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
But it is by his work as an illustrator he will be remembered, and,
despite the few years he practised, for his first published drawing was
in _Once a Week_, December 15, 1859 (vol. i. p. 505), he has left an
honourable and not inconsiderable amount of work behind him. No search
has lighted upon any work of his outside the pages of the popular
magazines, except a few etchings (in the publications of the Junior
Etching Club), three designs of no great importance in _Lyra Germanica_
(Longmans, 1861), and a pamphlet, the _Life of St. Patrick_, with
some shocking engravings, said by his biographer to be from Lawless's
designs. In the chapters upon _Once a Week_, _London Society_, _Good
Words_, etc., every drawing I have been able to identify is duly
noted. It is not easy to refrain from eulogy upon the work of a
draughtsman with no little individuality and distinction, who has so
far been almost completely forgotten by artists of the present day. The
selection of his work reproduced here by the courtesy of the owners of
the copyright will, perhaps, send many fresh admirers to hunt up the
rest of it for themselves.
* * * * *
ARTHUR BOYD HOUGHTON (1836-1875) was born in 1836, the fourth son of
his father, who was a captain in the Royal Navy. He visited India,
according to some of his biographers; others say that he was never in
the East, but that it was a brother who supplied him with the oriental
details that appear in so many of his drawings. Be that as it may,
his fellow-workers on the _Arabian Nights_ pretended to be jealous
of his Egyptian experience, and declared that it was no good trying
to rival from their imaginings the scenes that he knew by heart.
At present, when all men unite to praise him, it would almost lend
colour to a belief that he was unappreciated by his fellows to read in
a contemporary criticism: 'His designs were often striking in their
effects of black and white, but were wanting in tone and gradation--a
defect partly due to the loss of one eye.' This is only quoted by
way of encouragement to living illustrators, who forget that their
hero, despite sympathy and commissions, suffered also much the same
misunderstanding that is often their lot. Against this may be set a
criticism of yesterday, which runs:--
'As regards "the school of the sixties," now that it has
moved away, we can rightly range the heads of that movement,
and allowing for side impulses from the technique of Menzel,
and still more from the magnetism of Rossetti's personality,
we see, broadly speaking, that with Millais it arrived, with
Houghton it ceased. Under these two leaders it gathered others,
but within ten years its essential work was done. It has all
gone now nobly into the past from the hands of men, some still
living, some dead but yesterday.