Among those associated with the 'Arts and Crafts' who have given more
of their art to book-decoration, Mr. Anning Bell is first. He has
gained the approval even of the most exigent of critics as an artist
who understands drawing for process. Since 1895, when the 'Midsummer
Night's Dream' appeared, his winning art has been praised with
discrimination and without discrimination, but always praised. Trained
in an architect's office, widely known as the recreator of coloured
relief for architectural decoration, Mr. Anning Bell's illustrations
show constructive power no less than that fairy gift of seeming to
improvise without labour and without hesitancy, which is one of its
especial charms. In feeling, and in many of his decorative forms, his
drawings recall the art of Florentine bas-relief, when Agostino di
Duccio, or Rossellino or Mino da Fiesole, created shapes of delicate
sweetness, pure, graceful--so graceful that their power is hardly
realized. The fairy by-play of the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' is exactly
to Mr. Anning Bell's fancy. He knows better than to go about to expound
this dream, and it is not likely that a more delightful edition will
ever be put into the hands of children, or of anyone, than this in the
white and gold cover devised by the artist.
Of his illustrations to the 'Poems by John Keats' (1897), and to the
'English Lyrics from Spenser to Milton' of the following year--as
illustrations--not quite so much can be said, distinguished and
felicitous as many of them are. The simple profile, the demure type of
beauty that he affects, hardly suit with Isabella when she hears that
Lorenzo has gone from her, with Lamia by the clear pool
"Wherein she passioned
To see herself escaped from so sore ills,"
or with Madeline, 'St. Agnes' charmed maid.' Mr. Anning Bell's
drawings to 'The Pilgrim's Progress' (1898) reveal him in a different
mood, as do those in 'The Christian Year' of three years earlier. His
vision is hardly energetic enough, his energy of belief sufficient, to
make him a strong illustrator of Bunyan, with his many moods, his great
mood. A little these designs suggest Howard Pyle, and Anning Bell is
better in a way of beauty not Gothic.
[Illustration: FROM MR. ANNING BELL'S 'KEATS.'