ART.
ENGLISH HUMORISTS IN ART: THE YOUNGER HUMORISTS.
THE original drawings by Thackeray, chiefly illustrations for his own books, are fortunately comic, in which line he was far more successful than when he attempted the serious or sentimental. The three subjects in one frame, exhibited by Mr. Wright, are a most enviable possession. The immortal Mulligan and Miss Little, "The Pa's-id Kid in the Grasp of the Milesian Eagle," engaged in the grand polka, is treated. with a spirit no one but the originator could have conceived,. much less expressed ; the drawing shows great variations from the one eventually published in "Mrs. Perkins's Ball." Some illustrations by Richard Doyle for that delightful book, "Brown, Jones, and Robinson's Tour in Foreign Parts,' should not be overlooked. The book has, we believe, long been out of print, and hosts of similar works have since been published, but none approaching this. Both in the letterpress and illustrations, we find the happy combination of humour, and comedy without exaggeration or vulgarity. "H. B." (John Doyle), father of Richard Doyle, whose delicate pencil-drawings are a complete record of the personages, both political and. social, of the first Reform Bill period, is poorly represented, which is to be regretted when we consider the large amount of wall-space occupied by " Phiz," whose work, though full of cleverness, is so painfully mannered and tricky. John Leech,, who is largely represented by the enlarged oils we have before alluded to, has only a few of those sparkling sketches which are signed so indelibly as the work of a master-hand with. every stroke of the pencil. The slight water-colour (606) of the pallid gent "sea-fishing," with the unfeeling boatman, "Do you feel anything yet, Sir p'raps you'd better try another worm," must appeal to every one who has tried riding at anchor whiting-fishing, with a little ground-swell. Amongst the oils (587), "The Little Gent on the Screw," who expatiates to the very noble Lord on the beauties of fox-hunting, as " bring- ing people together as wouldn't otherwise meet," is delightful ; we fancy the noble Lord, who is equally characteristic, was. intended for the late Lord Cardigan, the haughtiest of aristocrats. To compare Leech, with his boundless range of fun and unobtrusive satire, to his modern successors, is as -unfair as to compare sunlight to gaslight. He is overpowering in the wide range of his always honest fun, which embraced all society as then constituted, and consequently was acceptable to all. It would be equally unfair to contend that his know- ledge of what could be done with black and white was as wide as theirs ; in technique, he left off where they begin,—in fact, he was an artist,—they are clever painters.
From this highly individual artist it is rather a sudden transition to Caldecott. On coming to his work, after what we have seen, it strikes one as rather tame,—graceful, but lacking sinews and fibre. The fact may in some measure be accounted for by the presence of such a representative collection of Rowlandson. The sincerest admirers of Randolph Caldecott's work would, we imagine, admit that he owes a good deal to the former artist; they have only (to take an example) to look at the frontispiece of. the "Tour in the Post-Chaise" to see this. What we like best here, is the humour shown in the sketches of animals, which is perfectly natural and legitimate, not human humour grafted on to animals, which so often dis- figures Landseer's best work, but a play of fun on the animals' own character and expression, as in the delightful "Rat Sitting on a Saucepan ;" this is the artist's own individual gift, for which he owes no one thanks.
Coming now to the living, we see every reason to con- gratulate ourselves on the work of Messrs. Fred Barnard and Green, who are strongly to the fore here, both on canvas and paper. The former's broad, rollicking humour, and rather stagey sense of melodrama and popular tragedy, 'point him out as a very fitting illustrator of Dickens ; his 'original work, which shows his complete sympathy with that novelist's types, is highly interesting ; and he is far more successful with Bill Sikes and Jingle, than with Thackeray's Majors Pendennis and Dobbin. Mr. Green, whose delicately -stippled water-colour drawings are always such a feature of the Institute exhibitions, is exceedingly well represented. He also comes out strongly here with illustrations to Dickens. His work, though much of it hardly comes under the head of 'humorous, is, as usual, rich in delicate, tender qualities of colour, combined with considerable appreciation of simple prettiness in women. "Mr. Turveydrop's Dancing Academy" (750) is excellent, the pompous deportment and style of the bewigged dancing-master making an excellent foil to the pretty pupils, whose heel-less satin slippers and Miss Jane Austen style of dress this artist understands and paints to perfection. Very good, too, and of an earlier period of costume, is Gabriel Vardon being equipped by dainty female fingers for the parade-ground, though the worthy Trainband Captain's figure is of a style which recalls the old joke,—" Father's new uniform has come home ; and we've tried it on the water-butt, and it looks lovely."
The artists regularly working on the comic papers fill a room entirely to themselves. Most of their work, full as it is of accuracy of drawing and knowledge of the utmost that can be got out of pen and pencil, does not really lose much in the reproduction in wood-engraving ; the manner of printing has more to answer for with respect to any imperfections than the process itself. Mr. Tenniel's eartoons, full of dignity of design as most of them are, beyond the fact of the great delicacy and neatness of the pencil-work, are no new thing to any one ; and the same may be said of Mr. Linley Sambourne, the apostle of precision and ingenuity, who has been the first to draw boots, champagne-bottles, knives and forks, ac., abso- lutely as they are. No one handles pen and ink with greater skill than Mr. Sambourne, except, in a different style, Mr. Du Meunier, whose laborious work, though full of distinction and grace, and interesting as it is, and no doubt will continue to be, as a record of how the society of the time walked and -dressed, never can embrace the large field of character John Leech took in ; when he attempts the low, he is exaggerated. A man more individual in his work, and whose sketches here are highly interesting, is Charles Keene, whose extraordinary mastery of expression and perception of middle-class every- day life going on around us, render him, in our opinion, by far the truest humorist now working for Punch. His original work here, with all its slightness, has just those qualities of sudden, nnlaboured production which must to a great extent dis- appear in reproduction. A quality all his own is that of giving the relative values of foreground and distance in line-work ; no one can represent a farzy common, or a shingly beach with tossing surf, as he can, given merely pen and ink. Mr. Furniss shows all his exuberant fancy, broad comedy, and dainty drawing ; he is well represented, not only by his Parliamentary drawings, but also by his "Academy Jokes," though the effect of the massive gold in which he has, no doubt according to the Burlington House regulation, enclosed them, is rather over. powering.
Besides all these, the other comic papers furnish a numerous contingent. Amongst them, the late W. C. Baxter, of "Ally Sloper " fame, seems most worthy of notice ; in spite of great vulgarity and exaggeration, there is something rather fas- cinating in the broad humour so lavishly displayed, and un- doubtedly a great deal of talent in the draughtsmanship. Mr. J. V. Sullivan, whose specialty is a comic treatment of the British workman and the unemployed, proves himself un- doubtedly a humorist, if not of the first rank. It is not often Mr. Watts will be found in such company, but his amusing first sketch of our remote ancestors venturing on the first oyster (1,283) should not be overlooked. Neither should we omit the clever slight pen-and-ink scribble by the late Bastien Lepage of the celebrated " Ape " (1,367). Also note Mr. Leslie Ward's capital caricature of Messrs. Corney Grain and Grossmith, which might be entitled "The Elephant and the Monkey" (1,377), and early sketches by the same hand of the late Lord Lytton and Charles Dickens.
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