Americans. Drawn by C. D. Gibson. (J. Lane. 20s.)—Mr. Gibson's
American young ladies have lost nothing in size and hardness of outline since his last volume. When we open the book we cannot help being delighted by the vigour and beauty of these commanding young people; by the time we have got to the middle of the book we begin to wish for a little variety of face and figure ; and before we reach the end we long for some one old and ugly. With the young men it is much the same, though relief is found in the character studies of elderly husbands. Mr. Gibson's satire is good-humoured, and though humour is not so prominent in this volume as it was in that devoted to Mr. Pipp, it is none the less present. Stevenson, in describing one of the characters in his inimitable "Wrong Box," says of him that he "was usually attired in the height of fashion, with a certain mercantile brilliancy, best described perhaps as stylish ; nor could anything be said against him, as a rule, but that he looked a trifle too like a wedding guest to be quite a gentleman." This description applies admirably to the people drawn by Mr. Gibson. From the purely artistic point of view the best drawings are those which have the least attempt at completeness. The single figures without backgrounds are much pleasanter to look at than the compositions where the surrounding objects are drawn as well as the people. The reason is that the artist, although he has a very keen sense of line, has little faculty for representing the relative values of light and dark which different things have to each other. To realise this we have only to turn to a volume of Punch and look at any drawing by Charles Keene. This great artist had a never failing sense of the relation of one object to another ; hence the roundness and solidity of his scratchiest figures. It is perhaps unfair to compare these spirited American drawings with the work of .a great master, especially after having been amused by their prettiness and vitality.
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