BOOK PICTURES AND DESIGNERS.
IN nothing is the paucity of genius, the poverty of resources, and the imperfect education of our modern artists shown so strongly as in the embellishments designed to illustrate books. We do not here allude to the landscapes, which are as attractive and beauti- ful as the .others are unsatisfactory. The talent of our designers does not bear any thing like a fair proportion to the increased number of artists; and the Illustrations of the Waverley Novels, of the Standard Novels, and of BYRON and other poets, are no better than those of Comm's Novels and BELT s Poets of the last century, and are not so good as those of SHARPE'S British Poets and Essayists, published at the beginning of the present. The plates to SuARPE's pocket edition of the Poets were—nay they are—the most beautiful set of illustrations of this class ever put forth. They contain some of the best and earliest designs of
COOK, SMIRKE, STOTHARD, HOWARD,WESTALL, and one or tiro
by FUSELI, WEST, HAMILTON, TRESHAM, &C.; and were got up by that ablest of pictorial caterers JOHN SHARPE, whose taste
and judgment were equal to his liberality and indefatigable M. dustry. We speak of him in the past tense,—though he yet lives, and now and then his name greets us in the titlepage of some
little volume, always one of the prettiest and most elegant of its. class—because, like most who regard the excellence of their under. takings rather than the profit of the speculation, he has enriched the libraries of the lovers of book-luxuries without enriching himself. Had lie been intrusted with the superintendence of the. plates to the Waverley Novels, we should not have had so much reason to complain of their insufficiency. The grand cause of the inferiority of the present race of design- ers, is undoubtedly their want of fancy, and their deficiency of skill and taste. We allude principally to the mass of rising artists; for COOK is no more, at least as a designer ; STOTHARD and SMIRKE " are gone into the sear and yellow leaf;" and HOWARD and WESTALL are no longer young. Coon's designs were the beau ideal of book plates—finished miniature pictures. He had clear conception and an elegant taste ; understood the figure well, and composed with facility ; his style was neat, and his cos- tumes and grouping were correct and classical. HowARD's de- signs most resembled his; but COOK had a more simple, striking, and effective way of_telling his story ; he brought the scene more vividly before you. 1VESTALCS mannerism always interfered with the subject more or less ; but his early works are not so deformed by this affectation as his latter performances. His men and wo- men were always of a family; but latterly the "in and inbreed"' has rendered them caricatures of the peculiarities of their race. STOTHARD'S designs, though also tinctured by a prevailing manner, were and are still distinguished by poetic taste as well as by graceful elegance of style ; and by a certain benevolence of feel- ing, which, though degenerating into affectation, yet redeemed them from the imputation of mere mechanical cleverness. In spite of his half-faced men, and the insipid sweetness of his wo- men, there is an imaginative character in the conceptions them- selves, which infuses a charm into all STOTHARD'S works, and makes us regard no one with indifference : so potent is genius, whose light, like a sunbeam, makes beautiful all that it touches. It is not generally known that HILTON in his younger days was a designer. He painted a series of miniature pictures to illustrate the Mirror and the Citizen of the World : these little designs are full of character and feeling, and are beautifully executed.
SMIRKE'S designs have obtained a character for humour, more by the force of a quaint manner than the richness of his comic fancies; but there is an historical air about his pictures, which sets off by contrast the sparing drollery of the design. His Illustra- tions of the Arabian Tales, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, &c., were de- servedly admired; but he never equalled LESLIE' S Sancho before the Dutchess. The power to express humour with gusto, but without an approach to caricature, is rare among our artists. MULREADY and Buss are eminently effective; and RICHTER has been successful in one or two instances. The designs of KIDD and FARRIER are hard and forced, and wanting in that spontaneity which characterizes the flow of genuine humour.
STEPHANOFF was too much of a mannerist: his style was cha- racterized by an affectation of grace and elegance that surfeited by its sickly monotony. CORBOULD and UWINS are neat and prac- tised designers, and have the merit of technical cleverness and facility; but the soul of genius does not inform their creations. LESLIE is the prince of designers, His style is finished and masterly, with a tendency nevertheless to a mannerism of stiffness and angularity, which we hope he will avoid. His bias inclines to humour, but never to the derogation of beauty; and we have seen some beautiful touches of pathos in his pictures. Indeed, the true, sensibility to comic humour, includes a corresponding suscepti- bility to scenes of graver interest.
NEWTON'S conceptions are solid and grave, as LESLIE'S are smart and lively. His tendencies are rather towards serious inci- dents; but he has also a relish for dry, absorbent humour. • His style is bold and elevated ; and he is a thorough master of his art. BO%ALL treads in his steps, though with a spirit of emulation, not. as a servile imitator. His feeling and taste are delicate and re- fined, but he is wanting in vividness of conception and force of style; though he is fast repairing these deficiencies. By aiming to embody traits of character and points of feeling, too recondite to become palpable to the sight in a picture, he has hazarded the im- putation of feebleness and insipidity. INSKIPP is too much of a mannerist in his style, and his designs are crude and deficient in. purpose as regards the expression. His creations are the repre- sentatives of a class, not of individual character. FRASER, a pupil of WILKIE, is successful in the secondary parts and accessaries of a picture; but his designs want the soul of character and origi- nality; the expression of the persons of the scene is consequently vague and feeble. WILKIE himself is not great in these extem- pore designs, as his talents would lead us to suppose; which those. who have seen his first crude sketches for his admirable pictures. will not be surprised at. His process of invention is slow, and is. only finished with the completion of the painting. Besides, he• grapples with realities and matters of fact, more powerfully than with the fictions of the brain. He should depict only real persons, I'from the life, or from authentic portraits ; or else the imaginary persons should appear and sit to his fancy, as poor BLAKE said the angels used to him. No one understands how to make up a pic- f. tune better, or paints one in a finer manner, than WILKIE ; but then he should have all his materials before him in a tangible shape. MULREADY is very real and vivid in his representations of
characters and their expression ; and his paintings are beautifully wrought up. We only regret that lie has not given wider scope to his fancy, and selected a class of subjects more worthy of talent.
&air; LANDSEER, too, is one of the foremost of illustrators, more especially in scenes favourable to the display of his unrivalled skill in delineating dogs and other animals. There are a grace and fa- cility in his compositions, and a life and spirit in his designs, which place them in the highest rank. COOPER is only good in horses and harness ; out of which, however, he makes clever
pictures. • •
These are only a part, though the best part, of the artists who have been engaged in illustrating the Waverley Novels ; and yet, in looking over the five parts of the collection of plates, comprising eighty designs, we do not find a tithe of them that convey an adequate idea of the scenes they profess to depict. Feebleness of style, poverty of conception, indecisiveness of expression, clumsy grouping, and bad and careless drawing, are the prevailing quali- ties, only redeemed by that pleasing general effect which so emi- nently distinguishes the productions of the English school. This quality, which is in itself a great excellence, makes the eye pleased with what does not satisfy the judgment. Take this away, or leave it out of the consideration, and the imperfections of the design appearing in their naked deformity, render it ludicrous or disgusting. And we really believe, that one great cause of these painful defects, is a want of mastery over the materials of the art,-imperfect skill in drawing and composition ; insufficient knowledge of the figure, and of the appropriate costumes. In the slight sketches made for the engraver to work from, these defects are slurred over, and rendered less apparent by being confounded with the touches of the handling; so that, to a superficial ob- server, the effect of an indifferent and of a perfect sketch is the same; the colour and effect and the style of the artist captivate the senses, and the eye is satisfied : but when the mind is brought to bear upon the work-when the character and expreSsion of the persons of the scene are scrutinized, and put to the test of com- parison with the author's description-then the beautiful little work of art provokes more dissatisfaction than it at firSt excited pleasure. A slight sketch will doubtless convey as vivid an idea to the mind, even upon an attentive 'examination, as a finished picture-perhaps more so; but then every touch must have its meaning and object, not merely as regard's the *pictorial effect, but the moral sentiment of the design. The difference between the two is that of a tableau vivant and an animated dramatic scene as seen on the stage. Here are among these plates two or three designs by BONINGTON, which are worthlesS as illustrations, and deserve no better title than mere embellishments. STANFIELD displays talent as a designer, though only remarkable as promising something better: and an artist whose name is new to us, R. LAUDER, has two designs with beautiful pictorial effects. Bad as are the majority of the designsfor the Waverley Novels, those for the Standard Novels are worse : they are for the most part wretched abortions. But there are some which have merit, especially those of the last few volumes, which are by PICKERING-a young artist of great promise, whose education in the French school gives him advantages over the generality of English artists in respect to technical skill and knowledge ; and which only require a corresponding degree of mind and feeling to produce a rival to LESLIE or NEWTON. But even of the merit of the best of these designs we should be cautious in judging, with- out a sight of the originals ; for the best and the worst have, we suspect, suffered. equally by having been literally and bunglingly translated by the engraver into the vulgar tongue of art. Here again we touch upon a prolific source of disappointment. The majority of the engravers are not good draughtsmen; and in ren- dering the original, they proceed mechanically, often without even understanding the forms, and generally without comprehending the feeling of the original. The only chance for the artist is in the accurate finish of his picture, or the force of its effect; but as most of the originals are slight sketches, the engraver's imitation of the artist's. handling produces the most ludicrous effects, which are aggravated when the touch is not full of purpose ; though even then, the copyist will often read it wrong,-just as a mere dictionary translator, ignorant of the genius of a language, renders its idioms literally, and is incapable of comprehending the precise meaning of many words, and of understanding the allusions of the author. What with the imperfections of the painter and engraver, and of their respective arts, and the disadvantages of minor cir- cumstances, indeed, it is not extraordinary that our book-illustra- tions are not what we could wish them to be. We have endea- voured to point out the causes of the defects; and we hope that our remarks will therefore tend in some degree to facilitate their removal.
Previous page
