EXPRESSIVE "LINE."

BY FREDERICK WEDMORE.

AMONGST the things I opened on New Year's morning was a big brown envelope addressed to me in the handwriting of the Editor of THE STUDIO. It contained what, at the first moment, I presumed were two original draw ings by that engaging Frenchman, Forain. I bethought me, " What a pretty étrenne ! Doubtless,"I reflected, " the Editor of THE STUDIO, wishing to pleasantly remember the circumstance that anotheryear has somehow passed over my tired head that I have survived a hundred calamities, and theprinted disapproval of a well-known critic—doubt-less the Editor seeks to cheer or to congratulate me by the offering of a couple of Forains." Alas ! they were reproductions. In the brown envelope there was a neat note. Might not the reproductions-in substance, this is what it said to me—might not the reproductions from two drawings of Forain's suggest a text which, as the Editor knew, to no one more than to myself could it be congenial to preach upon ? The text-reticence of workmanship, economy, and expressiveness of " line." There was a certain tendency, nowadays, amongst our younger artists, especially amongst illustrators, to avoid the frank employment of " line," and to make many strokes in themselves most of them meaningless as well as crowded : done to secure " tone." Could not a little sermon be preached on the saving grace of a return to "line "? And, to fortify the matter, if Forain was not enough, the Editor could choose some Japanese drawings, drawings in line, which, by-the-bye, like Forain's, should be brush drawings. So perhaps a little healthy lesson might be taught to excellent young men.

I accepted the Editor's proposition, but added to it a rider of my own. He was quite right, I told him : no one enjoyed more thoroughly than I did the accomplishment, in any art, of a great thing by little means : terse, pregnant literature ; decisive, economic draughtsmanship. And in regard to the draughtsmanship, those Forains illustrated the matter well, and so, no doubt, would the Japanese drawings, which he would be so good as to select, for no one knew them better. But, if I preach, I said, my illustrations should be drawn from sources wider, and some of them, at all events, in time more remote. " Your excellent young men know something of Forain, as they know Phil May. The Japanese they will receive gladly. I should like, if you please, the illustrations to take them into other worlds as well. For, when you insist upon the expressiveness of ' line,' and the economical use of it, you insist practically upon the value of a quality not recognised only by the modern Frenchman and the Japanese, but the property rather of nearly all great artists, from the days when, in whatever land, pictorial art first became mature."

The Editor assented, and I convinced myself very speedily that my sermon would be best preached by the illustrations themselves, did I but choose discreetly, and that my words need be but few. Phil May was talked about. Excellent ; but already very familiar, and, as far as method is concerned, in some measure a result of the Frenchmen. Let us, I thought, go farther. But, not to go too far at first, let there be a Charles Keene. And we thought of one—a portrait of Millais.* If Charles Keene's work has any quality at all, it has the quality of expressive line. How it differs from that of his contemporaries in the publication to which he most of all contributed ! How it differs, most of all, from Du Maurier's ! Not that I would underrate for a moment the steady elegance of Mr. Du Maurier's work : its completeness — acquired seemingly laboriously—within its recognised limits. But so many lines, after all, where, perhaps, there might have been so few. And the medium, visibly a little hard, a little rigid. The mere method of Charles Keene-the method to which we confine ourselves—the mere method is so different. The selection of line, how economical, and how severe !

But, if it is severity, if it is economy, if it is charm of " line " we want to illustrate, must we not in fairness turn, too, to a great artist half forgotten by the public, and never properly appreciated—the artist, above all things, of exquisite suggestion—I mean Flaxman ? The public, so far as it knows of him at all, knows of him as a sculptor. But he wrought exquisite book-illustrations, and so fertile in ideas was he, that, as regards his sculptured pieces, they do not embody and carry out a hundredth part of the designs that came so easily to his great mind and noble vision. And, whether in sculpture or in pencilled design, or in drawings in Indian ink, I like him best of all perhaps when he is simplest. What a classic austerity, what a refined yet intimate truth, in the sculptured panel, the low relief, at Bath !—Dr. Sibthorpe, the botanist, culling a flower. And the some hundred drawings at University College, and the drawings at the British Museum ! I went to the Museum print-room—the home of drawings as well as of engravings—and from two Solander cases I chose two drawings. One of them is but of two figures, but in a dozen lines only.

Two figures and a pedestal. Mother and child. I said a dozen lines; but such is the spontaneity, the continuity, and grace—it would be difficult to say where each line stops and where each line begins. The inspiration of the thing is Greek, of course. But Flaxman was—or seems to be sometimes—more Greek than the Greeks. The second drawing is less strictly classical ; though of a classical theme, it is more florid. Its inspiration is from the Renaissance of Italy, albeit it is an illustration of the days and works of Hesiod. It is entitled The Good Race, and under Blake's engraving of it, in the publication issued in 1817, the words that are placed are:

" Genial Peace
Dwells in their borders, and their Youth increase."

Both of the Flaxman drawings are done in Indian ink, with the pen.

The two drawings by Forain speak for themselves—full, perhaps, of the only quality which that artist displays more constantly than Steinlen : for Steinlen is a genius as great. The Japanese drawing also speaks for itself, and is sure, amongst the younger people, of a public to welcome it. My own words may be reserved for the remaining masters, Rembrandt and Dürer, giants of whose power no instructed person can possibly be doubtful ; but giants still of whom among the younger school, brought up a little too exclusively on the dexterity of the Parisian studio, only one is popularly recognised as among the gods of art. For myself, the more I study Dürer the more am I uncertain whether in the last resort it is to him or to Rembrandt we are to award the palm.

Both the Dürer and the Rembrandt that I have chosen in illustration of the power of simple economic line come from the great collection of Old Masters' drawings which it was the pride of Malcolm of Poltalloch — the Duke of Argyll's great neighbour in Scotland, and the father of the first peer—to accumulate at that house of his abutting on Park Lane, which has since been dismantled and destroyed. Dürer's drawings are, in method, very various. Amongst them are some of the first water-colours : amongst them two little drawings in silver-point, serene and equable and firm amongst them, too, elaborate detailed studies. But in illustration of the expressiveness of wellselected line I could not choose any of these. I chose instead a rather large scale drawing with the reed pen-full of masculine imagination and vigorous handwork. " Memento mei " are the words printed decoratively at the side of it ; it is an early drawing, of 1505, and, in its presentation of a King of Terrors, mounted, riding, it recalls, or has some mental relation to, the famous print, The Knight of Death. There it stands, awful, weird, significant, beyond all praise, the creation of a genius and a master.

I might have illustrated " line " by some abstract of landscape from the hand of Titian. I might have illustrated it by a drawing of Raphael ; by a study aux trois crayons from the hand of Watteau, by a reproduction of a Demarteau print by Boucher, by an etching of Whistler. I chose, however, as has been said already, a Rembrandt landscape. The simple etching, Six's Bridge, might have been employed, or the long suavity and vast expanse of the estate of Uytenbogaert—The Goldweigher's Field. But I preferred again a simple pen drawing—that would compare more fairly with the modern work we were to have in any case, and would assert (as well as the Goldweigher's Field itself, or the Landscape with a Tower) above all claims of modern cleverness, the inalienable claim of Style. So the photographer has been bidden to reproduce for us the pen drawing described at the Museum as Landscape with Road beside a Canal. Often by Rembrandt, as by another master, a little wash is employed, to give a space of shadow or to perform some modelling. But this is " line " unmixed—line pure and definite—nor do I know the master of our day to whom it may not administer a lesson. Notice its easy, its seemingly almost unconscious inclusion of so many a fact. And its unity, too, and its charm ! A brief bridge spans a ditch between the main road and a close, of orchard or of pasture land, with its high gate. Trees edge the way. Into the immense distance the road goes straight upon its course. There is an endless vista. Simplification of fact can scarcely, I suppose, be carried farther, nor can fact on fact be presented more convincingly, in a scene which, to endow it with an interest so enduring, required a great vision as well as a great hand. To amateur, as well as to practising artist or to youthful student, a group gathered together, as is ours for this article, from many diverse schools, and in full sympathy with different methods, should teach the inutility of sacrificing, in any draughtsmanship, for the attainment of any other aim, the expressiveness of the selected line, learnedly chosen, and when chosen, economically and firmly laid.

FREDERICK WEDMORE.

 

Illustrations

FROM A DRAWING BY DÜRER

* This portrait was published as, a supplement to the February number of THE STUDIO.

FROM A DRAWING BY REMBRANDT

STUDY IN "LINE" BY FORAIN

FROM A DRAWING BY FLAXMAN

FROM A DRAWING BY FLAXMAN

FROM A DRAWING BY KIOSA

STUDY IN "LINE" BY FORAIN