SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
(Notice in this velum* loss not necessarily preclude subsequent review.)
Charles Eisen. By Vera Salomons. (J. & E. Bumpus. 28s. net.)—Miss Salomons has prepared a descriptive catalogue of the best known books illustrated by Eisen, and has prefixed to it a short memoir and an essay on Eisen as a draughtsman. The late M. Emile Bertaux contributed a preface, recalling Lady Dilke's admirable work on French eighteenth-century art. The book is produced with good taste and contains thirty well-chosen examples of Eisen's designs, photographed from copies in the famous collection of Sir David Salomons. Eisen, like Watteau, was a native of Valenciennes, and he had much of the fertility of invention and much of the delicacy which characterized his greater fellow-citizen. His figure-designs, illustrating La Fontaine, Dorat, Rousseau, Richardson, Thomson, and the other favourite authors of his day, have the merits and failings of a rigorous convention ; but the best of his purely decorative designs, for title-pages, headings and mils de lampe, have not aged and retain all their charm. Miss Salomons has been wise in representing this side of Eisen's work as a book-decorator more fully than his illustrations properly so-called.
Previous page
