With 1865 we reach the height of the movement--this and the following
year being of all others most fertile in books illustrated by the best
representative men. It saw Rossetti's frontispiece and title to _The
Prince's Progress_ (Macmillan, 1866), these two designs being almost
enough to make the year memorable. _A Round of Days_ (Routledge), one
of the finest of the illustrated gift-books, contains Walker's _Broken
Victuals_ (p. 3), _One Mouth More_ (p. 58), and the well-known _Four
Seasons_ (pp. 37, 39, 41, 43), for one of which the drawing on wood
is at South Kensington Museum. A. Boyd Houghton appears with fourteen
examples (pp. 1, 2, 5, 19, 20, 21, 22, 30, 47, 48, 71, 73, 77, 78),
J. W. North with three exquisite landscapes (pp. 15, 17, 18), G. J.
Pinwell with five subjects, Paul Gray with one (p. 81), J. D. Watson
with five (pp. 26, 28, 62, 64, 66), T. Morten with one (p. 79), A. W.
Bayes with two, T. Dalziel with seven, and E. Dalziel with two. These
complete its contents, excepting two delicately engraved studies of
heads after Warwick Brookes. The book itself is distinctly a lineal
descendant from the annuals of the earlier half of the century; a
typical example of a not very noble ideal--a scrap-book of poems and
pictures made important by the work of the artists.
Yet, with full recognition of the greater literalism of reproductive
process to-day, one doubts if even _The London Garland_ (Macmillan,
1895), which most nearly approaches it, will maintain its interest more
fully, after thirty years' interval, than does this sumptuous quarto,
and a few of its fellows. That we could get together, at the present
time, as varied and capable a list of artists is quite possible; but
where is the publisher who would risk paying so much for original work
designed for a single book, when examples by the same men are to be
obtained in equally good reproductions, and not less well printed in
many of the sixpenny weeklies and the monthly magazines? The change of
conditions seems to forbid a revival of volumes of this class, although
the _Yellow Book_, _The Pageant_, _The Savoy_, and _The Quarto_, are
not entirely unrelated to them.
To 1864 belongs formally _The Cornhill Gallery_, a hundred impressions
from the original blocks of pictures. Among the early volumes issued
for Christmas 1865, this is, perhaps, the most important book, but, as
its contents are fully noticed elsewhere, no more need be said here. It
is amusing to read that a critic disliked 'Mr. Leighton's unpleasant
subjects'--the Romola designs! Dalziels' _Illustrated Goldsmith_ (Ward
and Lock, 1865), may be considered, upon the whole, the masterpiece of
G. J. Pinwell, who designed the hundred illustrations which seemed then
to be accepted as the only orthodox number for a book. How charming
some of these are every student of the period knows. Pinwell, as
certain original drawings that remain prove only too clearly, suffered
terribly at the engraver's hands, and, beautiful as many of the designs
are, one cannot avoid regret that they were not treated more tenderly.
It is quite possible that bold work was needed for the serial issue in
large numbers, and that the engravers simplified the drawings of set
purpose; but the delicacy and grace of the originals are ill-replaced
by the coarser modelling of the faces and the quality of the 'line'
throughout. This year saw also _Home Thoughts and Home Scenes_, a book
with thirty-five drawings of children, by A. Boyd Houghton (Routledge,
1865); which was afterwards reprinted as _Happy Day Stories_. This book
is absolutely essential to any representative collection of the period,
but nevertheless its designs can hardly be regarded as among the
artist's most masterly works.
Warne's edition of _The Arabian Nights_ (1866), with sixteen drawings,
eight by A. Boyd Houghton, must not be confused with the other edition
to which he contributed quite distinct subjects. This, and _Don
Quixote_ (Warne) appear in the Christmas lists for 1865. The great
Spanish novel hardly seems to have sustained the artist to his finest
achievements throughout. It contains 100 most interesting designs;
some that reveal his full accomplishment. At the same time it fails to
astound you, as the _Arabian Nights_ have a knack of doing again and
again, whenever you turn over their pages.
[Illustration: G. J. PINWELL
DALZIELS' 'ILLUSTRATED
GOLDSMITH,' p. 155
WHAT, BILL! YOU
CHUBBY ROGUE]
[Illustration: FREDERICK WALKER
'A ROUND OF DAYS'
AUTUMN]
This was a great year for Gustave Doré. So many English editions of
his books were issued that a summary of the year's art begins with
an apology for calling it 'l'année dorée.' Among these _Don Quixote_
gained rapid and firm hold of popular fancy. Many people who have
risen superior to Doré to-day, and speak of him with contempt now, at
that time grovelled before the French artist's work. A contemporary
critic writes of him as one who, 'by common consent occupies the first
place of all book-illustrators of all time.' As he is not in any sense
an English illustrator we need not attempt to appraise his work here,
but it influenced public taste far more than it influenced draughtsmen;
yet the fact that _Don Quixote_, as Houghton depicted him, even now
fails to oust the lean-armoured, grotesque hero (one of Doré's few
powerful creations), may be the reason for Houghton's version failing
to impress us beyond a certain point.
A book of the year, _Ballads and Songs of Brittany_, from the French
of Hersart de la Villemarqué, by Tom Taylor (Macmillan), should be
interesting to-day, if only for the two steel plates after Tissot,
which show that, in his great Eastern cycle of Biblical drawings,
he reverts to an earlier manner, which he had employed before the
_mondaine_ and the _demi-monde_ attracted him. The book contains
also four Millais', and a fine Keene, which, with most of the other
subjects, had already appeared with the poems in _Once a Week_.
_Enoch Arden_ (E. Moxon & Co., 1866), with twenty-five most dainty
drawings by Arthur Hughes, is said, in some contemporaneous
announcements of the season, to be the first successful attempts at
photographing the designs on wood; but we have already noticed the
fine example of Mr. Bolton's new process for photographing on wood,
a bas-relief after Flaxman, in the _Lyra Germanica_ (1861). Another
table-book, important so far as price is concerned, is _The Life of Man
Symbolised_ (Longmans, 1866), with many illustrations by John Leighton,
F.S.A. _Gems of Literature_, illustrated by Noel Paton (Nimmo); _Pen
and Pencil Pictures from the Poets_ (Nimmo), with forty illustrations
by Keeley Halswelle, Pettie, M'Whirter, W. Small, J. Lawson, and
others; and _Scott's Poems_, illustrated by Keeley Halswelle, were
also issued at this time. An epoch-making book of this season, _Alice
in Wonderland_ (Macmillan), with Tenniel's forty-two immortal designs,
needs only bare mention, for who does not know it intimately?
A very interesting experiment survives in the illustration to Watts's
_Divine and Moral Songs_ (Nisbet, 1865). This book, edited by H.
Fitzcock, the enthusiastic promoter of graphotype, enlisted the
services of notable artists, whose tentative efforts, in the first
substitute for wood-engraving that attained any commercial recognition,
make the otherwise tedious volume a treasure-trove. The Du Maurier
on page 14, the J. D. Watson (p. 22), T. Morten (p. 43), Holman Hunt
(p. 49), M. E. Edwards (p. 62), C. Green (p. 9), and W. Cave Thomas
(p. 75), are all worth study. A not very important drawing, _The Moon
Shines Full_, by Dr. C. Heilbuth (p. 3), is a very successful effort
to rival the effect of wood-engraving by mechanical means. The titles
of the poems come with most grotesque effect beneath the drawings. An
artist in knickerbockers, by Du Maurier, entitled 'The excellency of
the Bible,' for instance, is apt to raise a ribald laugh; and some of
the Calvinistic rhymes and unpleasant theology of the good old doctor
are strangely ill-matched with these experiments in a medium which
evidently interested the draughtsman far more than the songs which laid
so heavy a burden on the little people of a century ago.
_Legends and Lyrics_, by A. A. Procter (Bell and Daldy, 1865), is
another quarto edition of a popular poet, but here, in place of the
usual hundred Birket Fosters, Gilberts, and the rest, we have but
nineteen engravings; but they are all full pages. Charles Keene's two
subjects are _The Settlers_ and _Rest_ (a night bivouac of soldiers);
John Tenniel with _A Legend of Bregenz_, and Du Maurier with _A
Legend of Provence_ and _The Requital_, also represent the _Punch_
contingent. The others are by W. T. C. Dobson, A. R. A., L. Frolich,
T. Morten, G. H. Thomas, Samuel Palmer, J. D. Watson, W. P. Burton,
J. M. Carrick, M. E. Edwards, and William H. Millais; all engraved by
Horace Harral, who cannot be congratulated upon his rendering of some
blocks. A very charming set of drawings by J. E. Millais will be found
in Henry Leslie's _Little Songs for me to sing_ (Cassell, undated).
The subjects, seven in number, are slightly executed studies of
childhood by a master-hand at the work. The first volume of Cassell's
_Shakespeare_, which contains a large number of drawings by H. C.
Selous, was issued this year.
[Illustration: G. J. PINWELL
'WAYSIDE POESIES'
THE LITTLE CALF]
[Illustration: FREDERICK WALKER
'WAYSIDE POESIES'
THE BIT O'
GARDEN]
A fine collection of reprinted illustrations is _Pictures of Society_
(Sampson Low, 1866); its blocks are taken from Mr. James Hogg's
publications, _London Society_ and _The Churchman's Family
Magazine_, and include the fine Sandys, _The Waiting Time_, and M. J.
Lawless's _Silent Chamber_, both reproduced here by his permission. It
is a scarce but very interesting, if unequal, book.
The minor books at this time are rich in drawings by most of the
artists who are our quest in this chronicle. The number, and the
difficulty of ascertaining which of them contain worthy designs, must
be the excuse for a very incomplete list, which includes _Keats's
Poetical Works_, with a hundred and twenty designs by G. Scharf; _The
Children's Hour_ (Hunter, Edinburgh), W. Small, etc.; _Jingles and
Jokes for Little Folks_, Paul Gray, etc.; _The Magic Mirror_, W. S.
Gilbert (Strahan); _Dame Dingle's Fairy Tales_, J. Proctor (Cassell);
_Ellen Montgomery's Bookshelf_, twelve plates in colour by J. D. Watson
(Nisbet); _An Old Fairy Tale_, R. Doyle (Routledge); _What the Moon
saw_, eighty illustrations by A. W. Bayes (Routledge); _Ernie Elton
the Lazy Boy_, _Patient Henry_, _The Boy Pilgrims_, all illustrated by
A. Boyd Houghton and published by Warne; _Sybil and her Snowball_, R.
Barnes (Seeley); _Stories told to a Child_, Houghton, etc. (Strahan);
_Aunt Sally's Life_, G. Thomas, (Bell); _Mother's Last Words_, M. E.
Edwards, etc. (Jarrold), and _Watts's Divine Songs_ (Sampson Low), with
some fine Smalls and Birket Fosters.
Although the style of work that prevailed in 1865-66 was so widely
popular, it did not find universal approval. Critics deplored the
'sketchy' style of Dalziels' engraving and, comparing it unfavourably
with Longmans' _New Testament_, moaned, 'when shall we find again such
engraving as in Mulready's drawings by Thompson.' In _Don Quixote_
they owned Houghton's designs were clever, but thought, 'on the whole,
the worthy knight deserved better treatment.' And so all along the
line we find the then present contrasted with the golden past; even
as many look back to-day to the golden 'sixties' from the commonplace
'nineties.' This time saw the beginning of the superb toy-books by
Walter Crane--which are his masterpieces, and monuments to the skill
and taste of Edmund Evans, their engraver and printer. For wood-block
printing in colours, no western work has surpassed them even to this
date.
_Poems by Jean Ingelow_ (Longmans, 1867) is a very notable and scarce
volume, which was published in the autumn of 1866. It contains twenty
drawings by G. J. Pinwell, of which the seven to _The High Tide_ are
singularly fine; but that they suffered terribly at the engraver's
hands some originals, in the possession of Mr. Joseph Pennell, prove
only too plainly. J. W. North is represented by twenty-four, A. Boyd
Houghton by sixteen, J. Wolf by nine, E. J. Poynter by one, W. Small by
four, E. Dalziel by three, and T. Dalziel by twenty. The level of this
fine book is singularly high, and it must needs be placed among the
very best of one of the most fruitful years.
Another book published at this time, _Ballad Stories of the
Affections_, by Robert Buchanan (Routledge, undated), contains some
singularly fine examples of the work of G. J. Pinwell, W. Small, A.
B. Houghton, E. Dalziel, T. Dalziel, J. Lawson, and J. D. Watson,
engraved by the Brothers Dalziel; _Signelil_ (pp. 7 and 9), _Helga
and Hildebrand_ (p. 17), _The Two Sisters_ (p. 29), and _Signe at the
Wake_ (_frontispiece_) show Houghton at his best; _Maid Mettelil_ (p.
47) exhibits Pinwell in an unusually decorative mood. Indeed, the
thirty-four illustrations are all good, and the book is decidedly one
of the most interesting volumes of the period, and unfortunately one
least frequently met with to-day.
[Illustration: J. W. NORTH
'WAYSIDE POESIES'
GLEN OONA]
[Illustration: J. W. NORTH
FROM THE ORIGINAL DRAWING
GLEN OONA]
[Illustration: J. W. NORTH
'WAYSIDE POESIES,' 1867
THE NUTTING]
[Illustration: J. W. NORTH
'WAYSIDE POESIES'
AFLOAT]
If _Wayside Poesies_ (Routledge, 1867) is not the finest illustrated
book of the Christmas season of 1866, it is in the very front rank. Its
eighteen drawings by G. J. Pinwell are among the best things he did;
the five by Fred Walker are also well up to his best manner, and the
nineteen by J. W. North include some of the most exquisite landscapes
he ever set down in black and white. It was really one of Messrs.
Dalziels' projects, and its publishers were only distributors; so that
the credit--and it is not slight--of producing this admirable volume
belongs to the popular engravers whose names occur in one capacity or
another in almost every paragraph of this chronicle. Still more full
of good things, but all reprinted, is _Touches of Nature by Eminent
Artists_ (Strahan, 1866). This folio volume, 'into which is gathered
much of the richest fruit of Strahan and Company's magazines,' does not
belie its dedication. As almost every one of its ninety-eight subjects
is referred to in the record of the various magazines whence they were
collected, it will suffice to note that it contains three by
Sandys, nine by Fred Walker, four by Millais, five by A. Boyd Houghton,
eight by G. J. Pinwell, two by Lawless, and many by J. W. North, W.
Small, J. Pettie, G. Du Maurier, J. Tenniel, J. D. Watson, Robert
Barnes, with specimens of Charles Keene, J. Mahoney, Marcus Stone, W.
Orchardson, F. J. Shields, Paul Gray, H. H. Armstead, and others.
A volume of even greater interest is _Millais's Collected
Illustrations_ (Strahan, 1866). The eighty drawings on wood include
many subjects originally published in _Lays of the Holy Land_, _Once
a Week_, _Tennyson's Poems_, _Good Words_, _Orley Farm_, etc. etc.
Copies in good condition are not often in the market; but it should be
the blue riband of every collector, for the blocks here receive more
careful printing than that allowed by the exigencies of their ordinary
publication, and, free from any gold border, set on a large and not
too shiny page, they tell out as well as one could hope to find them.
As you linger over its pages you miss many favourites, for it is by no
means an exhaustive collection even from the sources mentioned; but it
is representative and full of superb work, interspersed though it be
with the less fine things done while the great draughtsman was still
hampered by the conventions of Mulready and Maclise.
_Idyllic Pictures_ (Cassell, 1867) is another reprinted collection,
this time selected entirely from one magazine, _The Quiver_. It
contains a fine Sandys here called _October_, elsewhere _The Advent
of Winter_, whereof the artist complained bitterly of the 'cutting.'
In March 1884, the _Art Journal_ contained a very excellent paper on
'Frederick Sandys,' by J. M. Gray, where the original drawing for this
subject is reproduced by process. The more important things in _Idyllic
Pictures_ are: G. J. Pinwell's _Faded Flowers_ (p. 13), _Sailor's
Valentine_ (p. 47), _The Angel's Song_ (p. 73), _The Organ-man_ (p.
121), and _Straight On_ (p. 169); A. Boyd Houghton's _Wee Rose Mary_
(p. 89), _St. Martin_ (p. 181), and _Sowing and Reaping_ (p. 189); Paul
Gray's _Cousin Lucy_ (_Frontispiece_), _A Reverie_ (p. 17), _By the
Dead_ (p. 21), _Mary's Wedding-day_ (p. 141), and _The Holy Light_ (p.
193); W. Small's _Between the Cliffs_ (p. 29), _My Ariel_ (p. 43), _A
Retrospect_ (p. 85), _Babble_ (p. 109), and _Church Bells_ (p. 173); T.
Morten's _Izaak Walton_ (p. 69) and _Hassan_ (p. 81); M. E. Edwards's
_A Lullaby_ (p. 49), _Seeing Granny_ (p. 117), and _Unrequited_ (p.
129), with others by the artists already named, and R. Barnes, H.
Cameron, R. P. Leitch, C. J. Staniland, and G. H. Thomas.
_Two Centuries of Song_, selected by Walter Thornbury (Sampson Low,
1867), is a book almost exactly on the lines of those of the earlier
sixties, which seems at first sight to be out of place amid the works
of the newer school. It has nineteen full-page drawings, set in
ornamental borders, which, printed in colours, decorate (? disfigure)
every page of the book. The illustrations, engraved by W. J. Linton,
Gavin Smith, H. Harral, are by eminent hands: H. S. Marks, T. Morten,
W. Small, G. Leslie, and others. The frontispiece, _Paying Labourers,
temp. Elizabeth_, by the first named, is very typical; _Phyllis_, by
G. Leslie, a pretty half-mediæval, half-modern 'decorative' subject;
and _Colin and Phoebe_, by W. Small, a delightful example of a
broadly-treated landscape, with two figures in the distance--a really
notable work. In my own copy, freely annotated with most depreciatory
criticisms of text and pictures in pencil by a former owner, the
illustration (p. 138) has vanished, but on its fly-leaf the late owner
has written--
'This verse its picture had,
A vulgar lass and lout;
The _wood-cut_ was so bad
That I _would cut_ it out.'
That it is signed G. W. is a coincidence more curious than pleasing to
me, and I quote the quatrain chiefly to show that the term 'wood-cut'
for 'wood-engraving' has been in common use unofficially, as well as
officially, all through this century. Nevertheless it is a distinct
gain to differentiate between the diverse methods, by refusing to
regard the terms as synonymous.
[Illustration: G. DU MAURIER
'STORY OF A FEATHER'
p. 63
'SEND THE CULPRIT
FROM THE HOUSE
INSTANTLY']
[Illustration: G. DU MAURIER
'STORY OF A FEATHER'
p. 14
'HE FELT THE SURPASSING
IMPORTANCE OF
HIS POSITION']
[Illustration: T. MORTEN
'THE QUIVER'
IZAAK WALTON]
Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_ (Cassell, undated), issued about this time,
has a number of notable contributors; but the one-sided gruesome record
of cruelties which, whether true or false, are horribly depressing, has
evidently told upon the artists' nerves. The illustrators, according
to its title-page, are: 'G. H. Thomas, John Gilbert, G. Du Maurier,
J. D. Watson, A. B. Houghton, W. Small, A. Pasquier, R. Barnes, M.
E. Edwards, T. Morten, etc.' Some of the pictures have the names of
artist and engraver printed below, while others are not so
distinguished. Those most worthy of mention are by A. Boyd Houghton
(pp. 389, 480, 508, 572, 596, and 668), S. L. Fildes (p. 493), G. Du
Maurier (p. 541), and W. Small (pp. 333, 365, 624). Among artists not
mentioned in the title-page are F. J. Skill, J. Lee, J. Henley, and F.
W. Lawson. The first volume of Cassell's _History of England_ appeared
this year with many engravings after W. Small and others.
Another book of the season worth noting is _Heber's Hymns_ (Sampson
Low, 1867). It contains 100 illustrations by T. D. Scott, W. Small,
H. C. Selous, Wilfrid Lawson, Percival Skelton, and others; but they
can hardly be styled epoch-making. _Christian Lyrics_ (Sampson Low,
1868) (re-issued later in Warne's _Chandos Classics_), contains 250
illustrations by A. B. Houghton, R. Barnes, and others.
_The Story of a Feather_ (Bradbury, Evans, and Co. 1867), illustrated
by G. Du Maurier, is a book that deserves more space than can be
allowed to it. It holds a large number of drawings, some of which,
especially the initial vignettes, display the marvellously fecund and
dramatic invention of the artist. _The Spirit of Praise_ (Warne, 1867)
is an anthology of sacred verse, containing delightful drawings by W.
Small (pp. 57, 97, 149, 189), by Paul Gray (p. 89), by G. J. Pinwell
(pp. 19, 157), by A. Boyd Houghton (p. 53), and others by J. W. North
and T. Dalziel.
To 1866 belongs most probably _Gulliver's Travels_, illustrated
with eighty designs by 'the late T. Morten,' in which the ill-fated
artist is seen at his best level; they display a really convincing
imagination, and if, technically speaking, he has done better work
elsewhere, this is his most successful sustained effort.
_Moore's Irish Melodies_ (Mackenzie) contains many illustrations by
Birket Foster, Harrison Weir, Cope, and others. _Art and Song_ has
thirty original illustrations engraved on _steel_, which naturally
looks very out of date among its fellows. _A New Table-Book_ by Mark
Lemon (Bradbury) is illustrated by F. Eltze. Mackay's 1001 _Gems of
Poetry_ (Routledge) numbers among its illustrations at least one
Millais.
Books containing designs by artists whose names appear after the
title, may be noted briefly here. _Little Songs for Little Folks_,
J. D. Watson; _Æsop's Fables_, with 114 drawings by Harrison Weir
(Routledge); _Washerwoman's Foundling_, W. Small (Strahan); _Lilliput
Levée_, J. E. Millais, G. J. Pinwell, etc. (Strahan); _Roses and Holly_
(Nimmo); _Moore's Irish Melodies_, Birket Foster, H. Weir, C. W. Cope,
etc. (Mackenzie); _Chandos Poets: Longfellow_, A. Boyd Houghton, etc.
(Warne); _Things for Nests_ (Nisbet). The popularity of the illustrator
at this time provoked a critic to write: 'Book-illustration is a
thriving fad. _Jones fecit_ is the pendant of everything he does. The
dearth of intellectual talent among book-illustrators is amazing. The
idea is thought less of than the form. Mental growth has not kept pace
with technical skill'--a passage only worth quoting because it is
echoed to-day, with as little justice, by irresponsible scribblers.
In another criticism upon this year's books we find: 'For the
pre-Raphaelite draughtsman and the pre-Bewick artist, who love scratchy
lines without colour, blocks which look like spoilt etchings, and the
first "proofs" of artists' work untouched by the engraver, nothing can
be better.' It was the year of Doré's _Tennyson_, and Doré's _Tupper_,
a year when the fine harvests were nearly at an end, when a new order
of things was close at hand, and the advent of _The Graphic_ should set
the final seal to the work of the sixties and inaugurate a new school.
But, although the Christmas of 1866 saw the ingathering of the most
fertile harvest, the next three years must be not overlooked. In 1867
_Lucile_, with Du Maurier's designs, carries on the record; and _North
Coast and other Poems_, by Robert Buchanan (Routledge, 1868), nobly
maintains the tradition of Dalziels. It contains fifty-three drawings:
thirteen by Houghton, six by Pinwell, two by W. Small, one by J. B.
Zwecker, three by J. Wolf, twenty-five by T. and three by E. Dalziel,
and the engraving is at their best level, the printing unusually good.
[Illustration: T. MORTEN
'GULLIVER'S TRAVELS'
CASSELL
GULLIVER IN LILLIPUT]
[Illustration: T. MORTEN
'GULLIVER'S TRAVELS'
CASSELL
THE LAPUTIANS]
_Golden Thoughts from Golden Fountains_ (Warne, 1867) is another
profusely illustrated anthology, on the lines of those which preceded
it. The first edition was printed in sepia throughout, but the later
editions printed in black do more justice to the blocks. In it we find
seventy-three excellent designs by A. Boyd Houghton, G. J. Pinwell, W.
Small, J. Lawson, W. P. Burton, G. Dalziel, T. Dalziel, and others;
if the book, as a whole, cannot be placed among the best of its
class, yet all the same it comprises some admirable work. The _Savage
Club Papers_, 1867 (Tinsley), has also a galaxy of stars in its list of
illustrators, but their sparkle is intermittent and feeble. True that
Du Maurier, A. Boyd Houghton, J. D. Watson, and a host of others drew,
and Dalziels, Swain, Harral, and the rest engraved their work; but all
the same it is but an ephemeral book. _Krilof and His Fables_ (Strahan,
1867) enshrines some delightful, if slight, Houghtons, and many
spirited animal drawings by Zwecker. Wood's _Bible Animals_ is also
rich in fine zoological pictures. The _Ode on the Morning of Christ's
Nativity_ (Nisbet, 1867) would be notable if only for its three designs
by Albert Moore, who appears here as an illustrator, probably the
only time he ever contributed to any publication. Notwithstanding two
or three powerful and fantastic drawings by W. Small, the rest are a
very mixed lot, conceived in all sorts of manners. _The Illustrated
Book of Sacred Poems_ (Cassell, undated) is a big anthology, with a
silver-print photograph by way of frontispiece. It contains a rather
fine composition, _Side by Side_ (p. 17), with no signature or other
means of identification. W. Small (p. 21), J. D. Watson (pp. 69, 89,
105, 200, 209), M. E. Edwards, H. C. Selous, J. W. North, and many
others are represented; but the engravers, for the most part, cannot be
congratulated upon their interpretation of the artists' designs.
Other books worth mention are: _The Mirage of Life_, with twenty-nine
characteristic illustrations by John Tenniel (Religious Tract Society);
_The Story without an End_, illustrated by E. V. B.; _Cassell's
Illustrated Readings_, two volumes with a mass of pictures of unequal
merit, but the omnivorous collector will keep them for the sake of
designs by F. Barnard, J. D. Watson, J. Mahoney, W. Small, S. L.
Fildes, and many another typical artist of the sixties, in spite of
the unsatisfactory blocks; _Fairy Tales_, by Mark Lemon, illustrated
by C. H. Bennett and Richard Doyle; _Pupils of St. John the Divine_,
illustrated by E. Armitage (Macmillan); _Puck on Pegasus_ (the new and
enlarged edition); _Poetry of Nature_, illustrated by Harrison Weir;
and _Original Poems_ by J. and E. Taylor (Routledge, 1868), with a
large number of designs by R. Barnes, A. W. Bayes, etc.
With 1868 the end is near; the few books of real merit which bear
its date were almost all issued in the autumn of the previous year.
_The Savage Club Papers_, 1868, is a book not worth detailed comment;
_Five Days' Entertainment at Wentworth Grange_, by F. T. Palgrave
(Macmillan), contains some charming designs by Arthur Hughes; _Stories
from Memel_, illustrated by Walter Crane (W. Hunt and Co.), is a
pleasant book of the year; and, about this time, other work by the same
artist appeared in _The Merrie Heart_ (Cassell). _King Gab's Story Bag_
(Cassell), _The Magic of Kindness_ (Cassell), and other children's
books I have been unable to trace, nor the _Poetry of Nature_, edited
by J. Cundall.
_Lyra Germanica_ (Longmans), a second anthology of hymns translated
from the German, contains three illustrations by Ford Madox Brown, _At
the Sepulchre_, _The Sower_, and _Abraham_, six by Edward Armitage,
R.A., and many headpieces and other decorations by John Leighton, which
should not be undervalued because the taste of to-day is in favour of a
bolder style, and dislikes imitation Gothic detail. Of their sort they
are excellent, and may be placed among the earliest modern attempts to
decorate a page, with some show of consistency of treatment. Compared
with the so-called 'rustic' borders of earlier efforts, they at once
assume a certain importance. The binding is similar to that upon the
first series.
_Tom Brown's School Days_, illustrated by Arthur Hughes and S. P. Hall,
is one of the most notable books of the year. It is curious that at
the close of the period, as at its beginning, this artist is so much
to the fore, although examples of his work appear at long intervals
during the years' chronicle. Yet, as 1855 shows his work in the van
of the movement, so also he supplies a goodly proportion of the
interesting work which is the aftermath of the sixties, rather than the
premature growth of the seventies. _Tom Brown_ is too well known in
its cheap editions, where the same illustrations are used, to require
any detailed comment here. _Gray's Elegy_ (illustrated in colour by R.
Barnes, Birket Foster, Wimperis, and others) is of little importance.
[Illustration: A. BOYD HOUGHTON
'GOLDEN THOUGHTS FROM
GOLDEN FOUNTAINS'
LOVE]
[Illustration: W. SMALL
'GOLDEN THOUGHTS FROM
GOLDEN FOUNTAINS'
MARK THE GREY-HAIRED
MAN]
In 1869 _The Nobility of Life_ (Warne), an anthology, edited by L.
Valentine, is attractive, less by reason of its coloured plates after
J. D. Watson, C. Green, E. J. Poynter, and others, than from its
headpieces, by A. Boyd Houghton (pp. 26, 106, 122, 136, 146, 178),
Francis Walker (pp. 82, 170), J. Mahoney (p. 98), which, subsidiary as
they appear here, are in danger of being overlooked. _Carmina Crucis_
(Bell and Daldy, 1860), poems by Dora Greenwell, has two or three
decorative pieces, by G. D. L[eslie], which might be attributed to
the influence of the _Century Guild Hobby Horse_, if direct evidence
did not antedate them by twenty years. _Miss Kilmansegg_, illustrated
by Seccombe; _The Water Babies_, Sir Noel Paton and P. Skelton; _In
Fairyland_, R. Doyle (Longmans); _Vikram and the Vampire_, E. Griset
(Longmans), and _Æsop's Fables_ (Cassell), with one hundred clever and
humorous designs, by the same artist, are among the few others that are
worth naming.
Several series of volumes, illustrated by various hands, may be noticed
out of their due order. For the date of the first volume is often far
distant from the last, and yet, as the series maintained a certain
coherency, it would be confusing to spread its record over a number of
years and necessitate continual reiteration of facts.
The _Choice Series_ of selections from the poets, published by Messrs.
Sampson Low and Co., include several volumes issued some time before
they were included as part of this series. The ideal of all is far
more akin to that of the early fifties--when the original editions
of several of these were first issued--than to that of the sixties.
They include Bloomfield's _Farmer's Boy_ (1857), Campbell's _Pleasures
of Hope_ (1855), Coleridge's _Ancient Mariner_ (1857), Goldsmith's
_Deserted Village_ and _Vicar of Wakefield_, Gray's _Elegy_ (1853),
Keats's _Eve of St. Agnes_, Milton's _L'Allegro_, Warton's _The
Hermit_, Wordsworth's _Pastoral Poems_, and Rogers's _Pleasures of
Memory_ (1864). All the volumes, but the last, have wood-engravings by
various hands after drawings by Birket Foster, Harrison Weir, Gilbert
and others; but in the _Pleasures of Memory_ 'the large illustrations'
are produced by a new method without the aid of an engraver, and some
little indulgence is asked for them on the plea of the inexperience of
the artists in this process. 'The drawing is made' (to continue the
quotation) 'with an etching needle, or any suitable point, upon a glass
plate spread with collodion. It is then photographed [? printed] upon
a prepared surface of wax, and from this an electrotype is formed in
relief which is printed with the type.' Samuel Palmer, J. D. Watson,
Charles Green, and others are the artists to whom this reference
applies, and the result, if not better than the best contemporary
engraving, is certainly full of interest to-day.
The _Golden Treasury_ Series (Macmillan and Co.) contains, in each
volume, a vignette engraved on steel by Jeens, after drawings by J. E.
Millais, T. Woolner, W. Holman Hunt, Sir Noel Paton, Arthur Hughes, etc.
Although the 'Household Edition' of Charles Dickens's complete works
was issued early in the seventies, it is illustrated almost entirely
by men of the sixties, and was possibly in active preparation during
that decade. Fred Barnard takes the lion's share, the largest
number of drawings to the most important volumes. His fame as a
Dickens illustrator might rest secure on these alone, although it is
supplemented by many other character-drawings of the types created by
the author of _Pickwick_. To _Sketches by Boz_ he supplies thirty-four
designs, to _Nicholas Nickleby_ fifty-nine, to _Barnaby Rudge_
forty-six, to _Christmas Books_ twenty-eight, to _Dombey and Son_
sixty-four, to _David Copperfield_ sixty, to _Bleak House_ sixty-one,
and to the _Tale of Two Cities_ twenty-five. 'Phiz' re-illustrates _The
Pickwick Papers_ with fifty-seven designs, concerning which silence
is best. J. Mahoney shows excellent work in twenty-eight drawings
to _Oliver Twist_ and fifty-eight each to _Little Dorrit_ and _Our
Mutual Friend_; Charles Green's thirty-nine illustrations to the
_Old Curiosity Shop_ are also admirable. F. A. Fraser is responsible
for thirty to _Great Expectations_, E. G. Dalziel for thirty-four to
_Christmas Stories_ (from _All the Year Round_), twenty-six to the
_Uncommercial Traveller_, and a few to minor pieces, issued with _Edwin
Drood_, which contain S. L. Fildes's excellent designs. H. French
contributes twenty to _Hard Times_, A. B. Frost illustrates _American
Notes_, J. Gordon Thomson _Pictures from Italy_, and J. M'L. Ralston
supplies fifteen for _A Child's History of England_. To re-embody
characters already stereotyped, for the most part, by the earlier
plates of the original editions, was a bold enterprise: that it did
not wholly fail is greatly to its credit. It is quite possible that
as large a number of readers made their first acquaintance with the
_dramatis personæ_ of the novels in these popular editions as in the
older books, and it would be interesting to discover what they really
felt when the much-vaunted copper-plates afterwards fell under their
notice. The sentiment of English people has been amply expended on
the Hablot K. Browne designs. Cruikshank is still considered a great
master by many people; but if one could 'depolarise' their pictures (to
use Wendell Holmes's simile), and set them before their admirers free
from early associations, free from the glamour of Dickens romance, and
then extract a frank outspoken opinion, it would be, probably, quite
opposite to that which they are now ready to maintain.
Recognising that the old illustrations are still regarded with a halo
of memory and romance, not unlike that which raises Mumbo Jumbo to a
fetish among his worshippers, a wish to estimate anew the intrinsic
value, considered as works of art, of these old illustrations, is not
provoked by merely destructive tendencies. So long as Thackeray's
drawing of _Amelia_ is accepted as a type of grace and beauty, how can
the believer realise the beauty of Millais's _Was it not a lie?_ in
_Framley Parsonage_. In the earlier and later engravings alike, the
costume repels; but in the one there is real flesh and blood, real
passion, real art, in the other a merely conventional symbol, which
we agree to accept as an interesting heroine, in the way a child of
five accepts the scratches on his slate as real pirates and savages.
There is little use in trying to appreciate the best, if the distinctly
second-best is reverenced equally; and so, at any cost of personal
feeling, it is simply the duty of all concerned to rank the heroes of
the sale-room, 'Phiz,' Cruikshank, and Leech at their intrinsic value.
This is by no means despicable. For certain qualities which are not
remotely connected with art belong to them; but the beauty of truth,
the knowledge born of academic accomplishment, or literal imitation of
nature, were alike absolutely beyond their sympathy. Hence to praise
their work as one praises a Dürer, a Whistler, or a Millais, is apt
to confuse the minds of the laity, already none too clear as to the
moment when art comes in. This protest is not advanced to prove that
every drawing mentioned in these pages surpasses the best work of the
men in question, but merely to suggest whether it would not be better
to recognise that the praise bestowed for so many years was awarded
to a conventional treatment now obsolete, and should not be regarded
as equivalent to that bestowed upon works of art which owe nothing to
parochial conventions, and are based on unalterable facts, whether a
Hokousaï or a Menzel chances to be the interpreter.
The _Chandos Poets_ (Warne), a series of bulky octavos, with
red-line borders, are of unequal merit. Some, _Willmott's Poets of
the Nineteenth Century_, _James Montgomery's Poems_, _Christian
Lyrics_, and _Heber's Poetical Works_, appear to be merely reprints
of earlier volumes with the original illustrations; others have new
illustrations by men of the sixties. The _Longfellow_ has several by A.
Boyd Houghton, who is also represented by a few excellent designs in
the _Byron_; _Legendary Ballads_ (J. S. Roberts) has three full-page
designs, by Walter Crane, to _Thomas of Ercildoune_ (p. 357), _The
Jolly Harper_ (p. 462), and _Robin Hood_ (p. 580). Later volumes, with
designs by F. A. Fraser and H. French, do not come into our subject.
Other series of the works of 'standard poets,' as they were called, all
resplendent in gold and colours, and more or less well illustrated,
were issued by Messrs. Routledge, Nimmo, Warne, Cassell, Moxon,
and others, beginning in the fifties. Here and there a volume has
interest, but one suspects that many of the plates had done duty
before, and those which had not are not always of great merit; as, for
instance, the drawings by W. B. Scott to the poetical works of L. E.
L. (Routledge). In these various books will be found, _inter alia_,
examples of Sir John Gilbert, Birket Foster, E. H. Corbould, W. Small,
and Keeley Halswelle.
_Hurst and Blackett's Standard Library_ is the title of a series
of novels by eminent hands in single volumes, each containing a
frontispiece engraved on steel. That to _Christian's Mistake_ is by
Frederick Sandys, engraved by John Saddler. _John Halifax_, _Nothing
New_, _The Valley of a Hundred Fires_, and _Les Misérables_, each have
a drawing by Millais, also engraved by John Saddler. In _Studies from
Life_ Holman Hunt is the draughtsman and Joseph Brown the engraver.
_No Church_, _Grandmother's Money_, and _A Noble Life_, contain
frontispieces by Tenniel, _Barbara's History_, one by J. D. Watson,
and _Adèle_, a fine design by John Gilbert. Others by Leech and Edward
Hughes are not particularly interesting. The steel engraving bestowed
upon most of these obliterated all character from the designs, and
superseded the artist's touch by hard unsympathetic details; but, all
the same, compositions by men of such eminence deserve mention.
With 1870 the end of our subject is reached; it is the year of _Edwin
Drood_, which established S. L. Fildes's position as an illustrator
of the first rank; it also has a pleasant book of quasi-mediæval
work, _Mores Ridicula_, by J. E. Rogers (Macmillan), (followed later
by _Ridicula Rediviva_ and _The Fairy Book_, by the author of _John
Halifax_, with coloured designs by the same artist), of which an
enthusiastic critic wrote: 'Worthy to be hung in the Royal Academy
side by side with Rossetti, Sandys, Barnes, and Millais'; Whymper's
_Scrambles on the Alps_, a book greatly prized by collectors, with
drawings by Whymper and J. Mahoney; _The Cycle of Life_ (S.P.C.K.);
and _Episodes of Fiction_ (Nimmo, 1870) containing twenty-eight
designs by R. Paterson, after C. Green, C. J. Staniland, P. Skelton,
F. Barnard, Harrison Weir, and others. _Novello's National Nursery
Rhymes_, by J. W. Elliott, published in 1871, belongs to the sixties
by intrinsic right. It includes two delightful drawings by A. Boyd
Houghton--one of which, _Tom the Piper's Son_ (owned by Mr. Pennell),
has been reproduced from the original by photogravure in Mr. Laurence
Housman's monograph--and many by H. S. Marks, W. Small, J. Mahoney, G.
J. Pinwell, W. J. Wiegand, Arthur Hughes, T. and E. Dalziel, and others.
_H. Leslie's Musical Annual_ (Cassell, 1870) contains a fine drawing,
_The Boatswain's Leap_, by G. J. Pinwell, and a steel engraving, _A
Reverie_, after Millais, which was re-issued in _The Magazine of Art_,
September 1896. _Pictures from English Literature_ (Cassell) is an
excuse for publishing twenty full-page engravings after elaborate
drawings by Du Maurier, S. L. Fildes, W. Small, J. D. Watson, W.
Cave Thomas, etc. etc. This anthology, with a somewhat heterogeneous
collection of drawings, seems to be the last genuine survivor of
the old Christmas gift-books, which is lineally connected with the
masterpieces of its kind.
Soon after the inevitable anthology of poems reappeared, in humbler
pamphlet shape, as a birthday souvenir, or a Christmas card,
embellished with chromo-lithographs, as it had already been allied
with photographic silver-prints; but it is always the accident of the
artists chosen which imparts permanent interest to the otherwise
feeble object; whether it take the shape of a drawing-room table-book,
gaudy, costly, and dull, or of a little booklet, it is a thing of no
vital interest, unless by chance its pictures are the work of really
powerful artists. The decadence of a vigorous movement is never a
pleasant subject to record in detail. Fortunately, although the king
died, the king lived almost immediately, and _The Graphic_, with its
new ideals and new artists, quickly established a convention of its
own, which is no less interesting. If it does not seem, so far as we
can estimate, to have numbered among its articles men who are worthy
in all respects to be placed by Rossetti, Millais, Sandys, Houghton,
Pinwell, Fred Walker, and the rest of the typical heroes of the
sixties, yet in its own way it is a worthy beginning of a new epoch.
Before quitting our period, however, a certain aftermath of the rich
harvest must not be forgotten; and this, despite the comparatively few
items it contains, may be placed in a chapter by itself.
[Illustration: FREDERICK SANDYS
'ONCE A WEEK'
VOL. VII. p. 266
DEATH OF KING
WARWOLF]