With Mr. New, Mr. R. J. Williams and Mr. H. P. Clifford illustrated Mr.
Aymer Vallance's two books on William Morris. Their illustrations are
fit records of the homes and working-places of the great man who
approved their art. Mr. Frederick Griggs, who since 1900 has
illustrated three or four garden books, also follows the principles of
Mr. New, but with more variety in detail, less formality in
tree-drawing and in the rendering of paths and roads and streams and
sunshine, in short, with more of art outside the school, than Mr. New
permits himself.
The open-air covers so much that I have little room to give to another
aspect of open-air illustration--drawings of bird and animal-life. The
work of Mr. Harrison Weir, begun so many years ago, is chiefly in
children's books; but Mr. Charles Whymper, who has an old reputation
among modern reputations, has illustrated the birds and beasts and fish
of Great Britain in books well known to sportsmen and to natural
historians, as also books of travel and sport in tropical and ice-bound
lands. The work of Mr. John Guille Millais is no less well known. No
one else draws animals in action, whether British deer or African wild
beast, from more intelligent and thorough observation, and of his art
the graceful rendering of the play of deer in Cawdor Forest gives proof
that does not need words. Birds in flight, beasts in action--Mr.
Millais is undisputably master of his subject. Many drawings show the
humour which is one of the charms of his work.
[Illustration: FIGURE-OF-EIGHT RING IN CAWDOR FOREST. BY J. G. MILLAIS.