The sobriety and decorum of Mr. New's architectural and landscape
drawings are the antithesis of the flagrantly picturesque. I do not
know whether Mr. Gere or Mr. New invented this order of landscape and
house drawing, but Mr. New is the chief exponent of it, and has placed
it among popular styles of to-day. It has the effect of sincerity, and
of respectful treatment of ancient buildings. Mr. New does not lapse
from the perpendicular, his hand does not tremble or break off when
house-walls or the ridge of a roof are to be drawn. His is a convention
that is frankly conventional, that confines nature within decorous
bounds, and makes formality a function of art. But though a great deal
of Mr. New's work is mechanical and done to pattern, so that sometimes
little perpendicular strokes to represent grass fill half the pictured
space, while little horizontal strokes to represent brick-work,
together with 'touches' that represent foliage, fill up the rest except
for a corner left blank for the sky; yet, at his best, he achieves an
effective and dignified way of treating landscape for the decoration of
books. Sensational skies that repeat one sensation to monotony,
scattered blacks and emphasized trivialities, are set aside by those
who follow Mr. New. When they are trivial and undiscriminating, they
are unaffectedly tedious, and that is almost pleasant after the
hackneyed sparkle of the inferior picturesque.
Mr. New's reputation as a book-illustrator was first made in 1896, when
an edition of 'The Compleat Angler' with many drawings by him appeared.
The homely architecture of Essex villages and small towns, the low
meadows and quiet streams, gave him opportunity for drawings that are
pleasant on the page. Two garden books, or strictly speaking, one--for
'In the Garden of Peace' was succeeded by 'Outside the Garden'--contain
natural history drawings similar to those of fish in 'The Compleat
Angler' and of birds in White's 'Selborne.' The illustrations to
'Oxford and its Colleges,' and 'Cambridge and its Colleges,' are less
representative of the best Mr. New can do than books where village
architecture, or the irregular house-frontage of country high-streets
are his subject. Illustrating Shakespeare's country, 'Sussex,' and
'The Wessex of Thomas Hardy,' brought him into regions of the
country-town; but the most important of his recent drawings are those
in 'The Natural History of Selborne,' published in 1900. The drawing of
'Selborne Street' is from that volume.
[Illustration: Selborne Street