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
As copies are both scarce and costly, it may be well to call attention
to a volume entitled _Art Pictures from the Old Testament_ (Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1897), wherein the whole sixty-nine
reappear supplemented by twenty-seven others, which would seem to have
prepared for the _Bible Gallery_, but not previously issued:
thirteen of these added designs are by Simeon Solomon, two by H. H.
Armstead, R.A., three by E. Armitage, R.A., three by F. R. Pickersgill,
R.A., three by T. Dalziel, and one each by F. S. Waltges (_sic_), G. J.
Pinwell, and E. G. Dalziel.
As impressions of the famous blocks are obtainable at a low cost, it
would be foolish to waste space upon detailed descriptions. Of course
the popular reprint ought not to be compared with the fine proofs
of the great _édition-de-luxe_, which cost about twenty times as
much. But for many purposes it is adequate, and gives an idea of the
superb qualities of the Leighton designs, and the vigour and strongly
dramatic force of the Poynters. It is interesting to compare Sir Edward
Burne-Jones's original design for _The Boiling Pot_, reproduced in
_Pen-Drawing and Pen-Draughtsmen by Joseph Pennell_ (Macmillan, 1894),
with the engraving, which is from an entirely different version of the
subject. Other drawings on wood obviously intended for this work, but
never used, can be seen at South Kensington Museum.
A few belated volumes still remain to be noticed--they are picked
almost at random, and doubtless the list might be supplemented almost
indefinitely: _The Trial of Sir Jasper_, by S. C. Hall (Virtue,
undated), with illustrations by Gilbert, Cruikshank, Tenniel, Birket
Foster, Noel Paton, and others, including W. Eden Thomson and G. H.
Boughton. The latter, a drawing quite in the mood of the sixties, seems
to be the earliest illustration by its author. Another design by H. R.
Robertson, of a dead body covered by a cloth in a large empty room,
is too good to pass without comment. _Beauties of English Landscape_,
drawn by Birket Foster, is a reprint, in collected form, of the works
of this justly popular artist; it is interesting, but not comparable
to the earlier volume with a similar title. In _Nature Pictures_,
thirty original illustrations by J. H. Dell, engraved by R. Paterson
(Warne), the preface, dated October 1878, refers to 'years of patient
painstaking labour on the part of artist and engraver'; so that it is
really a posthumous child of the sixties, and one not unworthy to a
place among the best.