ETCHINGS, DRAWINGS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS.*
MR. STRANG.S mind, like that of his master, Legros, is always bent on a bare and grand expression of essentials, and pursues its way detached from local circumstances or passing fashions. The heroic figures and theatre of Milton's poem accord well with a mind like this, for man and Nature are alike presented in terrible or august simplicity. There are superhuman figures, indeed, and unearthly scenes, which strain the very medium of words to hint at, and must be the more overwhelmingly impossible to render by graphic art. Of these a Blake may invent some wild symbol, but no less in- spired designer will touch without discomfiture such images of the text. For this reason Mr. Strang's earlier designs are less adequate than his later scenes of Paradise, but there is throughout his work a gravity that makes one sympathetic with his effort. Our choice among the etchings would be, for one, the scene where Adam and Eve entertain the archangel. The arrangement is quiet and monumental, the fruits brought by the man and woman forming, as it were, a wreath about the pedestal of the angel's seat. Another is the birth of Eve, where the vertical forms of the trees help the upward moving figure of the woman, and the light and shadow are imposingly distributed. A third is the scene where Adam refuses the condolements of Eve. Here, again, figures and landscape are heroically conceived. We like the drawing on the cover least of the designs. It is an instance of the curious way a man's virtues forsake him sometimes when he alters his technique. Bat there is no call to point out deficiencies in a work not unworthy of its ambitions scope.
We have watched with some regret the way in which Mr. Ruskin's editors and publishers have recently exploited his name by the production of early and insignificant writings. The present volume, published under the title Studies in Both Arts, we are glad to be able to praise. Mr. Ruskin, the most extraordinary of writers on art, for some qualities stands in the very front rank among draughtsmen of architecture. His name as a critic suffers eclipse just now because of certain glaring defects of appreciation in the wide field he has attempted ; but in the long-run it is by what a critic has strongly appreciated that be is remembered, and chapters like those in Modern Painters on Turner's topo- graphy and composition are not likely to be surpassed, whether for analytic power or for eloquence of expression. Nothing can be less pleasing to those who are fighting the battle of other artists than to bear the splendid advocate of Turner disparaged. With regard to his own efforts in draw-
• (1.) Paradise Lost. A Series of 12 Illustrations etched by William Strang. London: Jobu 0. Nimmo. 16.—(2.1 Studies in Both Arts. Being 10 Sub- jects drawn and described by Jobn Ruskin. London: George Allen. 1595. —(3.) Etching in England. By Frederick Wedmore. With 50 Illustrations. London: George Bell and Sone. 1895.—(4.) The Tavern el the litres Virtues. Tra',sleted from the Original of Saint Jun's. Illuhtrated with 60 Drawings by Daniel Vierge. together with a Critical Essay on the Art of Vierge by Edmund Goose. London: T. Fisher Unwin.
ing, Mr. Ruskin had the rare modesty to recognise that he had not himself the picture-making power. He therefore limited himself to those elaborate studies of actual form in nature and architecture for which his powers and his patience fitted him. His early drawings of buildings were executed in the taking clever manner he had learned from Pront and Harding. Later he became more serious, cast away clever- ness, and developed a close sympathetic handling of form as far removed as possible from the symbols of the ordinary architectural sketcher. The most beautiful example in the volume before us is the study of a doorway in St. Mark's; but the tomb of the Can Signorio at Verona is another excellent drawing. Among the topographical subjects, the drawing of Bonneville is the finest, with the huge bulk of the moun- tains towering over the town and bridge. The drawings are well reproduced by photogravure, but we are doubtful whether the chromolithographs render the delicacy of the original colouring. Extracts from the author's writings bearing on the subjects illustrated make up the letterpress. We should have been glad of a few more drawings instead of those disjointed pieces.
Mr. Wedmore has advisedly called his volume Etching in England, though even so, the title must be strained a little to include M. Helleu, however familiar he has become here through exhibitions. About half the men included are not English, but French, Scottish, American, German, Swedish. The balance tips against England still more decidedly if we weigh as well as count ; for in the front rank of living etchers Sir Seymour Haden's name is the only English name likely to be reckoned with those of Whistler, Legros, and Helleu. In the past Turner, Girtin, Crome, Cotman, Samuel Palmer, make a stronger show, as great artists who made use of etch- ing; but even so, the two Scotchmen, Wilkie and Geddes, were more distinctively etchers ; and Mr. Wedmore does well to in clude them. Among living men, besides the great names already referred to, the selection leaves out no one of impor- tance, and errs only a little on the side of laxity, Messrs. Herkomer, Alfred East, Menpes, and others, having no place in a really strict selection. It is a good deed, on the other hand, to enforce the merits of Messrs. William Strang, Frank Short, Oliver Hall, Charles Holroyd, and Colonel Goff. The volume is illustrated with process reproductions after the plates of the etchers, is published at a very low price, and well got up. Mr. Wedmore's commentary might pass as an agreeable gossip about the various artists, were it not for two rather sudden breaks in its gentle flow. In his notice of Mr. Whistler he admits that that artist is " the most skilled wielder of the etching-needle" since Rembrandt. But he has not yet learned the lesson that Mr. Whistler's feeling for his subject is no less profound than his technical mastery is complete. He speaks of " Mr. Whistler's scarcely sympathetic attitude towards his kind," and sets up Samuel Palmer as the contrasting case of an artist of reverie and human emotion. When will our critics get beyond titles in judging the content of pictures ? Has Mr. Wedmore ever seen Mr. Whistler's portrait of his mother ? If he has seen it, does he know any painting of our time that expresses so tender a humanity ? Has he ever seen the Little White Girl ? If he has seen it, does he know any picture of our time so poetic in its expression of reverie ? Other parts of the notice, written in a strain of innuendo and small flippancy, are no more commendable. It is not thus we ought to treat our greatest living men, and it is small wonder if the artist's attitude to the critic kind has been " scarcely sympathetic." Another instance where a personal feeling seems to intrude itself is the notice of Mr. Pennell. If Mr. Wedmore considered that an etching by Mr. Pennell de- served a place in his book, and took steps to obtain per- mission to include it, how does he justify the reception he gives the artist?—" Mr. Pennell is an extremely clever, energetic, dexterous American, who has found profitable employment in our English land." And why the attack that follows on Mr. Pennell as a critic ? Mr. Pennell as a critic may be good or bad (there is at least never any doubt as to what he admires), but this was not a well-chosen occasion for emitting an opinion on the point. A reviewer of Mr. Wedmore's stories would have no right to bring up his edition of Michel's Rembrandt against him ; and if some one were to include one of those pieces in a book called The Short Story in America, and disparage its author as a band at skittles, Mr. Wedmore would hardly think the act polite or the criticism to the point.
We have felt bound to signalise those blemishes in an other- wise pleasant enough volume.
The Tavern of the Three Virtues comes before us as a new example of the art of Vierge, the illustrator. Mr. Gosse, with some complaint of the intemperate praise the artist has received, defines very well the character of the drawings by which he is best known. But he would appear to have paid little attention to those under his eye in the present volume, the best of which are not conceived in line-filigree and blot, but in fuller tone rendered with the brush in gouache and translated here into wood-engravings. They are full of the spirit of picaresque romance, and it is hard to believe that they are the work of a man who had lost by paralysis the use of his right hand and has had painfully to teach the old cunning to the left.
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