English Illustration 'The Sixties': 1855-70: With Numerous Illustrations by Ford Madox Brown: A. Boyd Houghton: Arthur Hughes: Charles Keene: M. J. Lawless: Lord Leighton, P.R.A.: Sir J. E. Millais, P.R.A.: G. Du Maurier: J. W. North, R.A.: G. J. Pinwell: Dante Gabriel Rossetti: W. Small: Frederick Sandys: J. Mcneill Whistler: Frederick Walker, A.R.A.: and Others
Dante Alighieri · en
_Goldsmith's Poems_, with coloured illustrations by Birket Foster,
appeared this year, which saw also many volumes (issued by Day and
Son), resplendent with chromo-lithography and 'illuminations' in
gold and colours. So that the Christmas harvest, that might seem
somewhat meagre in the short list above, really contained as
many high-priced volumes appealing to Art, 'as she was understood in
1860,' as the list of 1897 is likely to include. But the books we deem
memorable had not yet appeared, and the signs of 1860 hardly point to
the rapid advance which the next few years were destined to reveal.
In passing it may be noted that this was the great magenta period
for cloth bindings. 'Surely the most exquisite colour that ever left
the chemist's laboratory,' exclaims a contemporary critic, after a
rapturous eulogy.
The 'wicked fratricidal war in America,' we find by references in the
trade periodicals of the time, was held responsible for the scarcity of
costly volumes at this date. Perhaps the most important book of 1862 is
Willmott's _Sacred Poetry of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries_ (like
many others issued the previous Christmas). It contains two drawings by
Sandys, which are referred to elsewhere, three by Fred Walker, seven by
H. S. Marks, two by Charles Keene, twenty-eight by J. D. Watson, one
by Holman Hunt, eight by John Gilbert, and others by G. H. Andrews, H.
H. Armstead, W. P. Burton, F. R. Pickersgill, S. Read, F. Smallfield,
J. Sleigh, Harrison Weir, and J. Wolf. Although the absence of Millais
and Rossetti would suffice to place it just below the Tennyson, it
may be considered otherwise as about of equal interest with that and
the earlier anthology of _Poets of the Nineteenth Century_, gathered
together by the same editor. It is distinctly a typical book of the
earlier sixties, and one which no collector can afford to miss.