"After all, the best of KEENE's life-work is to be found in the
innumerable cuts which he contributed to _Punch_ during a period of
nearly forty years; and still more in the originals of these, the
masterly pen-and-ink drawings which are now for the first time shown
in a collected form to the Public."
So says Mr. CLAUDE PHILLIPS, in his "Prefatory Note," to the
"Catalogue of a Collection of Drawings of the late CHARLES KEENE," now
on view at the Rooms of the Fine Arts Society, 148, New Bond Street.
If the British Public possess that "taste for Art" and that "sense of
humour" which some claim for and others deny to it, it (the B.P.) will
throng the comfortable and well-lighted Gallery in New Bond Street,
where hang some hundreds of specimens of the later work of the most
unaffected humorist, and most masterly "Black-and-White" artist of
his time. Walk up, Ladies and Gentlemen, and see--such miracles of
delineation, such witcheries of effect, as were never before put on
paper by simple pen-and-ink!
It is difficult to realise sometimes that it _is_ pen and ink, and
that only--all the delightful display of fresh English landscape and
unsophisticated British humanity, teeming with effects of distance,
hints of atmosphere, and suggestions of colour. Many a much-belauded
brush is but a fumbling and ineffective tool, compared with
the ink-charged crowquill handled by CHARLES KEENE. Look at
"_Grandiloquence_!" (No. 220) There's composition! There's effect!
Stretch of sea, schooner, PAT's petty craft, grandiloquent PAT
himself, a nautical Colossus astride on his own cock-boat, with stable
sea-legs firmly dispread, the swirl of the sea, the swish of the
waves, the very whiff of the wind so vividly suggested!--and all in
some few square inches of "Black-and-White!"
Look, again, at the breadth of treatment, the power of humorous
characterisation, the strong charm of _technique_, the colour, the
action, the marvellous ease and accuracy of street perspective in No.
16 ("_The Penny Toy!_"). Action? Why, you can _see_ the old lady jump,
let alone the frog! Fix your eye on the frightened dame's foot, and
you'll swear it jerks in time to the leap of the "horrid reptile."
Or at that vivid bit of London "hoarding," and London low life, and
London street-distance in "_'Andicapped!_" (No. 25.) Good as is the
"gaol-bird," is not the wonderfully real "hoarding" almost better?
Who now can draw--or, for that matter, _paint_--such a shopkeeper,
_such_ a shop, _such_ a child customer as those in "_All Alive!_" (No.
41), where the _Little Girl_ a-tip-toe with a wedge of cheap "Cheddar"
at the counter, comes down upon him of the apron with the crusher,
"Oh, mother's sent back this piece o' cheese, 'cause father says if
he wants any bait when he's goin' a fishin', he can dig 'em up in our
garden!"
Are _you_ a fisherman, reader? Then will you feel your angling as well
as your artistic heart warmed by No. 75 ("_The Old Adam_") and No.
6 ("_Wet and Dry_"), the former especially! What water, what Scotch
boys, _what_ a "prencipled" (but piscatorial) "Meenister"! Don't _you_
feel your elbow twitch? Don't _you_ want to snatch the rod from SANDY
McDOUGAL's hand, and land that "fush" yourself, Sawbath or no Sawbath?
But, bless us, one wants to describe, and praise, and _purchase_
them all! A KEENE drawing, almost _any_ KEENE drawing, is "a thing of
beauty and a joy for ever" to everyone who has an eye for admirable
art and adorable drollery. And good as is the _fun_ of these drawings,
the graphic force, and breadth, and delicacy, and freshness,
and buoyancy, and breeziness, and masterly ease, and miraculous
open-airiness, and general delightfulness of them, are yet more marked
and marvellous. Time would fail to tell a tithe of their merits. An
essay might be penned on any one of them--but fate forbid it _should_
be, unless a sort of artistic CHARLES LAMB could take the task in
hand. Better far go again to New Bond Street and pass another happy
hour or two with the ruddy rustics and 'cute cockneys, the Scotch
elders and Anglican curates, the stodgy "Old Gents" and broad-backed,
bunchy middle-class matrons, the paunchy port-swigging-buffers,
and hungry but alert street-boys, the stertorous cabbies, and
chatty 'bus-drivers, the "festive" diners-out and wary waiters, the
Volunteers and _vauriens_, the Artists and 'Arries, the policemen
and sportsmen, amidst the incomparable street scenes, and the equally
inimitable lanes, coppices, turnip-fields and stubbles, green glades
and snowbound country roads of wonderful, ever-delightful, and--for
his comrades and the Public alike--all-too-soon-departed CHARLES
KEENE!
Nothing really worthy of his astonishing life-work, of even that part
of it exhibited here, _could_ be written within brief compass, even
by the most appreciative, admiring, and art-loving of his sorrowing
friends or colleagues. Let the British Public go to New Bond Street,
and see for itself, in the very hand-work of this great artist, what
he made manifest during so many years in the pages of _Punch_, namely,
the supreme triumph of "Black-and-White" in the achievements of its
greatest master.
* * * * *
[Illustration: KING STORK AND KING LOG.