This Week's Books
Ix a witty and .provocative introduction to a book of Cartoons (Cayme Press, 15s.) equally entitled to both adjec-
tives, Mr. Richard Sickert most improperly (and deliberately) refuses to present the reviewer with ready-made opinions of the artist's merits. He prefers, in the raciest of English, to
propound the merits of the process-block as against the copper-plate, and he succeeds in suggesting (without ever saying so) that Mr. Powys Evans is a successful pioneer of the mode of the future. He may well be right as to the decease of copper-plate, but that is a question for the etchers. The ordinary public will thank him for having so amusingly introduced to their notice eighty- eight cartoons which, like his writing, hit one nail on the head in each sentence. Mr. Evans is not a Max ; that is to say, he does not dissect and exhibit the remains with a brilliant leer. Indeed, his weakness is that he is more of a portrait painter than a satirist. lie is much more inclined, that is, to reveal his subjects' virtues and qualities than their vices and eccentricities. And sometimes he carries this so far that, with Mr. Churchill and Lord Parmoor, he has positively irradiated them with contemplative goodness. But, in general, he does succeed in preienting his personalities with witty understanding that indicates (as Mr: Sickert, to do him justice, suggests) that Mr. Evans will ultimately (and rightly) come down on the side of the portrait painter. And the sooner the better.
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