That Thornbury's _Legendary Ballads_ (dated 1876) should be regarded as
a most important volume in a collection of the 'sixties' is not odd,
when you find that its eighty-one illustrations were reprinted from
_Once a Week_. Many of the drawings were republished in this book, with
the poem they originally illustrated; others, however, were joined
to quite different text. If the memories of those living are to be
trusted, not a few of the artists concerned were extremely annoyed to
find their designs applied to new purposes. To take a single instance,
the Sandys design to _King Warwolf_ re-accompanied the poem itself, but
the drawing by John Lawson, which is herein supposed to illustrate the
lines,
'And then there came a great red glare
That seemed to crimson fitfully
The whole broad Heaven.'
was first published with a poem, _Ariadne_, by W. J. Tate, in August
1866, long after _King Warwolf_ first appeared. Its design is obviously
based on this passage:
'My long hair floating in the boisterous wind,
My white hands lightly grasping Theseus' knees,
While he, his wild eyes staring, urged his slaves
To some last effort of their well-tried skill.'
But it requires a great effort of perverted imagination to drag in the
picture, which shows a Greek hero on one ship, watching, you suppose,
the dying Norse king on another ship; when the ballad infers, and
the dramatic situation implies, that the old monarch put out at once
across the bar, and his people from the shore watched his ship burn
in the night. To wrench such a picture from its context, and apply it
to another, was a too popular device of publishers. As, however, it
preserves good impressions of blocks otherwise inaccessible, it would
be ungracious to single out this particular instance for blame. Yet
all the same, those who regard the artist's objection to the sale of
_clichés_ for all sorts of purposes, as a merely sentimental grievance,
must own that he is justified in being annoyed, when the whole
intention of his work is burlesqued thereby.
A contemporary review says that the illustrations had 'appeared before
in _Once a Week_, _The Cornhill_, and elsewhere.' It would be a long
and ungrateful task to collate them, but, so far as my own memory can
be trusted, they are all from the first named. In place of including
a description of the book itself, a few extracts, from a review by
Mr. Edmund Gosse in the _Academy_ (February 1876, p. 177), will not
only give a vivid appreciation of the work of two of the artists, but
show that twenty years ago the book was prized as highly as we prize
it to-day. He says: 'We have thought the illustrations sufficiently
interesting to demand a separate notice for themselves, the more so
as in many cases they are totally unconnected with Mr. Thornbury's
poems.... We are heartily glad to have collected for us some of the
most typical illustrations of a school that is, above all others, most
characteristic of our latest development in civilisation, and of which
the principal members have died in their youth, and have failed to
fulfil the greatness of their promise.
'The artists represented are mainly those who immediately followed the
so-called pre-Raphaelites, the young men who took up many of their
principles, and carried them out in a more modern and a more quiet way
than their more ambitious masters. Mr. Sandys, who pinned all his early
faith to Holbein, and Messrs. Walker, Pinwell, Lawless, and Houghton,
who promised to form a group of brother artists unrivalled in delicacy
and originality of sentiment, are here in their earliest and strongest
development.... M. J. Lawless contributes no less than twenty designs
to the volume. We have examined these singular and beautiful drawings,
most of them old favourites, with peculiar emotion. The present writer
[Mr. Edmund Gosse] confesses to quite absurd affection for all the few
relics of this gifted lad, whose early death seems to have deprived
his great genius of all hope of fame. Years ago these illustrations,
by an unknown artist, keenly excited a curiosity which was not to be
satisfied till we learned, with a sense of actual bereavement, that
their author was dead. He seems to have scarcely lived to develop a
final manner; with the excessive facility of a boy of high talent we
find him incessantly imitating his elder rivals, but always with a
difference.... No doubt, in M. J. Lawless, English art sustained one of
the sharpest losses it ever had to mourn.
[Illustration: W. HOLMAN HUNT
WILLMOTT'S 'SACRED
POETRY,' 1862
THE LENT
JEWELS]
[Illustration: J. LAWSON
'ONCE A WEEK'
VOL. II. N. S. p. 127
ARIADNE]
'Of Pinwell no need to say so much. He has lived, not long enough
indeed to fulfil the great promise of his youth, but to ensure his
head a lasting laurel. There have been stronger intellects, purer
colourists, surer draughtsmen among his contemporaries, but where
shall we seek a spirit of poetry more pathetic, more subtle, more
absolutely modern than his? The critics are for ever urging poets and
painters to cultivate the materials that lie about them in the common
household-life of to-day. It is not so easy to do so; it is not to be
done by writing "idylls of the gutter and the gibbet"; it is not to be
done by painting the working-man asleep by his baby's cradle. Perhaps
no one has done it with so deep and thorough a sympathy as Pinwell; and
it is sympathy that is needed, not curiosity or pity.' But it would
be hardly fair to quote further from Mr. Gosse's appreciation twenty
years ago of artists still living. The volume contains eight designs by
Sandys, namely, _Labours of Thor_ (_Harold Harfagr_), _King Warwolf_,
_The Apparitor of the Secret Tribunal_ (_Jacques de Caumont_),
_Tintoretto_ (_Yet once more on the organ play_), _The Avatar of Zeus_
(_The King at the Gate_), _The search of Ceres for Proserpine_ (_Helen
and Cassandra_), _The Boy Martyr_, _The Three Statues of Egina_, and
_The Miller's Meadow_ (_The Old Chartist_); the alternative title given
in brackets is that of the original as it first appeared in _Once
a Week_. To show how carelessly the author treated the artists, to
whom, in a flowery preface, he says he owes so much, 'for they have
given to his airy nothings a local habitation and a name, and have
caught and fixed down on paper, like butterflies in an entomologist's
cabinet, many a fleeting Cynthia of his brain,' it will suffice to
quote his profuse acknowledgments to 'Mr. Poynter, an old schoolfellow
of the author's, and now Professor in the London University, [who]
has expended all his learning, taste, and thought in the _The Three
Statues_. The drapery might be copied by a sculptor, it is arrayed with
such fine artistic feeling, and over the whole the artist has thrown
the solemnity of the subject, and has shown, in Pluto's overshadowing
arm, the vanity of all things under the sun--even the pure ambition
of a great artist.' This charming eulogy, be it noted, is bestowed
on a drawing that is by Frederick Sandys!!! not by Poynter, who is
unrepresented in the book.
The four Whistlers of _Once a Week_ are all here, absurdly renamed.
There are twenty by M. J. Lawless, seven by T. Morten, ten by J.
Lawson, one by A. Boyd Houghton, two by Fred Walker, eight by G. J.
Pinwell, six by W. Small, three by J. Tenniel, three by F. Eltze, and
one each by J. D. Watson, C. Keene, G. Du Maurier, Towneley Green, C.
Green, T. R. Macquoid, P. Skelton, A. Fairfield, E. H. Corbould, and A.
Rich. The book is well printed, and a treasure-house of good things,
which appear to more advantage upon its 'toned paper' than in the pages
of the periodical where they first saw daylight.
The preface to _Dalziels' Bible Gallery_ is dated October 1880, so
that the volume was probably issued for the season of 1880-81. As we
have seen, the work was in active preparation in the early sixties. It
contained sixty-nine blocks excellently printed upon an India tint.
These include nine by the late Lord Leighton, P.R.A., three by G. F.
Watts, R.A., five by F. R. Pickersgill, R.A., twelve by E. J. Poynter,
R.A., three by E. Armitage, R.A., two by H. H. Armstead, R.A., one by
Sir E. Burne-Jones, one by Holman Hunt, three by Ford Madox Brown, six
by Simeon Solomon, two by A. Boyd Houghton, two by W. Small, one by
E. F. Brewtnall, fourteen by T. Dalziel, one by E. Dalziel, two by A.
Murch, and one by F. S. Walker, and one by Frederick Sandys. The praise
lavished on these designs is amply justified if you regard them as a
whole; but, turning over the pages critically after a long interval,
there is a distinct sense of disillusion. At the time they seemed all
masterpieces; sixteen years after they stand confessed as a very mixed
group, some conscientious pot-boilers, others absolutely powerful and
intensely individual. The book is monumental, both in its ambitious
intention and in the fact that it commemorates a dead cause. It is
easy to disparage the work of the engravers, but when we see what fine
things owe their very existence to Messrs. Dalziels' enterprise, it is
but just to pay due tribute to the firm, and to regret that so powerful
an agency is no longer actively engaged in similar enterprises.
[Illustration: EDWARD BURNE JONES
DALZIELS' 'BIBLE
GALLERY,' 1880
THE PARABLE OF THE
BOILING POT]
[Illustration: SIR FREDERICK LEIGHTON, P.R.A.
DALZIELS' 'BIBLE GALLERY,' 1883
CAIN AND ABEL]
[Illustration: SIR FREDERICK LEIGHTON, P.R.A.
DALZIELS' 'BIBLE
GALLERY,' 1880
MOSES VIEWING THE
PROMISED LAND]
[Illustration: SIR FREDERICK LEIGHTON, P.R.A.
DALZIELS' 'BIBLE
GALLERY,' 1880
ABRAM AND
THE ANGEL]
As copies are both scarce and costly, it may be well to call attention
to a volume entitled _Art Pictures from the Old Testament_ (Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1897), wherein the whole sixty-nine
reappear supplemented by twenty-seven others, which would seem to have
prepared for the _Bible Gallery_, but not previously issued:
thirteen of these added designs are by Simeon Solomon, two by H. H.
Armstead, R.A., three by E. Armitage, R.A., three by F. R. Pickersgill,
R.A., three by T. Dalziel, and one each by F. S. Waltges (_sic_), G. J.
Pinwell, and E. G. Dalziel.
As impressions of the famous blocks are obtainable at a low cost, it
would be foolish to waste space upon detailed descriptions. Of course
the popular reprint ought not to be compared with the fine proofs
of the great _édition-de-luxe_, which cost about twenty times as
much. But for many purposes it is adequate, and gives an idea of the
superb qualities of the Leighton designs, and the vigour and strongly
dramatic force of the Poynters. It is interesting to compare Sir Edward
Burne-Jones's original design for _The Boiling Pot_, reproduced in
_Pen-Drawing and Pen-Draughtsmen by Joseph Pennell_ (Macmillan, 1894),
with the engraving, which is from an entirely different version of the
subject. Other drawings on wood obviously intended for this work, but
never used, can be seen at South Kensington Museum.
A few belated volumes still remain to be noticed--they are picked
almost at random, and doubtless the list might be supplemented almost
indefinitely: _The Trial of Sir Jasper_, by S. C. Hall (Virtue,
undated), with illustrations by Gilbert, Cruikshank, Tenniel, Birket
Foster, Noel Paton, and others, including W. Eden Thomson and G. H.
Boughton. The latter, a drawing quite in the mood of the sixties, seems
to be the earliest illustration by its author. Another design by H. R.
Robertson, of a dead body covered by a cloth in a large empty room,
is too good to pass without comment. _Beauties of English Landscape_,
drawn by Birket Foster, is a reprint, in collected form, of the works
of this justly popular artist; it is interesting, but not comparable
to the earlier volume with a similar title. In _Nature Pictures_,
thirty original illustrations by J. H. Dell, engraved by R. Paterson
(Warne), the preface, dated October 1878, refers to 'years of patient
painstaking labour on the part of artist and engraver'; so that it is
really a posthumous child of the sixties, and one not unworthy to a
place among the best.
_Songs of Many Seasons_, by Jemmett Brown (Pewtress and Co., 1876),
contains two little-known designs by Walter Crane, two by G. Du Maurier
and one by C. M. (C. W. Morgan). _Pegasus Re-saddled_ (H. S. King,
1877), with ten illustrations by G. Du Maurier is, as its title
implies, a companion volume to the earlier _Puck on Pegasus_, by H.
Cholmondeley Pennell. _The Children's Garland_ (Macmillan, 1873),
contains fourteen capital things by John Lawson--no relative of 'Cecil'
or 'F. W. Lawson.'
_The Lord's Prayer_, illustrated by F. R. Pickersgill, R.A., and
Henry Alford, D.D. (Longmans, 1870), has a curiously old-fashioned
air. One fancies, and the preface supports the theory, that its nine
designs should be considered not as an aftermath to the sixties, but
as a presage of the time, near the date of _The Music-master_. Their
vigorous attempt to employ modern costume in dignified compositions
deserves more than patronising approval. Any art-student to-day would
discover a hundred faults, but their one virtue might prove beyond his
grasp. Although engraved on wood by Dalziel, printed as they are upon
a deep yellow tint, the pictures at first sight suggest lithographs,
rather than wood-engravings. _Rural England_, by L. Seguin (Strahan,
1885) has many delightful designs by Millais and Pinwell, but all,
apparently, reprints of blocks used in _Good Words_ and elsewhere.
Possibly the whole series of Mr. Walter Crane's toy-books, which began
to be issued in the mid-sixties, should be noticed here; but they
deserve a separate and complete iconography. In fact, any attempt to go
beyond the arbitrary date is a mistake, and this chapter were best cut
short, with full consciousness of its being a mere fragment which may
find place in some future volume, upon 'the seventies,' that I hope may
find its historian before long.
[Illustration: EDWARD J. POYNTER, R.A.
DALZIELS' 'BIBLE
GALLERY,' 1880
JOSEPH BEFORE
PHARAOH]
[Illustration: EDWARD J. POYNTER, R.A.
DALZIELS' 'BIBLE
GALLERY,' 1880
PHARAOH HONOURS
JOSEPH]
A book of this sort, which aimed to be complete, should contain a
critical summary of the period it attempts to record. But to extract
from the mass of material a clearly-defined purpose, and build up a
plausible theory to show that all the diverse tendencies could be
traced to a common purpose, would surely be at best merely an academic
argument. All that the sixties prove, to a very sincere if incapable
student, seems to be that the artist, if he be indeed an artist, can
make the meanest material serve his purpose. The men of the sixties
tried obviously to do their best. They took their art seriously, if not
themselves. It is tempting to affirm that the tendency now is for no
one to take himself seriously, and even at times to look upon his
art, whatever it may be, as merely a useful medium to exploit for his
own ends. Yet such an opinion would be probably too sweeping; and one
is driven back to the primal fact, that the energy and knowledge which
results in masterly achievement is, and must always be, beyond rules,
beyond schools, as it is beyond fashion or mood. A man who tries to do
his best, if he be endowed with ripe knowledge and has the opportunity,
will make a fine thing; which, whether intended for a penny paper, or a
guinea gift-book, will possess both vitality and permanent value.
But the men of the sixties took themselves quite seriously; and this
is surely evident from their drawings. Not a few committed suicide, or
died from over-work; neither catastrophe being evidence of flippant
content with the popularity they had achieved. Whether inspired by pure
zeal for art, by rivalry, or by money-making, they felt the game well
worth the candle, and did all they could do to play it fairly. Those
of us to-day who try to do our best may be inept, ignorant, and attain
only failure; yet the best is not achieved by accident, and the only
moral of the sixties is the moral of the nineties: 'Whatsoever thy hand
findeth to do, do it with all thy might.'
Whether it be the triumph of a master or a pot-boiling illustrator, the
real artist never takes his art lightly. Life, even reputation, he may
play with, but his craft is a serious thing. In short, the study of
the thousands of designs--some obviously burlesqued by the engraver,
others admirably rendered--will not leave an unprejudiced spectator
with a cut and dried opinion. That, as it happened, a number of really
distinguished men enlisted themselves as illustrators may be granted,
but each one did his own work in his own way; and to summarise the
complex record in a sentence to prove that any method, or any manner,
is a royal road to greatness is impossible. Yet no one familiar with
the period can avoid a certain pride in the permanent evidence it has
left, that English art in illustration, (no less than English music in
the part-songs of the Elizabethan period), has produced work worthy to
be entered on the cosmopolitan roll of fame. This is unquestionable;
and being granted, no more need be said, for an attempt to appraise the
relative value of totally distinct things is always a foolish effort.