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
In 1873 ten to _Sindbad the Sailor_, and six or seven others appeared
in _Good Words for the Young_, now entitled _Good Things_. To this year
belongs also _Speaking Likenesses_ by Christina Rossetti, with its
dozen fanciful and charming designs; and a frontispiece and full page
(p. 331), in Mr. George Mac Donald's _England's Antiphon_ (Macmillan).
In 1889 or 1890 _The Graphic_ Christmas number contained two full-page
illustrations by this artist. To 1892 belongs a delightful vignette
upon the title-page of Mrs. George Mac Donald's _Chamber Dramas_. With
a bare mention of seven drawings, inadequately reproduced in _The
London Home Monthly_, 1895, the record of Mr. Arthur Hughes's work
must close; Several designs to a poem by Jean Ingelow, _The Shepherd's
Lady_, the artist has lost sight of, and the date of the first edition
of _Five Old Friends and a Young Prince_, by Miss Thackeray, with a
vignette, I have failed to trace at the British Museum or elsewhere.
As Mr. Arthur Hughes, in the _Music-master_ (1855), heads the list, so
it seemed fit to mark his position by a fuller record than could be
awarded to other of his contemporaries still living; partly because
the comparatively small number of illustrations made a fairly complete
record possible.
* * * * *
FREDERICK SANDYS.--This most admirable illustrator 'was born in Norwich
in 1832, the son of a painter of the place, from whom he received his
earliest art-instruction. Among his first drawings was a series of
illustrations of the birds of Norfolk, and another dealing with the
antiquities of his native city. Probably he first exhibited in 1851,
with a portrait (in crayons) of "Henry, Lord Loftus" which appears
as the work of "F. Sands" in the catalogue of the Royal Academy to
whose exhibitions he has contributed in all forty-seven pictures and
drawings.'[15]
The above, extracted from Mr. J. M. Gray's article, 'Frederick Sandys
and the woodcut designers of thirty years ago,' gives the facts which
concern us here. A most interesting study of the same artist by the
same critic, in the _Art Journal_,[16] supplies more description
and analysed appreciation. The eulogy by Mr. Joseph Pennell in _The
Quarto_[17] must not be forgotten. Further references to Mr. Sandys
appear in a lecture delivered by Professor Herkomer at the Royal
Institution, printed in the _Art Journal_, 1883, and in a review of
Thornbury's _Ballads_ by Mr. Edmund Gosse in _The Academy_.[18]
[Illustration: FREDERICK SANDYS
'CENTURY GUILD HOBBY-HORSE'
VOL. III. p. 147
DANAE IN THE
BRAZEN CHAMBER]
[Illustration: FREDERICK SANDYS
DALZIELS' 'BIBLE
GALLERY,' 1880
JACOB HEARS THE VOICE
OF THE LORD]