FOUR ART-BOOKS.* Tins portfolio of twenty-one etchings does but add
further proof of the fact that Charles Keene was among the greatest of English artists. Great natural modesty and a peculiarity of temperament made him not only shun publicity, but take great pains to prevent the world from
knowing anything of him except his almost anonymous work in Punch. The public laughed at the jokes under the drawings
signed "C. K.," and did not realise that besides the power of brilliant illustration there was also pure art of the highest order. 'The present collection of etchings results from the accidental preservation of the plates. Their history is given by Mr. Spielmann in some introductory notes. Charles Keene was loud, as he called it, of " scratching " plates for his private amusement and instruction. He remarked to a friend: "I want to compel myself to be certain in my line?' But beyond this he made one or two etchings to be included in volumes illustrating "Passages from the Modern English Poets" by various artists. These are not included in the present collection. Instead, we have the work which the artist did for his own personal delight. These plates were printed for the artist by his friend Mrs. Edwards, who was in the front rank of the few printers of etchings. Some of these prints were in the possession of friends. The first critic to recognise
their importance was M. Beraldi, who, having seen the prints in 1888, wished to include Charles Keene in his Graveurs du XIXe Siècle. This is how Keene met the request. Writing to Mrs. Edwards, he says :— " I am amused at the idea of putting me down as a Graveur in XIXe Siècle'! I have only scratched a few studies of sketches, not more than a dozen all told, I should think,—the merest ex- periments! Titles they have not. To save my life I couldn't tell the dates—and as to writing my life ! Story, God bless you, Sir, I've none to telL' A quotation to that effect. 'The most stirring incidents in my life are a visit to the dentist (date for- gotten), and certain experiments of the past few days.' Try and choke the French biographer off."
M. Beraldi did, however, include Keene in his book. No regular notice of Keene's work as an etcher appeared in this country till after the artist's death in 1891, when Mr. Layard mentioned him in this capacity in his biography. Keene left the copperplates with Mrs. Edwards after they were printed, and gave her three,—portraits of her husband and herself. The rest, he seems to have remarked, were to be destroyed.
In moving house the plates were lost. Mrs. Edwards believed that they had been destroyed. Twenty years later she came upon them, and handed them over to the artist's executors. By this piece of rare good fortune the etchings are now able to be given to the public in a limited edition of a hundred and fifty copies, beautifully printed. The actual plates have been deposited in the British Museum, "with suitable provisos as to reprinting." Thus the difficulty has been got over of destroying the handiwork of a master.
To try to describe these works is to realise the futility of the attempt to convey in words the sublimated beauties of such a delicate art as that of etching. All that it is possible to do is to put up a signpost, and point out that in the "Portrait of Mrs. Heseltine " we have a figure of sur- passing grace and charm, while in "A Lady Reading a Book" there is a grandeur and beauty almost statuesque. The old man who stands before a stove is the quintessence of
the "Old Party" whom we have all loved in Punch. Here is a grasp of character and an economy of means positively amazing. The etchings of costume-models bear on their face their origin—technical exercise—but the landscapes are of
great beauty. Especially so is the Devonshire coast scene. No other hand, we feel, could have given us such absolute curves of beauty and rightness as those with which the boats
in the foreground are drawn. What specialist in interiors, we wonder, could have surpassed the second plate of the inside of Mr. Birket Foster's house ? The make-up of the portfolio and mounting of the etchings are excellent, strong, and workmanlike, but without cumbrousness or excess of margin. Happy is the man whose friends chose this for his Christmas present !
• (1) Twenty-one Etchings By Charles Keene. Guildford: at the Astolat Press. [53110s. J—(2) Selected Drawings from Old Masters in the University Galleries, and in the Library at Christ Church, Oxford. Part I. Chosen and Described by Sidney Colvin. Oxford : at the Clarendon Press. [53 Ss. net.]—(3) The Work of John S. Sargent, B.A. London : W. Heinemann. [56 Os. net.)—(4) Sixteen lltustrations of Subjects ,from Kipling's 4. Jungle Book." By Maurice and Edward Letmold. London : Macmillan and Co. [55 Se. net.1 Nowhere do modern processes of reproduction succeed so well as in making accessible the drawings of the old masters. It is a good work that Mr. Sidney Colvin has undertaken in selecting for publication fine examples from the singularly rich collections existing at Oxford. The process of collotype in its latest developments has been used, and so near is the reproduction that there seems little or no difference between the copy and the original, except in the surface of the paper. The great value to students of works of this kind is well illus- trated here by the reproduction of a drawing by Raphael,—a study for the Cardelino Madonna. Besides the original, we are given a copy of this drawing by some unknown contem- porary student's hand. Seen apart, the copy is not at first obvious, it is so cleverly and so freely executed ; but when the two are put side by side the difference is at once apparent. The reproductions are the exact size of the originals, and to each Mr. Colvin puts a note which gives briefly the principal historical and critical facts. These notes are far more useful than a general dissertation. This portfolio is the first part, containing twenty drawings, and we are told that at least three more are to follow. All lovers of art will look forward with pleasure to the succeeding issues. The drawings selected in this first instalment cover a wide field, for not only Italian but also German masters are included, and two drawings by Claude. One of these last is a sketch from Nature of a wooded country, so simple and so natural as to make one realise with a shock that Nature even in the days of Claude was not always adorned with classical temples, ruinous or otherwise. The collection does not contain the most famous drawings which are at Oxford, but aims rather at bringing to light things hardly known. Eventually the finest and most authentic of the studies of Raphael and Michelangelo will take their place in the series. Some artists make drawings purely as studies for pictures and frescoes, some make them as inde- pendent works. Each class has its own importance. In the present collection are examples of both kinds. The Michel- angelo drawing is a study for the Sistine roof. Here we see that while studying details of figures the artist transmutes the natural form into his individual style. To mistake the hand drawn separately at the edge of the paper would be impossible. Equally impossible is it to think that when Michelangelo made this brilliant note of a pose he was consciously adapting Nature to his own manner. Rather here we see that the so-called Michelangelesque style was, in the case of the originator, natural and unpremeditated.
A large volume of photogravures of Mr. Sargent's pictures is welcome. Here we can renew acquaintance with portraits known to us already, and make acquaintance with others we have not seen, at least as far as a reduction to black and white will allow. Also we can regret the absence of favourites, such, for instance, as the boy by the side of the Norwegian river. The " Carmencita " has been chosen for a frontispiece, and doubtless it is a most brilliant piece of work. Neverthe- less, when the work was hung in the same room at the Luxembourg with Whistler's portrait of his mother, the latter picture had the impressiveness of the living and feeling human being, while the dancer seemed an amusing confection of tinsel. The extreme brilliancy which arrests a moment appears sometimes with Mr. Sargent to defeat its object, for there are many cases in which he, striving after the utmost vitality, makes us only think of his cleverness, and forget the person he wished to make alive. When Mr. Sargent is in a mood of soberness, and paints a portrait like that of Mr. Alfred Wertheimer, all criticism is at an end. The quiet painting assumes an air of grandeur as it sets forth the thoughtful face with the dreamy eyes and intellectual forehead. Splendid modelling and characterisation in this picture are united to harmonious low-toned colour. Such a work is worth a wilderness of gaily dressed Duchesses and ladies of the haute finance. It has been said of Mr. Sargent that when by his pictorial analysis he disturbs in his sitters the foundations of identity, he is only able to capture and portray "Mr. Hyde." There would seem to be some scintilla of truth in this as we turn the pages of the volume before us. But when we come upon such portraits as that of Miss Octavia Hill, we recognise that the power to draw "Dr. Jekyll" also exists ; and where could a sweeter and more tender child's portrait be found than that of the Hon. Laura Lister ? The plates are well executed, and the book has the rare merit of opening really flat. Mrs. Meynell has written a short and sympathetic introduction.
A very remarkable series of water-colour drawings have been lately exhibited in London illustrating the Jungle Book, the work of the brotters Maurice and Edward Detmold. These drawings have now been reproduced by colour litho- graphy and published in a portfolio. The work is a very interesting one, for there is much vigour and great power of observation in tha drawing of the animals. The wealth of invention lavished upon. every part of each drawing, while sometimes confusing both the artistic and illustrative issue, shows that the artiste have ideas in abundance. Association rather than collaboration seems to be the secret of the joint authorship -here, for each drawing
bears a signature with an individual, At the same time, the style is identical. It is difficult' ;to say- that there is the slightest difference in quality or manner between the two artists. We believe we are correct in saying that the authors of these works have not yet attained their twentieth year. When this is taken into account, the illustra- tions before us are extraordinary. The fact that these pictures suffer from crowding and exuberance of work is promising for the future, because it ' argues intense pre- occupation with things as they are, and a desire to seize upon and understand the form and character of objects in the most complete way. Shere Khan, Bagheera, Akela, and the rest are here, and we believe in the portraiture. Perhaps Bagheera has not had full justice done to his fasci- nating character. He is a- little too Mephistophelian, for although he could be terrible, like all -cite, Bagheera had a fantastic element in his nature, at when he danced in what Stevenson calls "the black joy of his hearts," limiting the air, and saying "I am Bagheera."- To the wolves we can give nothing but praise; indeed, the most -beautiful animal in the whole set of drawings is the wolf Watching • Mowgli carrying the tiger's skin. Bagheera instructing the boy what to do with the red flower " is a fine piece of work; the black mass is full of life, and has 'infinite capacity of movement. Again, the coiled horror of the body of Kaa is made almost beautiful by the subtlety of its drawing. The figure of Mowgli lacks the romance whiah many of the animals have. The artists seem hardly to have felt the poetry of this wonderful creation which Mr. Lockwood Kipling realised, and which makes his illustrations so beautiful and appropriate. His figure of Mowgli leaving the jungle exactly expresses the strange pathos of the situation. It is a real pleasure to see animals treated as they are treated by Mr. Maurice and Mr. Edward Detmold, for their treatment is so entirely removed from all those trivialities of sentiment -which have blasted so much animal painting, from Land seer to Briton Riviera.
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