HARDING'S Annual Drawing Bonk, for the New Year, is the
best of the series. The snatches of landscape and marine scenery are charm- ing for their simplicity and truth, and the taste and skill shown in their selection and treatment. As sketches, too, they have a degree of finish and delicacy beyond their predecessors ; the pencilling is neater and sharper, and the tints more smooth and transparent, and the drawing of the figures and cattle more masterly than in the last volume. These examples should be studied, and the general effects imitated, not servilely copied. It would be a task at once futile and injurious to aim at mimicking the free and graceful touch of the artist ; but the spirit of his style may be emulated, and a feeling for nature be caught from these elegant transcripts of some of her most delightful features.
Previous page
