|Since this book was commenced as the companion, rather than the rival,
of that of M. Maindron, English designers of the poster have multiplied
in a degree altogether phenomenal.
Up to the time in question, as we have already seen, the English
artist who attempted the poster was exceptional. The famine, which was
prevalent only a year or two ago, has become the abundance of today, so
that where one expected a dearth of subject matter, one has in fact an
excess. It seems to me that, apart from the English pioneers, whom we
have already considered, the brothers Beggarstaff, in reality Messrs.
Pryde and Simpson, two young artists, are entitled to the first
place among the makers of the English artistic poster. They have best
appreciated the essence of their business: less than almost any native
designers, they are innocent of any homage of imitation. They have
imitated neither Cheret nor Lautrec: it may well be that they have had
the wisdom to take a hint here and there from both of these masters of
the art of the _affiche_. As yet the hoardings of London are screaming
with the vulgar designs of the advertiser's hack. The admirable art of
the Beggarstaffs is, up to now, infrequently met with. Their curious
advertisement for Sir Henry Irving's production of "Becket," was
eclipsed by that done for the same manager's "Don Quixote," while the
latter has to give place to one intended to announce a special issue of
"Harper's Magazine." All of these force themselves on the collector's
attention. They are at once striking and artistic; they cry their wares
well, and they are a delight to the eyes. The lettering in the Harper
poster is beyond all praise. Of its kind, it is the most beautiful
English lettering of which I know. At the Aquarium Exhibition the
Beggarstaff's showed four posters which advertised Nobody's Blue,
Nobody's Candles, Nobody's Niggers, and Nobody's Pianos. If each
"Nobody" is not rapidly converted into "Somebody," the various
manufacturers and proprietors of the articles mentioned above must be
very stupid people. All were excellent; that which advertised Nobody's
Pianos was a most curious and a most original performance. It seems to
me that the Beggarstaffs have few serious rivals in England, and not
very many in France. Their works should help very
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considerably in the task of revolutionizing the English pictorial
poster. The
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impression created by their designs on Frenchmen, who are past masters
in the art of the hoarding, is most favourable.
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It will be remembered that when Mr. Sickert took it into his head to
depict the Sisters Lloyd in their music-hall habit, the critics fell
out greatly. Even the young ladies in question had, it is said,
scant affection for a design in which everything was suggested and
nothing declared.
They had, it is true, the recompense of advertisement, and that, to a
music-hall singer, is a very sweet recompense. It was characteristic of
Mr. Sickert that he should go to the music-halls for a subject. The "New
English Art Club" is devoted to things which are
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new and strange, the artistic poster amongst them. Mr. Sickert is not
the only one of the members of this club who have made an essay in the
latest form of applied art. Mr. Beardsley, Mr. R. Anning Bell, and Mr.
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Wilson Steer are amongst those of his colleagues who have done the same
thing. Mr. Sickert's poster, which is, I believe, as yet unpublished, is
in four colours. It is calculated to make a good advertisement, and one
can only hope soon to meet with it on the hoardings. As an impressionist
painter of talent, Mr. Wilson Steer is as well known as Mr. Sickert. A
"New English Art Club" Exhibition without his work would be one which
lacked a most characteristic feature. Mr. Steer gave us an opportunity
of appreciating his talent as a painter by organizing a show of his
own work. To advertise this he did a poster, which was excellent of
its kind, and is in consequence very rare. It is a comparatively small
lithograph in four colours, and is quite unlike this artist's other
work. It leans, it seems to me, towards Pre-Raphaelitism rather than
towards Impressionism. An artist who has certainly sat at the feet of
Mr. Whistler is Mr. Mortimer Menpes. To advertise several exhibitions of
his paintings, he has invented at least three posters, which certainly
do not lack the merit of originality. He has abstained from the
frivolous girl and grotesque man. The "France," the "Venice," and the
"India" are in their way considerable achievements in dainty design and
quiet and harmonious colour. Mr. Menpes, by being intentionally simple,
has arrived at notable conspicuity. All this artist's designs are of
small size, and are appropriate rather to the notice board than to the
hoarding. Nothing more opposite to the fastidious productions of Mr.
Menpes could be conceived than the vigorous poster by Mr. Lockhart Bogle
advertising a Scottish Athletic Gathering, held in 1892. This is a large
lithograph, consisting of a single figure of a Highlander, which, if not
remarkably beautiful, is drawn with vigour and with no small accuracy.
Mr. Brangwyn is one of those English painters of whom we are entitled
to be proud. His directness, the audacity of his impressionism, the
splendour (if sometimes ill-considered) of his colour schemes, cannot
be passed over even by those who have slight sympathy with his method.
That, if so inclined, he would produce a poster at once startling and
artistic is not to be denied. The one which he has already designed to
advertise an exhibition of South African pictures by himself and Mr.
William Hunt, held at the Japanese Gallery, is certainly by no means
worthy his remarkable talent, and one trusts that he will cease for
a moment from painting pictures and produce a poster which shall be
memorable in the history of the _affiche_ in England.
Mr. Frank Richards is nothing if not versatile; his exhibition, held
recently at the Dowdeswells' Galleries, came as a surprise to all who
were unacquainted with his
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clever painting. In this exhibition his pictures ranged from a large
study of Mr. Clive as "Hamlet" to slight but beautiful studies of Venice
under various atmospheric conditions. In his poster work, of which at
present little has been seen, Mr. Richards shows that, to some extent,
he is under the influence of Mr. Dudley Hardy. Mr. Richards, no less
than Mr. Hardy, is undeniably up to date, and his work is really
effective. Among the most recent additions to the ranks of our popular
illustrators is Mr. Lewis Baumer. One meets with his work everywhere;
in "To-Day" and in the shortlived "Unicorn." His bills to advertise the
Academy students' annual burlesque are pretty, if they are nothing else.
Mr. Baumer has certainly still to make his mark as a poster designer.
The Artistic Supply Company, who are paying special attention to the
pictorial poster, have already produced a dainty little _affiche_ by
him. It may be noted here that the company in question have arranged
with some of the most eminent English designers for the reproduction of
artistic posters, and that several, which illustrate these pages, do so
only on account of their permission most generously given.
Among other services which the comic journal "Pick-Me-Up" has rendered
to the artistic public is the extremely important one of emphasizing,
and giving a congenial outlet to, the remarkable talent of Mr.
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Raven-Hill. From almost the first, his connexion with the journal in
question has been a very intimate one. Hardly a number is without a
specimen of his powerful drawing and his gift of comic invention. While
suggesting, in the best sense, the style of the incomparable Charles
Keene, Mr. Raven-Hill's work in black and white is the outcome of his
own personality. It would have been strange if this very modern artist
had not produced pictorial posters: his talent was perfectly adapted to
his doing so with success. His small bills for "Pick-Me-Up" are vigorous
in drawing, bold in colour, and of a pleasant fantasy. They only measure
twenty by thirty inches, but they are very telling. A complete set of
them is a most desirable addition to the collector's portfolio. Another
accomplished member of the staff of "Pick-Me-Up," Mr. Edgar Wilson, has
designed a bill for the recently defunct journal, "The Unicorn." It is
effective, but to me personally, the colour scheme is even more crude
than the exigencies of a poster demand. Mr. Reginald Cleaver, whose
sketches of scenes in the House of Commons created so favourable an
impression in "The Daily Graphic," has not yet, I believe, deliberately
produced a pictorial poster; but one of his drawings, reproduced on
a large scale, lends itself well enough to the purposes of mural
advertisement. Mr. Sydney Adamson, the art editor of
"To-day" and "The Idler," has done a bill which, when it is seen, will
be Jield, I have small doubt, a very striking performance. It is happily
conceived and boldly executed, and should make a striking patch of
colour on the hoardings.
Merely to chronicle the names of the innumerable Wilsons who are
producing pictures would take quite a considerable space. It may be
noted in passing that, like Edgar of that name, Mr. W. Wilson has also
attempted an _affiche_.
Among others who have designed posters which have yet to be seen an the
hoardings are Mr. Max Cowper, Mr. A. R. Miller, Mr. Kerr Lawson, Mr. F.
H. Townsend, whose black and white work one meets everywhere, Mr. Roche,
a prominent member of the Glasgow School, and one of the greatest living
English artists, Mr. Phil May.
Mr. Phil May is not the only "Punch" man who has been seized with the
prevailing mania for the production of posters. His colleague, Mr.
Bernard Partridge, has already designed one which is reproduced in these
pages. One associates Mr. Partridge with dainty and idyllic work rather
than with work which is vigorous, but his first essay in the poster
seems to me to be very promising. Mr. J. T. Manuel's work is as unlike
that of Mr. Bernard Partridge as possible. His pictures might be by a
clever member of the young French School who
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have taken more than a hint from Forain. The designs for posters which
Mr. Manuel exhibited at the Westminster Aquarium, if not so distinctive
of his talent as his contributions in black and white to "Pick-Me-Up,"
were not without definite merit. Of the three, that catalogued as "A
Music-hall Singer" struck me as the best. It should be purchased by Miss
Minnie Cunningham, for the likeness between her, and the young lady
it represents, if accidental, is marvellous. Among young decorative
painters of the day who are not mere imitators of such masters as Sir
Edward Burne-Jones or Puvis de Chavannes, but have invented a style for
themselves, must be included Mr. Charles Ffoulkes. The two examples of
his poster-work here reproduced are as beautiful in colour as they are
refined in pattern. Moreover, they proclaim themselves in loud tones.
Their tones, however, are those of a silver trumpet rather than those of
cymbal or of gong. At times Mr. Ffoulkes forsakes his lofty imaginings
and depicts _chic_ young ladies quite in the best French manner. Mr. L.
Solon's poster, reproduced here, is a very characteristic example of his
decorative style. In inventing it, the artist has clearly kept before
him the fact that a poster cannot live by beauty alone; if, happily,
there be beauty, there must of necessity be advertisement, else is
failure inevitable.
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Very unlike Mr. Solon's poster are the _affiches_ of Mr. Heywood Sumner;
those which I reproduce here seem to me to be very characteristic of his
graceful gift of design. Mr. Morrow is already an established favourite
on the hoardings of London, and justly so in that his performances are
of exceptional merit. His "Illustrated Bits"
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is a radiant affair, and his "New Woman" makes quite a pretty picture.
His works should certainly be collected.
Of Mr. R. Anning Bell it is not too much to say that for versatility
only Mr. Walter Crane among English artists can be said to rival him,
and, what is far more important, his success in a medley of mediums is
not to be gainsaid. His poster for the Liverpool School of Art, over
which he presides, is a magnificent piece of decoration, and nothing so
fine, in its way, has ever been, seen on English hoardings. It takes one
up to the Elgin marbles; it is an oasis of the classical in a desert of
the new. I can only mention the following native artists, not previously
considered, who have produced pictorial posters of interest: Mr. F.
Barnard ("Everybody should read in the European School"), Mr. F. Simpson
("Land of the Midnight Sun," "To Norway Fjords"), Mr. Robert Fowler,
R.I., whose poster for the Walker Art Gallery is here illustrated, Mr.
Sidney Haward (p. 279), Mr. Skipworth ("An Artist's Model"), Mr. Skinner
("Pall Mall Magazine"), Mr. Starr Wood and Mr. A. G. Draper.
I have already remarked that the poster movement in this country amounts
to a positive revolution. No young artist is satisfied unless he has a
hand in the decoration of the hoardings; the gold frame is for the time
forgotten, and all have their eyes on the lithographer's stone. France
has undoubtedly had a long start of us, but if she is to retain her
supremacy she must look to her laurels. Our young men are beating at
her doors, though beating only in a spirit of friendly rivalry. Happily,
between England and France there is, at this moment, only one war-the
war of the pictorial poster.
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