CHARING CROSS TO ST. PAUL'S.* Booirs like this are an
uncomfortable mixture of history, art, and commerce. A London street is to the competent historian an interesting study ; and for the proper understanding of its history, careful architectural elevations and ground-plans are a necessary supplement. A London street is also an inspiring subject for a literary artist; and Charles Lamb and De Quincey have shown us what may be done in that kind. A London street is, once more, an admirable subject for an artist, and for an artist of Mr. Pennell's gifts, in black-and-white. But what we get in book-making of this type is, on the literary side, letterpress of a dreary descriptive and digressive type written round the illustrations, and passing from half-hearted evocation of the past of London on insufficient data, to futile speculation about the career of the figures in the plates. Mr. Justin McCarthy is, in a way, amusing at times. His unim- peachable and unimportant relations with a barmaid, related with such particularity on p. 33, are, as twaddle, first- rate. But who are the people for whom such writing is provided, and provided in such quantities ?—for this kind of historical and descriptive gossip forms the staple of several illustrated periodicals. What is more im- portant, however, is the result on the black-and-white art, forced by this association with letterpress to compromise with history. The artist has to portray recognisable and " important " " views " within the bounds of the chosen subject. Thus, would Mr. Pennell, if left to a natural choice, have faxed on the view looking through the doors of St. Paul's,
* Charing Cross to St. Paul's. Notes by Justin McCarthy, M.P. ; and Plates and Vignettes from Diswinge by Joseph Pennell. London : Seeley and Co. 1891.
as one suitable to his art ? Or would be have troubled him- self about the uninteresting architectural detail of the Law Courts ? We prefer to think that it was rather the compul- sion of his task than his own satisfaction with the subject and effect, that led to these drawings being included. What really accounts for the conditions under which black-and-white work is published, is, we suppose, a superstition of the book trade, which objects to sending out volumes consisting purely of an artist's sketches done for his own pleasure; and it is, of course, possible that the paying public has the same super- stition; that it retains from nursery days the childish desire to hear "what it says about the picture ; " but one would think that there must be a sufficient public of amateurs who would welcome a volume of sketches with just so much or so little of legend affixed, as the artist himself thought desirable.
These drawings show some interesting advances or ex- periments beyond what was included in Mr. Pennell's earlier work. The earlier work was chiefly architecture, and that expressed in a strictly limited convention of line and tone. The larger plates here are still dependent mainly on line, and, indeed, it is one of their weaknesses that tone is employed in a curiously arbitrary way. Sometimes a foreground object is fully rendered in tone, while the architectural background is left in an abstract convention that, if read as tone, would mean a bright sunlight inconsistent with the former object : or, more arbitrary still, a figure is left as a white ghost, with others behind and in front of it realised further in tone. This is a doubtful extension of the quite allowable and laudable practice of carrying your main subject further than the rest, and leaving other parts in sketchy out- line. To interpolate the ghost is to reverse this practice, because it calls attention to him instead of drawing attention from him. In these same plates there is a much larger and freer use made of figures than in some of Mr. Pennell's previous work ; the architecture falls into the background, and the crowd of the street becomes the subject. We con- gratulate the artist on some very happy sketches of character and action ; but in one or two cases he has given an emphasis to a figure that its success as a figure-study hardly deserved. Thus, the 'bus in the foreground of the view in the Strand, and the ruffian's face in the view of Holywell Street, are not good enough to be so much forced on the attention. On the whole, the slighter woodcuts are more successful than the copper- plates, especially two in which a fine effect of wet streets and darkness lit up by the flare of theatre lights is rendered. In one or two the pen is given up for the brush, and the wash is handled with no little skill. A little heaviness of tone in these is possibly due to reproduction.
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