TWO BOOKS ON ILLUSTRATION.e MR. PENNELL, continuing his series of
books on the graphic arts, has produced an elaborate work on Pen Drawing.' In this finely produced volume, crowded with illustrations, the author surveys European and American pen work from the point of view of an artist and illustrator. The writer justly remarks that though books on medicine are written by doctors, too often books on art are written by those who have never held a pencil or brush. In a preface, Mr. Pennell laments the decay of the art of illustration, which has gone down before the onslaughts of the camera, and he laments that this is markedly so in America, which a few years ago by means of its magazines held such a distinguished position. This book is not an easy
• The Religion of Plato. By Paul Elmer More. Princeton University Press, N.J.. and Oxford University Press, London. (10s. 6d. net.1 t (1) Pen Drawing and Pen Draughlemen. By Joseph Pennell. London : Fisher finwin. J57 73.1—(21 The An of Illastration. By Edmund 3. Sullivan. London Chapman and Hall. [25s.j
one to review, because it consists of a mass of drawings about which the author has written notes which are of the greatest interest. It is, indeed, a book for the student rather than the general reader, though it must not be imagined from this state- ment that it is dry, rather it is full of racy and pointed criticism.
Mr. Sullivan's method is different ; his book=, though he has plenty of illustrations in it, is continuously written, and is full 9f interesting matter. Although his subject is illustration, he goes far afield into such matters as vivid vision of facts and symbolism, returning to the more technical chapters on the use of models and methods of drawing. The Victorian Age W11.3 essentially the time when book illustration flourished, and a surprising number of first-rate men appeared then, and among these few equalled Boyd Houghton, and perhaps only Sandys surpassed him, Keene being in a category by himself and unapproached. Mr. Sullivan has much that is interesting to say about this period, and also about Dore, whose power of producing the sense of enormous scale in a tiny woodcut was astonishing, as may be seen by several reproductions in this interesting book.
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