THE THIRD SERIES OF "VANITY FAIR ALBUM." Tars third series
of the Vanity Fair Picture Gallery contains a great number of pictures or caricatures,—(the artist sometimes contents himself with simple portraiture),—of power and humour quite equal to the best of its former specimens, but we cannot think that since the wonderfully clever artist who signed himself 'Ape' has ceased to draw, his place has been adequately sup- plied. During the last four or five months of last year (that is, The Varsity Fair Album. A Mow of Sovereigns, Statesmen, Judges, and Men of the Bay, with Biographical and Critical Notices, by Jehu, Junior. London: Vanity Fair Office, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden.
in about two-fifths of the pictures of this Album) ' Ape ' has dis- appeared from the scene, and his place been supplied by an artist, or by artists, no doubt of ability, and evidently capable of refinement of touch, but with a preference for a style of carica- ture far less intellectual than Ape's,' and with a tendency towards positive vulgarity. Hence we cannot doubt that the
pictures of Vanity Fair down to the end of July attained a far higher level of ability than those of the latter part of the year; not that these have been wanting in ability, but that they have contented themselves too often with aiming at lower elements of expression than were rendered by the great caricaturist who made the fame of this portrait gallery. Com- pare, for instance, the last of those by Ape,'—the exceedingly clever, but by no means extravagant, portrait of Mr. Miall, the- great 'Nonconformist,' in which 'Ape' has laid aside his sharp- ness of drawing, and contented himself with hinting the element of fantastic provincialism which Mr. Mall throws into his oratorical manner in the House of Commons,—and the first of than by his successor, the picture of "Big Ben," Mr. G. W. P. Bentiuck, with his mighty hippopotamian visage. Both are clever in their way, but the picture of Mr. Miall,—by no means the most humorous of " Ape's " achievements,—is a picture which produces its effect by very subtle touches, by the somewhat strained attitude, the hands clasped behind, the head turned round so completely to the left side as to carry effort in its mere posture, and the lips parted just enough to express a certain painful earnestness of distinction in what the speaker is saying. The picture of 'Big Ben,' on the contrary, is much coarser in its humour, and there is a tendency in it, much exaggerated in subsequent pictures, to play tricks with the complexion,—never an intellectual contrivance for the production of grotesque effects, because complexion is hardly ever an index of anything but the physical constitution and habits of the man. Big Ben's resemblance to the hippopota- mus has evidently struck the artist, and he has made the most of it, putting in an anxious and sorrowful expression which combines very grotesquely with the big creatureliness of the whole face. But the whole impression produced by the picture is one of much less subtlety than that of Mr. Mall's, though the artistic opportunity was at least as good. The fancy for exciting laughter by audacious experiments on the complexion,—a remini- scence of the old days of caricature which we exceedingly dislike,. —is still more marked in the nevertheless clever caricature of the Rev. Charles Voysey, where the blotchy effect is thoroughly vul- gar and disagreeable, and quite unnecessary to enhance the air- of eccentricity, of sanguine and almost hectic enthusiasm of heresy, which the whole attitude and character of the face and figure,— otherwise extremely well conceived,—convey. Blotchiness reaches, however, its climax of disagreeable and sinister effect in the cari- cature of Mr. W. H. Gregory. Again we are quite sure that ' Ape would have made a very far more refined and successful caricature- of Mr. Matthew Arnold than has been achieved by his successor. Here, too, without any cause, there is an attempt to use blotchiness as a mode of exciting amusement ; and while the lofty vanity, the self-satisfaction, and good-humoured condescension of the face are not at all badly imagined, there is a touch of pertness which is quite- false to the expression of the original, and a mistake in the very line of direction of the caricature. The caricaturist should have- tried to mingle "that severe, that earnest air" which distinguishes- the teacher who has a profound belief in his teachings, with the- playful smile of the lofty Olympian intelligence. He has missed: the former element of expression altogether. So too, in the picture. of Mr. Darwin the artist misses altogether the massive brow,—the weight of keen close observation,—which is of its very essence while he gives in an exaggerated degree the towering cone of the- head. Of all the later artist's work, the picture of Mr. G. J._ Whyte-Melville is the most refined, and that of 'King Cole" perhaps on the whole the cleverest.
'Ape' himself has failed, as far as we have the means of testing: his work, only once. The caricature of Archbishop Manning, which. is his work, is very bad,—as bad as that of Professor Huxley is good. The effect of thin precisian peakiness which the cari- caturist has imported into the face is an altogether false inter- pretation of the ascetic nervousness and restlessness which really- distinguishes it ; and the dead fixity of the eye, again, is a blank. blunder, for no eye was ever swifter or more inquisitive in its glances- The artist would not have lost, but would have exaggerated, it
had not for once missed his way in caricature, the great flexi- bility of nervous expression, the strategic playfulness and readiness. of adaptation, about the most remarkable ecclesiastical face which. London can produce. On the other hand, 'Ape' is at his best in, Professor Huxley. The expression of complacent, good-humourect positive mastery of fact, and of solid satisfaction with himself and his intellectual position ; could not possibly be given with subtler humour and more perfect refinement of exaggeration. You can hardly realize that Professor Huxley is standing on the common earth, and not on some invisible intellectual position which he has taken up.
The short prose sketches appended to each picture or caricature, and signed " Jehn, Junior," are usually very clever,—though of aourse they are better aimed when the critic happens to be familiar with his subject than when he has to pick up his information from common report ; moreover, they are better aimed when the subject is social than when it is theological or in the region of pure politics. You can see at once that he knows little or nothing about Mr. Miall ; but that he knows all about Mr. Algernon Borthwick (the "Morning Post") ; that he is doing up-hill work in writing labori- ous satire of Professor Huxley on Protoplasm ; and that he is en- gaged in a manner quite to his mind in criticizing Mr. Tennyson and in eulogizing Mr. Dawson-Damer.
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