The greater amount of Mr. Bedford's work for children consists of
coloured illustrations to nursery-books, and, when the humour of
half-penny paper journalism is supposed to be entertainment for babies,
one may be thankful for the pleasant and peaceful drawings of this
artist. Little Miss Muffet, Wee Willie Winkie, and the activities of
town and country, are a relief from the _jeunesse doree_, and the
lethargy of the War Office as toy-book subjects, while 'The Battle of
the Frogs and Mice'--though Miss Barlow's version of Aristophanes, with
Mr. Bedford's effective decorations, is hardly a nursery-book--is a
better child's subject than the punishable pretensions of other
nations.
In work hitherto noticed, the child may be regarded as the central
figure of the design, whether fact or fancy be set about his little
personality. Besides the illustrators whose subject is childhood in
some aspect or another, and those children's illustrators who
pictorialize the wide imaginings of the national fairy tales, there
are others in whose work the child figures incidentally, but not as the
central fact. In this connection one may consider those draughtsmen who
illustrate modern wonder-books with Zankiwanks, Krabs and Wallypugs.
Mr. Archie Macgregor should be classed, perhaps, among artists of the
child in wonderland, but the personalities of Tomakin and his sisters,
though Judge Parry sets them forth in prose and in verse with his usual
high spirits, are not the illustrator's first care. 'Katawampus,' 'The
First Book of Krab,' and 'Butterscotia,' have made Mr. Macgregor's
robust and strongly-defined drawings familiar, and, within the limits
of the author's hearty imagination, his droll and unflagging
representations of adventures, ceremonies and humours, are extremely
apt. Children, goblins, animals and queer monsters are drawn with
unhesitating spirit and humour, and with decorative invention that
would be even more successful if it were less fertile in devising
detail. More fortunate in rendering action than facial expression,
without the mystery that is the atmosphere of the magical fairy-land,
the fact and fancy of Mr. Macgregor are so admirably illustrative of
Judge Parry's text that one is almost inclined to attribute the absence
of glamour to the artist's strong conception of the function of an
illustrator.
Mr. Alan Wright's work, again, is inevitably associated with the
invention of an author, though Mr. Farrow's 'Wallypug' books have not
all been illustrated by one artist. Mr. Wright's drawings are proof of
an energetic and serviceable conception of all sorts of out-of-the-way
things. His humour is unelaborate, he goes straight to the fact, and,
having expressed its extraordinary and fantastic characteristics, he
does not linger to develop his drawing into a decorative scheme.
Apparently he draws 'out of his head,' whether his subject is fact or
extravagance. The three small humans who figure in 'The Little
Panjandrum's Dodo,' and the ambassador's son of 'The Mandarin's Kite,'
are as briefly sketched as the whimsicalities with whom they consort.
Mr. Arthur Rackham's illustrations to 'Two Old Ladies, Two Foolish
Fairies, and a Tom-Cat' (1897), and to 'The Zankiwank and the
Bletherwitch' show inspiriting talent for nursery extravaganza. The
children, whirled from reality into a phantasmagoria of adventure, are
deftly and happily drawn, the fairies have fairy grace, and the rout of
hobgoblins and grotesques fill their parts. Drawing real animals, Mr.
Rackham is equally quick to note what is characteristic, and his
facility in realizing fact and magic finds expression in the
illustrations to 'Grimm's Fairy Tales' (1900). This is the most
important work of Mr. Rackham as a child's illustrator, and if the
drawings are somewhat calculated to impress the horrid horror of
witches and forest enchantments on uneasy minds, the charm of
princesses and peasant maids, the sagacious humour of talking animals
and the grotesque enlivenment of cobolds and gnomes are no less vividly
represented. That Mr. Rackham admires Mr. E. J. Sullivan's scheme of
decorative black-and-white is evident in these drawings, but not to
the detriment of their inventive worth.
[Illustration: FROM MR. ARTHUR RACKHAM'S 'GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES.'