Professor Henry Tonks
A correspondent writes : The death last Friday of Professor Henry Tonks followed all too soon upon the exhibition of his work at the Tate Gallery last October. His loss will be felt not only by the distinguished group of his pupils at the Slade, but by a wide public who recognised in his work a mastery of drawing and an in- dividuality of vision . which expressed themselves as happily in the pure lyricism of "The Cherry Pickers " and "The Bird Cage " as in the conversation-pieces and cari- catures, centring around Steer, Sickert and Moore, by which he is perhaps best known. In the last year he had exerted himself, as George Moore's oldest living friend, to help his biographer in every possible way ; that strange man's character he understood and relished as keenly as we should expect from the enchanting series of " Levers of Orelay " drawings and the brilliant water- colour, " The Conversation then turned on Tonics." He was pleased, simply and undemonstratively as ever, at the success of his Tate exhibition, a little puzzled and amused at the professional jargon of some of the critics who most admired him, touched most of all by the presence at the private view of a restaurant-car attendant who had recognised him a few months before on the Irish Mail as "the great Henry Tonks," and had offered him a homage enthusiastic and sincere. There will never, alas, be another " Saturday Evening at the Vale," but the Tate possesses, in the picture of that name, the charming record of a social and artistic talent delicate, witty, and in its way unique.
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