Looking through these inimitable sketches of Paris and Parisians,
one indulges a fond hope that some day Frank Reynolds will produce
a companion set of drawings illustrative of London life. It is
answered, perhaps, that Paris affords a unique opportunity such as
the artist would hardly find at home; but the supposition is due,
of course, only to the familiarity of our immediate surroundings
and the difficulty which invariably arises, in consequence, of
focussing them to their true proportions. Needless to say, Frank
Reynolds has already worked the rich vein of Cockney life to a
considerable extent, but his essays in this direction only increase
the desire to see an exhaustive pictorial commentary from his pencil
and pen upon the men and manners of our own city. Such quaint humour
as is contained in his study of "Sunday Clothes at Bethnal Green"
(page 17), suggests what possibilities the subject presents.
Incidentally, it may be remarked, _apropos_ of this drawing, that
the London coster (whom he knows and loves) has provided some of
his most admirable studies from life. To that class belongs the
sympathetic study which faces page 1 in the present volume. The broad
humours of Whitechapel could scarcely fail to appeal irresistibly
to an artist of Reynolds' peculiar temperament, and few men have
depicted them with such relish or--thanks to his rare gift of
restraint--with such fidelity and truth.
To a certain extent, Frank Reynolds has already recorded contemporary
manners in England, and especially in London, in his well-known
series of "Social Pests," though it would perhaps be more correct
to say that he has pilloried therein the more extravagant of our
social freaks. Probably the delighted recognition with which these
ruthless analyses of character were hailed was due to the satisfaction
which attends the exhibition of a proper object of satire meeting
with its just deserts.
[Illustration: THE WARRENER.
_Exhibited at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours,_ 1907.]
No ridicule could be more serene, nor yet more biting, than that
with which the artist touches off the desperate efforts to attract
attention of the rowdy group of callow youths whom he names, with
a flash of inspiration, "The Dare-Devils" (page 10). Of "The
Suburbanite," to the writer's mind perhaps the most subtly accurate
character-study of all, the artist speaks in terms of apology.
It is hardly fair, he contends, to include in a gallery of pests
the bulwark of the nation!
A particular aspect of London life which provides a rich fund of
material for humorous treatment was dealt with by Frank Reynolds
in his series of drawings entitled "The 'Halls' from the Stalls."
As every frequenter of the variety theatre is aware, the programme
at such places of entertainment is arranged on certain well-defined
lines. The music-hall performer may be divided into certain very
distinct classes, each with its orthodox methods and mannerisms;
and it was on the little peculiarities of these different branches
of the profession that the artist seized with characteristic glee.
[Illustration]
How little his efforts, unfortunately, were taken in the spirit in
which they were meant, may be gleaned from the annoyance expressed
by one gentleman who considered himself, quite erroneously, to have
been singled out for individual ridicule. A certain drawing in
the series depicts "The Equilibrist"--an individual with an anxious
eye, who is poised upon a slack wire above the head of an admiring
assistant, balancing sundry cigar-boxes and wine-glasses on one toe,
while supporting on his head a lighted lamp, and discoursing sweet
music from a mandoline. The publication of this skit drew from a
wrathful professional an indignant letter, in which he declared that
insomuch as he was the one and only exponent of the equilibristic
art who could balance a lighted lamp upon his head, the picture
which illustrated this piece of "business" _must_ be intended as a
portrait of himself, though he considered it very badly done, and
a libellous production. From one point of view, it was surprising
that the impression of the "Lion Comique," as seen by Frank Reynolds,
elicited no similar response from the gentlemen of the boards, for
indisputably the picture was a portrait, and a perfect one, of each
individually and of all combined. On second thoughts, however, and
upon consideration of the drawing in question (which many readers
will remember), it is, perhaps, not so very surprising that no
claim to identity with it was forthcoming!
Other drawings in the same series, depicting other examples of
the strange freaks of humanity by whom the British public delights
to be entertained, afford good examples of the innate humour of
Frank Reynolds' art. There is often little that is actually comic
in the situations depicted, yet each is instinct with humour. It
is the triumph of Reynolds' comic art that he can snare, on the
wing as it were, humour that is too elusive and nimble for one
of slower perception and heavier hand.
[Illustration: VIVE L'ARMÉE
_From "Paris and Some Parisians"_]
"Art and the Man" was a series of drawings in the vein of farce
rather than of comedy. The intention was to depict various types
of artists rather as fancy might paint them than as they really
are. The "Marine Artist," for example, with his canvas slung from
davits and the entire furniture of his studio of extremely nautical
design, was a purely fanciful conception. The "Pot-Boiler," spending
his days in painting one solitary subject over and over again _ad
infinitum_, comes nearer to life, though his portrait again is
an exaggerated fancy rather than a study from life. One feels,
nevertheless, that if there be indeed such an individual as the
pot-boiler in existence, this, and no other, must be his outward
guise.
The drawings entitled "Dinners with Shakespeare," to which allusion
has already been made, gave scope for a very varied range of character
studies. Meal-time is a happy moment at which to catch human nature
unawares, and the artist made the most of his opportunities. They
add to the debt which the historians of contemporary manners will
owe to Reynolds in the future, for as a sidelight on social habits
of the present day these pictures of the dinner-table will be
instructive. The very triteness of their theme gives them their
interest.
[Illustration: "GAZED ON HAROLD"
_From "Paris and Some Parisians"_]
[Illustration: FROM A PARIS SKETCH-BOOK]
Of late years Reynolds' pen-and-ink drawings have been a familiar
feature of the pages of _Punch_. His gentle satires therein have
been at the expense of all classes of the community. But his most
successful and best remembered jokes have perhaps been those which
depicted the unconscious humours of Cockney low life. His illustration
of "Precedence at Battersea," in which one small gutter-snipe struggles
with another for a cricket bat, indignantly declaring that "The
Treasurer goes in before the bloomin' Seketery," is by way of becoming
a classic. Equally clever is the study of a small boy, (reproduced on
page 27) whose "pomptiousness" on attaining the dignity of knickers
forms the subject of admiring comment from his mother to a friendly
curate: the mother herself being a wonderful study of low life.
In "Going It" (page 59) the artist harks back to the theme of
"freak-study," if such a term is permissible, the expressions on
the faces of the two figures exhibiting well his acute powers of
observation.
[Illustration]
As an illustrator of stories of a certain type, Frank Reynolds is
without an equal. On a tale of mere incident his talent is wasted:
but into the spirit of a writer who takes human nature for his text,
the artist enters with the keenest sympathy. One is tempted to think
that the author who is so fortunate as to have Frank Reynolds for a
collaborator, must on occasion be startled at the clear vision
with which the artist materialises the private conceptions of his
mind. It would hardly be possible to find a more sympathetic series
of illustrations than those which Frank Reynolds drew for Keble
Howard's idyll of Suburbia, entitled "The Smiths of Surbiton."
The author constructed out of the petty doings and humdrum habits
of suburban life a charming little story of simple people, and
with equal cleverness the artist built up, out of these slight
materials, a series of exquisitely natural pictures, which revealed
the almost incredible fact that semi-detached villadom is not all
dulness.
Illustrators of Charles Dickens are legion, but when one thinks of
the opportunities for character-study, without that exaggeration
into which previous illustrators have been too prone to indulge,
which the works of the great novelist afford, one is inclined to think
that until we see that wonderful gallery of fanciful personalities
which began with Mr. Pickwick and his companions portrayed by the
pencil of Frank Reynolds, we shall have to wait still for the perfect
edition of Dickens. One niche in that gallery has already been
filled, and a study of the water-colour drawing of "Tony Weller
at the Belle Sauvage," which is reproduced in the present volume,
only increases our desire, like the immortal Oliver, to ask for
more.
[Illustration: "THE DES(S)ERTS OF BOHEMIA".
_From "Dinners with Shakespeare"_]
Frank Reynolds as a colourist is less known to the general public
than Frank Reynolds the black-and-white artist. It is only of recent
years, indeed, that he has turned his attention to painting. But his
work, as seen at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours
(of which body he was elected a member in 1903) and elsewhere,
proves that his skill with the brush is no less than with pen or
pencil. The present volume includes, besides the drawing of Tony
Weller just referred to, his picture of "The Warrener," another
fine character-study, exhibited at the Royal Institute in 1907.
"The Introduction," an example of a "time sketch" done at the London
Sketch Club, illustrates the quick readiness with which the artist
nimbly catches the spirit of his subject, and the subtle touch
which invests his drawing with the evasive quality of atmosphere.
Another Sketch Club study is that of the curate at the play, which
bears the title "Frivolity." As a study in expression it is amazingly
clever: and it must be a painful and melancholy respect for the cloth
which can suppress the smile which it summons. Even an Archbishop
will scarce forbear to snigger!
[Illustration]
It is not uncommon to hear modern black-and-white art in this country
decried by some persons--mostly of that shallow critical class
which can praise nothing in the present, and has encomiums only
for that which is past. But while English art can point to such
work in black-and-white as Frank Reynolds (to say nothing of others,
with whom this volume is not concerned) produces, he must have
dull senses who deplores the present and must hark back to the
days, let us say, of Charles Keene to find satisfaction for his
artistic cravings.
[Illustration: GOING IT!
SHE: After this, what do you say to a jaunt on one of the new tubes?]
If it be a merit to add to the gaiety of nations, then Frank Reynolds,
on that count alone, deserves of his fellow men more than a passing
approbation. He is something more than a mere jester, however: his
humour but flavours, as it were, a serious study of human nature.
Ignoring, for a moment, the skill and charm of his technique, one
feels it to be an accident only that his vehicle of expression
is pictorial and not literary. He occupies amongst artists the
place which the novelist holds amongst men of letters. When to
the recognition of this distinction is added a consideration of
his artistic ability, _per se_, his title to the appreciation of
men of taste and sensibility must be conceded.
Frank Reynolds is fortunately a young man. Long may we continue
to suffer the good-natured pricks with which his gentle shafts of
satire, piercing the cracks in our self-complacent armour, stimulate
us; long may we continue, secure in our own self-esteem, rapturously
to gloat over the spectacle of our dear friends and neighbours
held up, by his whimsical humour, to keen but harmless ridicule.
[Illustration:]