CHARLES KEENE'S DRAWINGS.
THE exhibition of Charles Keene's drawings and sketches which is being held at the Fine Art Society's galleries in New Bond Street, entirely justifies the opinion of those who declare him to have been one of the greatest of English artists. His work, when seen in its original form, proves him, too, more than the masterly designer of the Punch illustrations. His drawings are perfect and complete in themselves, and not merely
figurative directions to the wood-engraver. They are pictures, using the word in the sense of a work in which the artist has endeavoured to express himself to the fullest extent allowed by the particular form he is using. Each is sufficient in itself. The circumstance that they were afterwards to be mechanically reproduced has evidently not affected the artist. He made his drawings as if his achievement was to be judged solely on the individual production. For this characteristic many visitors to the exhibition at the Fine Art Society were evidently unprepared. They expected to find suggestion. Instead, they were brought face to face with full accomplishment,—with productions which, though confined to black-and-white, are as essentially pictures as the Ansidei Raphael. Take as an example the marvellous pen-and-ink drawing called "A Waverer,"—as perfect a work of art as can well be imagined, and thoroughly characteristic of Charles Keene's manner. The scene represented is a country road in winter. In the carriage-way and coming at you out of the picture is the village doctor's trap and horse,— a horse exactly appropriate to the owner's requirements, sound, strong, but not showy. In the footpath at the side is a smock- frocked rustic, and behind and beyond the figures stretches a snowy rural highway, delineated to the point of inspiration. The grace and poetry of the landscape, and the naturalness of the figures—a naturalness so great that they too have become instinct with grace—gives the whole piece a wonderful charm. Yet, at the same time, no single line in the earth or sky, in the villager's smock-frock or in the doctor's greatcoat, is un- conscious of the comic situation which the drawing represents. The doctor has just asked the countryman how he voted "after all," and the countryman is replying : "Well, Sir, I promised the blews, but the yallers got over my missus, and I says 'Yes.' So when I went to the Bewth, and they gives me my ballot-paper, Conscience for ever I' says I to myself, goes into the box, shuts my eyes, an' makes a big cross promiscous —and Lord knows how I voted !!" The whole drawing is suffused with the perplexity of this independent voter. It is apparent in every curve of his clothes, in the tilt of his hat, and is even to be caught reflected in the faces of the doctor and his horse.
This power of putting something of his central idea into every part or fragment of the parts which compose the picture, is again and again to be noted in Mr. Keene's work. He seems to have been governed by the principle which Mr. Stevenson, in treating of a sister-art, has declared to be obligatory on the novelist. The author of "The Master of Ballantrae" lays it down that there should be nothing in a work of narrative fiction which does not in some way or other contribute to the story as a whole,—which is not, that is, inextricably inter woven with it and vitally dependent thereon. However this may be in the case of the novel, Mr. Keene certainly observed the principle in his work. The central idea dominates and, as it were, sets the time to every- thing in the picture. If he has to draw an insolent cabdriver, the man's very boots are an impertinence. If the joke depends upon intoxication, intoxication seems to have become as much one of the essential elements of the scene portrayed as the sun- light or the air. Again, if the hero or heroine of the piece is embarrassed, the very chairs and carpets are shy and retiring. Take, for example, the exquisite drawing catalogued as "Undaunted." A bride and bridegroom are walking up the aisle, the latter in an agony of nervousness. "You're not nervous, darling ?" he inquires tremulously, only to
be answered by the bride (" Widow—firmly"), "Never was yet 1" In this picture, the wretched man's coat and trousers, and even the hat he holds in his hand, are evidently sharing the feelings of their wearer. The look they bear in their curves and wrinkles says quite as plainly as the bridegroom's face, that they are ready to sink into the ground to hide their embarrassment. Yet another example of this marvellous power is to be found in the drawing of the old lady frightened by the vendor of penny toys :—" Street Vendor (to nervous old gentlewOman who has a horror of reptiles) : 'They all on 'em jumps, Mum I Only —' So did the old lady." Here, again, the old lady's jump—a piece of drawing mar- vellous for its lack of all exaggeration—has got into the whole picture, and dominates it throughout. Charles Keene, in fact, drew as a good musician plays. He put expression into the whole of his piece. Allied to this characteristic was the dramatic faculty displayed by Mr. Keene. It is to be seen in all his work. While other illustrators are constantly falling into the stiff or the conventional, Charles Keene's men and women always "act up." In nothing is this dramatic faculty better illustrated than in the grouping of Keene's pictures. Mr. Du Maurier, though so clever and grace- ful an artist, often fails to give life to a group, and we notice a sort of artificial and academic arrangement of the dramatic personw and of the scene. In Charles Keene's pictures, the action is beyond criticism. Take a simple example, that of the Shake- spearian commentators :—" First Quidnunc (in an ecstasy): I've just been writing to the New Shakespeare Society. Believe I've made a discovery—that Horatio was Hamlet's father.' Second Quidnunc (enchanted) : You don't say so I' First Quidnunc : My dear Sir, doesn't Hamlet, when he handles Yorick's skull, address Horatio, "and smelt so pa "?
I think that's conclusive.'" The delicious eagerness of the two old gentlemen—wisps of hair flying off their bald heads, and collars almost bursting with excitement—is intensely dramatic, and recalls the impersonations of some great character-actor, like the late Mr. Hill.
It is a curious reflection that Charles Keene was often blamed for the lack of a quality which he possessed in a very high degree. The world in general has often accused him of having no imagination, and only a day or two ago a writer, who seems otherwise to have appreciated the artist, repeated the blundering accusation. If by imagina- tion is merely meant the invention and portrayal of things that never have existed and never could exist, the sort of things Mr. Doyle used to draw—fairies with iridescent wings, imps, goblins, water-witches, and impossible sunsets behind the mountains of the moon—then, of course, Charles Keene was devoid of imagination. If, however, we mean by imagina- tion the creative faculty by means of which the common clay of human thought is made living, and takes form and force, then most assuredly Charles Keene had imagina- tion. It is the function of the imagination to conceive and understand the essential and archetypal element which belongs to each class or group represented by the artist, and to give us something of that along with his re- presentation of a particular object. The artist must be realist and idealist at the same time, He must be true to the earth of his actual model, but yet breathe into it some- thing of the essentials of the class sought to be depicted. This Charles Keene did, and did it by the imaginative force which he possessed. He drew, for example, an omnibus- driver. The man was true to life, but he was not merely the driver of the 10.30 'bus from Hammersmith to Liver- pool Street. He was that and something more. He was the characterisation of the whole race of 'bus-drivers, not only John Smith, though John Smith may have partly served for a model. It was the same with Charles Keene' a game- keepers, street-arabs, and small country boys. His imagina- tive faculty enabled him to make them at once perfect types and yet perfect individual examples. Take, for instance, the Irish boy who tells the Saxon tourist, "There's Loire of us, yer honour, an' the baby," and adds that he is the eldest— "at prisent, yer honour," The boy has all the essentials of all the country boys one has ever met, Keene was, indeed, specially strong in children and young people. There is, for example, a boy drawn on blue paper out of one of his sketch-books, which, as a piece of graceful realism, can compare with the exquisite sketches in the girdle-books of Leonardo da, Vinci.
We must not leave our notice of Charles Keene's work with- out one more comment. No one can turn over his drawings without being struck by the extraordinary absence of repeti- tion. 1■To doubt there was an apparent sameness, due to the' artist's strong individuality, and to the similarity of the themes he handled. Looked at closer, however, it will be seen that he very seldom repeated himself. His mind was as fertile as it was original, and he seemed to lack invention as little as he lacked the power to give each line or shadow of his work its. exact appropriateness.
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