Part 2

I should not be candid if I closed this paper without admitting that my fifteenth-century friends anticipated modern publishers in one of their worst faults, the dragging in illustrations where they are not wanted. In the fifteenth century the same cuts were repeated over and over again in the same book to serve for different subjects. Modern publishers are not so simple-hearted as this, but they add to the cost of their books by unpleasant half-tone reproductions of unnecessary portraits and views, and I do not think that book-buyers are in the least grateful to them. Miss Sketchley, I am glad to see, has not concerned herself with illustrators whose designs require to be produced by the half-tone process. To condemn this process unreservedly would be absurd. It gives us illustrations which are really needed for the understanding of the text when they could hardly be produced in any other way, and while it does this it must be tolerated. But by necessitating the use of heavily-loaded paper--unpleasant to the touch, heavy in the hand, doomed, unless all the chemists are wrong, speedily to rot--it is the greatest danger to the excellence of our English book-work which has at present to be faced, while by wearying readers with endless mechanically produced pictures it is injurious also to the best interests of artistic illustration.

ENGLISH BOOK-ILLUSTRATION OF TO-DAY.

I. SOME DECORATIVE ILLUSTRATORS.

OF the famous 'Poems by Alfred Tennyson,' published in 1857 by Edward Moxon, Mr. Gleeson White wrote in 1897: 'The whole modern school of decorative illustrators regard it, rightly enough, as the genesis of the modern movement.' The statement may need some modification to touch exact truth, for the 'modern movement' is no single-file, straightforward movement. 'Kelmscott,' 'Japan,' the 'Yellow Book,' black-and-white art in Germany, in France, in Spain, in America, the influence of Blake, the style of artists such as Walter Crane, have affected the present form of decorative book-illustration. Such perfect unanimity of opinion as is here ascribed to a large and rather indefinitely related body of men hardly exists among even the smallest and most derided body of artists. Still, allowing for the impossibility of telling the whole truth about any modern and eclectic form of art in one sentence, there is here a statement of fact. What Rossetti and Millais and Holman Hunt achieved in the drawings to the 'Tennyson' of 1857, was a vital change in the intention of English illustrative art, and whatever form decorative illustration may assume, their ideal is effective while a personal interpretation of the spirit of the text is the creative impulse. The influence of technical mastery is strong and enduring enough. It is constantly in sight and constantly in mind. But it is in discovering and making evident a principle in art that the influence of spirit on spirit becomes one of the illimitable powers.

To Rossetti the illustration of literature meant giving beautiful form to the expression of delight, of penetration, that had kindled his imagination as he read. He illustrated the 'Palace of Art' in the spirit that stirred him to rhythmic translation into words of the still music in Giorgione's 'Pastoral,' or of the unpassing movement of Mantegna's 'Parnassus.' Not the words of the text, nor those things precisely affirmed by the writer, but the spell of significance and of beauty that held his mind to the exclusion of other images, gave him inspiration for his drawings. As Mr. William Michael Rossetti says: 'He drew just what he chose, taking from his author's text nothing more than a hint and an opportunity.' It is said, indeed, that Tennyson could never see what the St. Cecily drawing had to do with his poem. And that is strange enough to be true.

It is clear that such an ideal of illustration is for the attainment of a few only. The ordinary illustrator, making drawings for cheap reproduction in the ordinary book, can no more work in this mood than the journalist can model his style on the prose of Milton. But journalism is not literature, and pictured matter-of-fact is not illustration, though it is convenient and customary to call it so. However, here one need not consider this, for the decorative illustrator has usually literature to illustrate, and a commission to be beautiful and imaginative in his work. He has the opportunity of Rossetti, the opportunity for significant art.

The 'Classics' and children's books give greatest opportunity to decorative illustrators. Those who have illustrated children's books chiefly, or whose best work has been for the playful classics of literature, it is convenient to consider in a separate chapter, though there are instances where the division is not maintainable: Walter Crane, for example, whose influence on a school of decorative design makes his position at the head of his following imperative.

Representing the 'architectural' sense in the decoration of books, many years before the supreme achievements of William Morris added that ideal to generally recognized motives of book-decoration, Walter Crane is the precursor of a large and prolific school of decorative illustrators. Many factors, as he himself tells, have gone to the shaping of his art. Born in 1846 at Liverpool, he came to London in 1857, and there after two years was 'apprenticed' to Mr. W. J. Linton, the well-known wood-engraver. His work began with 'the sixties,' in contact with the enthusiasm and inspiration those years brought into English art. The illustrated 'Tennyson,' and Ruskin's 'Elements of Drawing,' were in his thoughts before he entered Mr. Linton's workshop, and the 'Once a Week' school had a strong influence on his early contributions to 'Good Words,' 'Once a Week,' and other famous magazines. In 1865 Messrs. Warne published the first toy-book, and by 1869-70 the 'Walter Crane Toy-book' was a fact in art. The sight of some Japanese colour-prints during these years suggested a finer decorative quality to be obtained with tint and outline, and in the use of black, as well as in a more delicate simplicity of colour, the later toy-books show the first effect of Japanese art on the decorative art of England. Italian art in England and Italy, the prints of Dürer, the Parthenon sculptures, these were influences that affected him strongly. 'The Baby's Opera' (1877) and 'The Baby's Bouquet' (1879) are classics almost impossible to criticise, classics familiar from cover to cover before one was aware of any art but the art on their pages. So that if these delightful designs seem less expressive of the Greece, Germany, and Italy of the supreme artists than of the 'Crane' countries by whose coasts ships 'from over the sea' go sailing by with strange cargoes and strange crews, it is not in their dispraise. As a decorative draughtsman Mr. Crane is at his best when the use of colour gives clearness to the composition, but some of his most 'serious' work is in the black-and-white pages of 'The Sirens Three,' of 'The Shepheardes Calendar,' and especially of 'The Faerie Queene.' The number of books he has illustrated--upwards of seventy--makes a detailed account impossible. Nursery rhyme and fairy books, children's stories, Spenser, Shakespeare, the myths of Greece, 'pageant books' such as 'Flora's Feast' or 'Queen Summer,' or the just published 'Masque of Days,' his own writings, serious or gay, have given him subjects, as the great art of all times has touched the ideals of his art.

But whatever the subject, how strong soever his artistic admirations, he is always Walter Crane, unmistakable at a glance. Knights and ladies, fairies and fairy people, allegorical figures, nursery and school-room children, fulfil his decorative purpose without swerving, though not always without injury to their comfort and freedom and the life in their limbs. An individual apprehension that sees every situation as a conventional 'arrangement' is occasionally beside the mark in rendering real life. But when his theme touches imagination, and is not a supreme expression of it--for then, as in the illustrations to 'The Faerie Queene,' an unusual sense of subservience appears to dull his spirit--his humorous fancy knows no weariness nor sameness of device.

The work of most of Mr. Crane's followers belongs to 'the nineties,' when the 'Arts and Crafts' movement, the 'Century Guild,' the Birmingham and other schools had attracted or produced artists working according to the canons of Kelmscott. Mr. Heywood Sumner was earlier in the field. The drawings to 'Sintram' (1883) and to 'Undine' (1888) show his art as an illustrator. Undine--spirit of wind and water, flower-like in gladness--seeking to win an immortal soul by submission to the forms of life, is realized in the gracefully designed figures of frontispiece and title-page. Where Mr. Sumner illustrates incident he is 'factual' without being matter-of-fact. The small drawing reproduced is hardly representative of his art, but most of his work is adapted to a squarer page than this, and has had to be rejected on that account. Some of the most apt decorations in 'The English Illustrated' were by Mr. Sumner, and during the time when art was represented in the magazine Mr. Ryland and Mr. Louis Davis were also frequent contributors. The graceful figures of Mr. Ryland, uninterested in activity, a garden-world set with statues around them, and the carol-like grace of Mr. Davis's designs in that magazine, represent them better than the one or two books they have illustrated.

Among those associated with the 'Arts and Crafts' who have given more of their art to book-decoration, Mr. Anning Bell is first. He has gained the approval even of the most exigent of critics as an artist who understands drawing for process. Since 1895, when the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' appeared, his winning art has been praised with discrimination and without discrimination, but always praised. Trained in an architect's office, widely known as the recreator of coloured relief for architectural decoration, Mr. Anning Bell's illustrations show constructive power no less than that fairy gift of seeming to improvise without labour and without hesitancy, which is one of its especial charms. In feeling, and in many of his decorative forms, his drawings recall the art of Florentine bas-relief, when Agostino di Duccio, or Rossellino or Mino da Fiesole, created shapes of delicate sweetness, pure, graceful--so graceful that their power is hardly realized. The fairy by-play of the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' is exactly to Mr. Anning Bell's fancy. He knows better than to go about to expound this dream, and it is not likely that a more delightful edition will ever be put into the hands of children, or of anyone, than this in the white and gold cover devised by the artist.

Of his illustrations to the 'Poems by John Keats' (1897), and to the 'English Lyrics from Spenser to Milton' of the following year--as illustrations--not quite so much can be said, distinguished and felicitous as many of them are. The simple profile, the demure type of beauty that he affects, hardly suit with Isabella when she hears that Lorenzo has gone from her, with Lamia by the clear pool

"Wherein she passionëd To see herself escaped from so sore ills,"

or with Madeline, 'St. Agnes' charmëd maid.' Mr. Anning Bell's drawings to 'The Pilgrim's Progress' (1898) reveal him in a different mood, as do those in 'The Christian Year' of three years earlier. His vision is hardly energetic enough, his energy of belief sufficient, to make him a strong illustrator of Bunyan, with his many moods, his great mood. A little these designs suggest Howard Pyle, and Anning Bell is better in a way of beauty not Gothic.

So if Mr. Anning Bell represents the 'Arts and Crafts' movement in the variety of decorative arts he has practised, and in the architectural sense underlying all his art, his work does not agree with the form in which the influence of William Morris on decorative illustration has chiefly shown itself. That form, of course, is Gothic, as the ideal of Kelmscott was Gothic. The work of the 'Century Guild' artists as decorative illustrators is chiefly in the pages of 'The Hobby Horse.' Mr. Selwyn Image and Mr. Herbert Horne can hardly be included among book illustrators, so in this connection one may not stop to consider the decorative strength of their ideal in art. The Birmingham school represents Gothic ideals with determination and rigidity. Morris addressed the students of the school and prefaced the edition of 'Good King Wenceslas,' decorated and engraved and printed by Mr. A. J. Gaskin 'at the press of the Guild of Handicraft in the City of Birmingham,' with cordial words of appreciation for the pictures. These illustrations are among the best Mr. Gaskin has done. The commission for twelve full-page drawings to 'The Shepheardes Calendar' (Kelmscott Press, 1896) marks Morris's pleasure in Mr. Gaskin's work--especially in the illustrations to Andersen's 'Stories and Fairy Tales.' If not quite in tune with Spenser's Elizabethan idyllism, these drawings are distinctive of the definite convictions of the artist.

These convictions represent a splendid tradition. They are expressive, in their regard for the unity of the page, for harmony between type and decoration, of the universal truth in all fine bookmaking. Only at times, Birmingham work seems rather heavy in spirit, rather too rigid for development. Still, judging by results, a code that would appear to be against individual expression is inspiring individual artists. Some of these--as Mr. E. H. New--have turned their attention to architectural and 'open-air' illustration, in which connection their work will be considered, and many have illustrated children's books. Their quaint and naïve fancy has there, at times, produced a portentous embodiment of the 'old-fashioned' child of fiction. Mr. Gere, though he has done little book-illustration, is one of the strongest artists of the school. His original wood engravings show unmistakably his decorative power and his craftsmanship. With Mr. K. Fairfax Muckley he was responsible for 'The Quest' (1894-96). Mr. Fairfax Muckley has illustrated and decorated a three-volume edition of 'The Faerie Queene' (1897), wherein the forest branches and winding ways of woodland and of plain are more happily conventionalized than are Spenser's figures. Some of the headpieces are especially successful. The artist uses the 'mixed convention' of solid black and line with less confusion than many modern draughtsmen. Once its dangers must have been evident, but now the puzzle pattern, with solid blacks in the foreground, background, and mid-distance--only there is no distance in these drawings--is a common form of black and white.

Miss Celia Levetus, Mr. Henry Payne, Mr. F. Mason, and Mr. Bernard Sleigh, are also to the credit of the school. Miss Levetus, in her later work, shows that an inclination towards a more flexible style is not incompatible with the training in Gothic convention. Mr. Mason's illustrations to ancient romances of chivalry give evidence of conscientious craftsmanship, and of a spirit sympathetic to themes such as 'Renaud of Montauban.' Mr. Bernard Sleigh's original wood-engravings are well known and justly appreciated. Strong in tradition and logic as is the work of these designers, it is, for many, too consistent with convention to be delightful. Perhaps the best result of the Birmingham school will hardly be achieved until the formal effect of its training is less patent.

The 'sixties' might have been void of art, so far as these designers are concerned, save that in those days Morris and Burne-Jones and Walter Crane, as well as Millais and Houghton and Sandys, were about their work. Far other is the case with artists such as Mr. Byam Shaw, or with the many draughtsmen, including Messrs. P. V. Woodroffe, Henry Ospovat, Philip Connard, and Herbert Cole, whose art derives its form and intention from the sixties. Differing in technical power and fineness of invention, in all that distinguishes good from less good, they have this in common--that the form of their art would have been quite other if the illustrated books of that period were among things unseen. Mr. Byam Shaw began his work as an illustrator in 1897 with a volume of 'Browning's Poems,' edited by Dr. Garnett. He proved himself in these drawings, as in his pictures and later illustrations, an artist with a definite memory for the forms, and a genuine sympathy with the aims of pre-Raphaelite art. Evidently, too, he admires the black-and-white of Mr. Abbey. He has the gift of dramatic conception, sees a situation at high pitch, and has a pleasant way of giving side-lights, pictorial asides, by means of decorative head and tailpieces. His illustrations to the little green and gold volumes of the 'Chiswick Shakespeare' are more emphatic than his earlier work, and in the decorations his power of summarizing the chief motive is put to good use. There is no need of his signature to distinguish the work of Byam Shaw, though he shows himself under the influence of various masters. Probably he is only an illustrator of books by the way, but in the meantime, as the 'Boccaccio,' 'Browning,' and 'Shakespeare' drawings show, he works in black and white with vigorous intention.

Mr. Ospovat's illustrations to 'Shakespeare's Sonnets' and to 'Matthew Arnold's Poems' are interesting, if not very markedly his own. He illustrates the Sonnets as a celebration of a poet's passion for his mistress. As in these, so in the Matthew Arnold drawings, he shows some genuine creative power and an aptitude for illustrative decoration. Mr. Philip Connard has made spirited and well-realized illustrations in somewhat the same kind; Miss Amelia Bauerle, and Mr. Bulcock, who began by illustrating 'The Blessed Damozel' in memory of Rossetti, have made appearance in the 'Flowers of Parnassus' series, and Mr. Herbert Cole, with three of these little green volumes, prepared one for more important work in 'Gulliver's Travels' (1900).

The work of Mr. Woodroffe was, I think, first seen in the 'Quarto'--the organ of the Slade School--where also Mr. A. Garth Jones, Mr. Cyril Goldie, and Mr. Robert Spence, gave unmistakable evidence of individuality. Mr. Woodroffe's wood-engravings in the 'Quarto' showed strength, which is apparent, too, in the delicately characterized figures to 'Songs from Shakespeare's Plays' (1898), with their borders of lightly-strung field flowers. His drawings to 'The Confessions of S. Augustine,' engraved by Miss Clemence Housman, are in keeping with the text, not impertinent. Mr. A. Garth Jones in the 'Quarto' seemed much influenced by Japanese grotesques; but in illustrations to Milton's 'Minor Poems' (1898) he has shown development towards the expression of beauty more austere, classical, controlled to the presentment of Milton's high thought. His recent 'Essays of Elia' remind one of the forcible work of Mr. E. J. Sullivan in 'Sartor Resartus.' Mr. Sullivan's 'Sartor' and 'Dream of Fair Women' must be mentioned. His mastery over an assertive use of line and solid black, the unity of his effects, the humour and imagination of his decorative designs, are not likely to be forgotten, though the balance of his work in illustrations to Sheridan, Marryat, Sir Walter Scott, obliges one to class him with "character" illustrators, and so to leave a blank in this article.

Mr. Laurence Housman stands alone among modern illustrators, though one may, if one will, speak of him as representing the succession of the sixties, or as connected with the group of artists whose noteworthy development dates from the publication of 'The Dial' by Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon in 1889. To look at Mr. Housman's art in either connection, or to record the effect of Dürer, of Blake, of Edward Calvert, on his technique, is only to come back to appreciation of all that is his own. As an illustrator he has hardly surpassed the spirit of the 'forty-four designs, drawn and written by Laurence Housman,' that express his idea of George Meredith's 'Jump to Glory Jane' (1890). These designs were the result of the appreciation which the editor, Mr. Harry Quilter, felt for Mr. Housman's drawings to 'The Green Gaffer' in 'The Universal Review.' Jane--the village woman with 'wistful eyes in a touching but bony face,' leaping with countenance composed, arms and feet 'like those who hang,' leaping in crude expression of the unity of soul and body, making her converts, failing to move the bishop, dying at last, though not ingloriously, by the wayside--this most difficult conception has no 'burlesque outline' in Mr. Housman's work, inexperienced and unacademic as is the drawing.

'Weird Tales from Northern Seas,' by Jonas Lie, was the next book illustrated by Mr. Housman. Christina Rossetti's 'Goblin Market' (1893), offered greater scope for freakish imagination than did 'Jane.' The goblins, pale-eyed, mole and rat and weasel-faced; the sisters, whose simple life they surround with hideous fantasy, are realized in harmony with the unique effect of the poem--an effect of simplicity, of naïve imagination, of power, of things stranger than are told in the cry of the goblin merchants, as at evening time they invade quiet places to traffic with their evil fruits for the souls of maidens. The frail-bodied elves of 'The End of Elfin Town,' moving and sleeping among the white mushrooms and slender stalks of field flowers, are of another land than that of the goblin merchant-folk. Illustrations to 'The Imitation of Christ,' to 'The Sensitive Plant,' and drawings to 'The Were-Wolf,' by Miss Clemence Housman, complete the list of Mr. Housman's illustrations to writings not his own, with the exception of frontispiece drawings to several books.

To explain Mr. Housman's vision of 'The Sensitive Plant' would be as superfluous as it would be ineffectual. In a note on the illustrations he has told how the formal beauty, the exquisite ministrations, the sounds and fragrance and sweet winds of the garden enclosed, seem to him as 'a form of beauty that springs out of modes and fashions,' too graceful to endure. In his pictures he has realized the perfect ensemble of the garden, its sunny lawns and rose-trellises, its fountains, statues, and flower-sweet ways; realized, too, the spirit of the Sensitive Plant, the lady of the garden, and Pan, the great god who never dies, who waits only without the garden, till in a little while he enters, 'effacing and replacing with his own image and superscription, the parenthetic grace ... of the garden deity.'

Of a talent that treats always of enchanted places, where 'reality' is a long day's journey down a dusty road, it is difficult to speak without suggesting that it is all just a charming dalliance with pretty fancies, lacking strength. Of the strength of Mr. Housman's imagination, however, his work speaks. His illustrations to his own writings, fairy tales, and poems, cannot with any force be discussed by themselves. The words belong to the pictures, the pictures to the words. The drawings to 'The Field of Clover' are seen to full advantage in the wood-engravings of Miss Housman. Only so, or in reproduction by photogravure, is the full intention of Mr. Housman's pen-drawings apparent.