ART.
RICHARD DOYLE'S WORK.* Is the many changes which have taken place of late years in our lighter forms of literature and the illustrations thereto, no peculiarity is more marked than the change in the quality of the humour which finds acceptance with the public. To turn over a volume of Gilray's or. Rowlandson's caricatures nowa- days, seems to take us back to the medimval times ; we can hardly bring ourselves to believe that in our grandfathers' days this humour, at once infantine, boisterous, and somewhat brutal, was the equivalent for Du Manrier's sarcasms, and Sambourne's subtleties. Was it in the early part of this century that our fathers delighted in those monstrous misrepresentations of " Boney," in which the hero of Austerlitz was conceived as an ogre or a demon P Is it possible that we were then so frank in our dislikes, no elementary in our fancies, so blatant in our patriotism, and took our pictorial pleasure so primitively P
Even in the last twenty-five years, the change in this matter of humorous illustration has been immense, and betokens an almost total alteration in the tastes of educated people. Where are now the comic sportsmen of Seymour's drawings, who formed the raison d'i;tre of Pickwick ? Where are the semi-political, semi- moral gibes of the elder Oraikshank ? What chance of success would a draughtsman have now-a-days with caricatures of a Cockney shooting ducks in a pond, and being subsequently con- fronted by a gamekeeper ; or with temperance tracts such as" The Bottle," which depicted every kind of crime, misery, and ruin as inevitably ensuing upon the indulgence in a glass of toddy. Even the delightful drawings of Hablot K. Browne (better known as " Phiz ") to Nicholas Nickleby and Bleak House have passed beyond us into the valley of bygone things ; we can hardly laugh at Mr. Kenwigs weeping over Morleena when he is told of Mr. Lillyvick's marriage, or Mr. Cbadband pouring forth his soul in pions rapture over Mrs. Snagsby's tea and toast. We have become a little ashamed of these simple, straightforward renderings of an uncultured, unaffected society; they jar on our finer sensibilities, on the fin sourire with which we have taught ourselves to think of life and its incidents,— we feel them to be a little strong for politeness, a little too simple for cultivation ; a little too English for our present cosmopolitan- ism. These considerations may perhaps account for the factlhat Richard Doyle's work, though it is almost contemporary in point of time, already seems to us old-fashioned and out of date ; for this man essentially belonged to the old days, and imbued his conceptions with the old spirit. With a fancy as varied, inexhaustible, and original as Sambourne's, he differed from him in a far richer, simpler vein of humour,—in, to tell the truth, a far broader, more genial humanity. Perhaps some limit of the difference between these men may be given by saying that while Doyle's work is out of date at present, there is no previous age of the world wherein his imps and fairies would not have found ready comprehension, and afforded keen pleasure; while to under- stand and care for Sambourne's designs, it is not only necessary that one should be living in the present day, but even that one should be living in London itself, and, moreover, well "up" in the incidents of the hour. Fun has been said frequently to be a peculiarly English quality, and it is fun on which Doyle founds his art. At the root of Sambourne's designs, speaking generally, we find not fun, but sneering ; and this is true of Du Manlier also, and true of the younger and (as far as drawing goes) better artist, Harry Furniss. Da Manrier seeks to make his point by emphasising the essential shallowness and snobbishness of English society, and when he fails, fails because he cannot persuade us that he is himself above the affectations he con- demns; and Furniss makes his point by seizing on the pecu- liarities of dress and manner of well-known men, and in- sisting on regarding such, from the " valet " point of view. But Doyle has no regard for either social shortcomings or the belittlement of heroes, but takes his fan easily in the domain of the grotesque, in which laughter has no after-taste. One • Comic English Mistot i.s. By Dick Doyle. Published at the Pall Hall Gazette Office.
might as well be offended with the frankness of a child as with this artist's drollery ; it is simply a coloured glass put over the phantasmagoria of the world, changing in a moment all its colours from grave to gay, but involving no deception, hinting at no unpleasantness. And if this be true of Doyle's later designs, of the celebrated title-page to Punch, with its climbing imps and mock-classic processions, its prophetically humorous Punch and staid Dog Toby ; true of BroWn, Jones, and Robinson, with its vivid record of a trip which now-a-days a schoolboy would regard as too trivial to chronicle,—it is also true of the earlier designs, which have now been published for the first time, entitled " Comic English Histories,"—Henry VIII. embracing Francis on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, with some typical French and English courtiers looking on admiringly ; Serle, Bishop of Ely, cutting Henry I.'s hair; Edward I. holding up his firstborn to the Welsh people ; and so on throughout the list. All of these are distinguished by the same characteristics,—broad fun, simplicity, and vivid imagina- tion. But most of all, we think, if we had to find a single word to describe these illustrations, we should call them " English," for there is no sign of foreign ancestry, no effort at subtlety or after-thought, no intention save to excite a broad grin. They are essentially the work of a boy (Doyle was only sixteen when he executed them), and were done in the home circle, and pro- bably with little, if any, view to publication. It would, therefore, be absurd to examine them in detail critically ; but it is interest- ing to note that they contain no hint at what afterwards grew to be the most prevailing element in Doyle's work,—namely, the supernatural. They are simply boyish burlesques of history, most vilely coloured (here we suspect the reproductions are much in fault), and drawn with equal incisiveness and exaggeration. The range of facial expression in them is very great, and, for a boy, quite extraordinary in its variety ; and it is curious to note that even at this early period Doyle's drawings are, in all im- portant respects, most admirable. Note especially in this con- nection how expressive are the hands throughout all the designs. On the whole, to sum up a somewhat desultory notice, we may say that the present publication will be interesting to those who know and care for Doyle's work, but that it will in no way add to his reputation. This raking-up of an artist's immature designs has of late grown too common, and is, in our opinion, much to be deprecated ; it can only be desirable in the case of very great men, the steps of whose progress are of vital consequence.
Previous page
