SO far, in writing of decorative illustrators and of open-air
illustrators, the difference in scheme between a study of
book-illustration and of 'black-and-white' art has not greatly affected
the scale and order of facts. The intellectual idea of illustration, as
a personal interpretation of the spirit of the text, finds expression,
formally at least, in the drawings of most decorative black-and-white
artists. The deliberate and inventive character of their art, the fact
that such qualities are non-journalistic, and ineffective in the
treatment of 'day by day' matters, keeps the interpretative ideal,
brought into English illustration by Rossetti, and the artists whose
spirits he kindled, among working ideals for these illustrators. For
that reason, with the exception of page-decorations such as those of
Mr. Edgar Wilson, the subject of decorative illustration is almost
co-extensive with the subject of decorative black-and-white. The
open-air illustrator represents another aspect of illustration. To
interpret the spirit of the text would, frequently, allow his art no
exercise. Much of his text is itinerary. His subject is before his
eyes in actuality, or in photographs, and not in some phrase of words,
magical with suggested forms, creating by its gift of delight desire to
celebrate its beauty. Still, if the artist be independent of the
intellectual and imaginative qualities of the book, his is no
independent form of black and white. It is illustration; the author's
subject is the subject of the artist. Open-air facts, those that are
beautiful and pleasurable, are too uneventful to make 'news
illustration.' Unless as background for some event, they have, for most
people, no immediate interest. So it happens that open-air drawings are
usually illustrations of text, text of a practical guide-book
character, or of archaeological interest, or of the gossiping, intimate
kind that tells of possessions, of journeys and pleasurings, or, again,
illustrations of the open-air classics in prose and verse.
But in turning to the work of those draughtsmen whose subject is the
presentment of character, of every man in his own humour, the
illustration of literature is a part only of what is noteworthy. These
artists have a subject that makes the opportunities of the
book-illustrator seem formal; a subject, charming, poignant, splendid
or atrocious, containing all the 'situations' of comedy, tragedy or
farce; the only subject at once realized by everyone, yet whose
opportunities none has ever comprehended. The writings of novelists and
dramatists--life narrowed to the perception of an individual--are
limitary notions of the matter, compared with the illimitable variety
of character and incident to be found in the world that changes from
day to day. And 'real' life, purged of monotony by the wit,
discrimination or extravagance of the artist, or--on a lower plane--by
the combination only of approved comical or sentimental or melodramatic
elements, is the most popular and marketable of all subjects. The
completeness of a work of art is to some a refuge from the
incompleteness of actuality; to others this completeness is more
incomplete than any incident of their own experience. The first bent of
mind--supposing an artist who illustrates to 'express himself'--makes
an illustrator of a draughtsman, the second makes literature seem no
more than _la reste_ to the artist as an opportunity for pictorial
characterization.
Character illustration is then a subject within a subject, and if it be
impossible to consider it without overseeing the limitations, yet a
different point of view gives a different order of impressions.
Caricaturists, political cartoonists, news-illustrators and graphic
humorists, the artists who pictorialize society, the stage, the slums
or some other kind of life interesting to the spectator, are outside
the scheme of this article--unless they be illustrators also. For
instance, the illustrations of Sir Harry Furniss are only part of his
lively activities, and Mr. Bernard Partridge is the illustrator of Mr.
Austin Dobson's eighteenth-century muse as well as the 'J. B. P.' of
'socials' in 'Punch.'
An illustrator of many books, and one whose illustrations have unusual
importance, both as interpretations of literature and for their
artistic force, Mr. William Strang is yet so incongruous with
contemporary black-and-white artists of to-day that he must be
considered first and separately. For the traditions of art and of race
that find a focus in the illustrative etchings of this artist, the
creative traditions, and instinctive modes of thought that are
represented in the forms and formation of his art, are forces of
intellect and passion and insight not previously, nor now, by more than
the one artist, associated with the practice of illustration. To
consider his work in connection with modern illustration is to speak of
contrasts. It represents nothing that the gift-book picture represents,
either in technical dexterities, founded on the requirements of process
reproduction, or in its decorative ideals, or as expressive of the
pleasures of literature. One phase of Mr. Strang's illustrative art is,
indeed, distinct from the mass of his work, with which the etched
illustrations are congruous, and the line-drawings to three
masterpieces of imaginary adventure--to Lucian, to Baron Munchausen and
to Sindbad--show, perhaps, some infusion of Aubrey Beardsley's spirit
of fantasy into the convictions of which Mr. Strang's art is
compounded. But these drawings represent an excursion from the serious
purpose of the artist's work. The element in literature expressed by
that epithet 'weird'--exiled from power to common service--is lacking
in the extravagances of these _voyages imaginaires_, and, lacking the
shadows cast by the unspeakable, the intellectual _chiaroscuro_ of Mr.
Strang's imagination, loses its force. These travellers are too glib
for the artist, though his comprehension of the grotesque and
extravagant, and his humour, make the drawings expressive of the text,
if not of the complete personality of the draughtsman. The 'types,
shadows and metaphors' of 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' with its
poignancies of mental experience and conflict, its transcendent
passages, its theological and naive moods, gave the artist an
opportunity for more realized imagination. The etchings in this volume,
published in 1894, represent little of the allegorical actualities of
the text. Not the encounters by the way, the clash of blows, the
'romancing,' but the 'man cloathed with rags and a great Burden on his
back,' or Christiana his wife, when 'her thoughts began to work in her
mind,' are the realities to the artist. The pilgrims are real and
credible, poor folk to the outward sight, worn with toil, limited,
abused in the circumstances of their lives; and these peasant figures
are to Mr. Strang, as to his master in etching, Professor Legros,
symbols of endurance, significant protagonists in the drama of man's
will and the forces that strive to subdue its strength. To both artists
the peasant confronting death is the climax of the drama. In the
etchings of Professor Legros death fells the woodman, death meets the
wayfarer on the high-road. There is no outfacing the menace of death.
But to Mr. Strang, the sublimity of Bunyan's 'poor man,' who overcomes
all influences of mortality by the strength of his faith, is a possible
fact. His ballad illustrations deal finely with various aspects of the
theme. In 'The Earth Fiend,' a ballad written and illustrated with
etchings by Mr. Strang in 1892, the peasant subdues and compels to his
service the spirit of destruction. He maintains his projects of
cultivation, conquers the adverse wildness of nature, makes its force
productive of prosperity and order; then, on a midday of harvest,
sleeps, and the 'earth fiend,' finding his tyrant defenceless, steals
on him and kills him as he lies. 'Death and the Ploughman's Wife'
(1894) has a braver ending. It interprets in an impressive series of
etchings how 'Death that conquers a'' is vanquished by the mother whose
child he has snatched from its play. The title-page etching shows a
little naked child kicking a skull into the air, while the
peasant-mother, patient, vigilant, keeps watch near by. In 'The Christ
upon the Hill' of the succeeding year, a ballad by Cosmo Monkhouse with
etchings by Mr. Strang, the artist follows, of course, the conception
of the writer; but here, too, his work is expressive of the visionary
faith that discerns death as one of those 'base things' that 'usher in
things Divine.'
[Illustration: FROM WILLIAM STRANG'S BALLAD, 'DEATH AND THE PLOUGHMAN'S
WIFE' (REDUCED FROM THE ORIGINAL ETCHING).