It is convenient to speak first of these painter-illustrators, because,
in a sense, they stand alone among illustrative artists. Obviously,
that is not to say that their work is worth more than the work of
illustrators, who, conforming to the laws of 'process,' make their
drawings with brain and hand that know how to win profit by concession.
But popularisers of an effective topographical or architectural style
are indirectly responsible for a large amount of work besides their
own. In one sense a leader does not stand alone, and cannot be
considered alone. Before, then, passing on to a draughtsman such as Mr.
Joseph Pennell, again, to Mr. Railton, or to Mr. New, whose successful
and unforgettable works have inspired many drawings in the books
whereby authors pay for their holiday journeys, other artists, whose
style is no convenience to the industrious imitator, may be considered.
Another painter, known for his work in black and white, is Mr. John
Fulleylove, whose 'Pictures of Classic Greek Landscape,' and drawings
of 'Oxford,' show him to be one of the few men who see architecture
steadily and whole, and who draw beautiful buildings as part of the
earth which they help to beautify. Compare the Greek drawings with
ordinary archaeological renderings of pillared temples, and the
difference in beauty and interest is apparent. In Mr. Fulleylove's
drawings, the relation between landscape and architecture is never
forgotten, and he draws both with the structural knowledge of a
landscape painter, who is also by training an architect. In aim, his
work is in accord with classical traditions; he discerns the classical
spirit that built temples and carved statues in the beautiful places of
the open-air, a spirit which has nothing of the museum setting about
it. The 'Oxford' drawings show that Mr. Fulleylove can draw Gothic.
Though not a painter, Mr. William Hyde works 'to colour' in his
illustrations, and is generally successful in rendering both colour and
atmosphere. He has done little with the pen, and it is in wash
drawings, reproduced by photogravure, that he is best to be studied. Of
his early training as an engraver there is little to be seen in his
work, though his appreciation of the range of tone existing between
black and white may have developed from working within restrictions of
monotone, when the colour sense was growing strong in him. At all
events he can gradate from black to white with remarkable minuteness
and ease. His earliest work of any importance after giving up
engraving, was in illustration of 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso,' 1895,
and shows his talent already well controlled. There are thirteen
illustrations, and the opportunities for rendering aspects of light,
from the moment of the lark's morning flight against the dappled skies
of dawn, to the passing of whispering night-winds over the darkened
country, given in the verse of a poet sensitive as none before him to
the gradations of lightness and dark, are realized. So are the
hawthorns in the dale, and the towered cities. But it is as an
illustrator of another towered city than that imagined by Milton, that
some of Mr. Hyde's most individual work has been produced. In the
etchings and pictures in photogravure published with Mrs. Meynell's
'London Impressions,' London beneath the strange great sky that smoke
and weather make over the gray roofs, London when the dawn is low in
the sky, or when the glow of lamps and lamp-lit windows turns the
street darkness to golden haze, is drawn by a man who has seen for
himself how beautiful the great city is in 'between lights.' His other
work is superficially in contrast with these studies of city light and
darkness; but the same love for 'big' skies, for the larger aspects of
changing lights and cloud movements, are expressed in the drawings of
the wide country that is around and beyond the Cinque Ports, and in the
illustrations to Mr. George Meredith's 'Nature Poems.' The reproduction
is from a pen drawing in Mr. Hueffer's book, 'The Cinque Ports.' There
is no pettiness about it, and the 'phrasing' of castle, trees and sky
shows the artist.
[Illustration: SALTWOOD CASTLE. BY WILLIAM HYDE.