “Pickwick” illustration in colour. The animal whimsicalities of Mr. Stewart Orr, and Mr. Carton Moore Park’s decorative suggestions of beast and bird life, are also illustrative examples we would not be without.
The Irish character-studies of Mr. Jack B. Yeats have an interest all their own; they have life and atmosphere. Light and atmosphere distinguish Mr. D. Y. Cameron’s two great little landscape drawings for “The Tomb of Burns.” One does not otherwise think of the great etcher as an illustrator. Mr. Frank Brangwyn is entirely himself in the two virile pen-and-ink drawings for “The Book of Bridges,” and the colour illustration to Kinglake’s “Eöthen.” Very charming, and worthy of their theme, are Mr. F. L. Griggs’s illustrations to “The Sensitive Plant”; nor is this accomplished artist less delightful in his designs for “The Chronicles of a Cornish Garden.” But, then, how could he be with such a title to inspire him? Mr. Edmund H. New is another artist of distinctive style who never fails us, and in the “Compleat Angler” and White’s “Selborne” he had, of course, subjects after his heart. The fanciful landscape is Mr. W. T. Horton’s design; peaceful Bruges is Mr. Charles Wade’s theme. FitzGerald’s “Omar” has suggested some quaintly fantastic designs by Miss Helen Sinclair; Mr. René Bull’s facile pen has busied itself with the “Arabian Nights”; while here also are characteristic drawings by Mr. F. H. Ball, Mr. Keith Henderson, Mr. Sydney R. Jones, Mr. Donald Maxwell, Mr. Harry Rountree, and Mr. Joseph Southall.
MAXWELL ARMFIELD | ||
“THE SPOTTED STAG”—WOOD-ENGRAVING | “GUINEA-FOWL”—WOOD-ENGRAVING | |
