Frank Reynolds, R.I. | Page 9

life. His illustration of "Precedence at Battersea," in which one small gutter-snipe struggles with another for a cricket bat, indignantly declaring that "The Treasurer goes in before the bloomin' Seketery," is by way of becoming a classic. Equally clever is the study of a small boy, (reproduced on page 27) whose "pomptiousness" on attaining the dignity of knickers forms the subject of admiring comment from his mother to a friendly curate: the mother herself being a wonderful study of low life. In "Going It" (page 59) the artist harks back to the theme of "freak-study," if such a term is permissible, the expressions on the faces of the two figures exhibiting well his acute powers of observation.
[Illustration]
As an illustrator of stories of a certain type, Frank Reynolds is without an equal. On a tale of mere incident his talent is wasted: but into the spirit of a writer who takes human nature for his text, the artist enters with the keenest sympathy. One is tempted to think that the author who is so fortunate as to have Frank Reynolds for a collaborator, must on occasion be startled at the clear vision with which the artist materialises the private conceptions of his mind. It would hardly be possible to find a more sympathetic series of illustrations than those which Frank Reynolds drew for Keble Howard's idyll of Suburbia, entitled "The Smiths of Surbiton." The author constructed out of the petty doings and humdrum habits of suburban life a charming little story of simple people, and with equal cleverness the artist built up, out of these slight materials, a series of exquisitely natural pictures, which revealed the almost incredible fact that semi-detached villadom is not all dulness.
Illustrators of Charles Dickens are legion, but when one thinks of the opportunities for character-study, without that exaggeration into which previous illustrators have been too prone to indulge, which the works of the great novelist afford, one is inclined to think that until we see that wonderful gallery of fanciful personalities which began with Mr. Pickwick and his companions portrayed by the pencil of Frank Reynolds, we shall have to wait still for the perfect edition of Dickens. One niche in that gallery has already been filled, and a study of the water-colour drawing of "Tony Weller at the Belle Sauvage," which is reproduced in the present volume, only increases our desire, like the immortal Oliver, to ask for more.
[Illustration: "THE DES(S)ERTS OF BOHEMIA". From "Dinners with Shakespeare"]
Frank Reynolds as a colourist is less known to the general public than Frank Reynolds the black-and-white artist. It is only of recent years, indeed, that he has turned his attention to painting. But his work, as seen at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (of which body he was elected a member in 1903) and elsewhere, proves that his skill with the brush is no less than with pen or pencil. The present volume includes, besides the drawing of Tony Weller just referred to, his picture of "The Warrener," another fine character-study, exhibited at the Royal Institute in 1907. "The Introduction," an example of a "time sketch" done at the London Sketch Club, illustrates the quick readiness with which the artist nimbly catches the spirit of his subject, and the subtle touch which invests his drawing with the evasive quality of atmosphere. Another Sketch Club study is that of the curate at the play, which bears the title "Frivolity." As a study in expression it is amazingly clever: and it must be a painful and melancholy respect for the cloth which can suppress the smile which it summons. Even an Archbishop will scarce forbear to snigger!
[Illustration]
It is not uncommon to hear modern black-and-white art in this country decried by some persons--mostly of that shallow critical class which can praise nothing in the present, and has encomiums only for that which is past. But while English art can point to such work in black-and-white as Frank Reynolds (to say nothing of others, with whom this volume is not concerned) produces, he must have dull senses who deplores the present and must hark back to the days, let us say, of Charles Keene to find satisfaction for his artistic cravings.
[Illustration: GOING IT! SHE: After this, what do you say to a jaunt on one of the new tubes?]
If it be a merit to add to the gaiety of nations, then Frank Reynolds, on that count alone, deserves of his fellow men more than a passing approbation. He is something more than a mere jester, however: his humour but flavours, as it were, a serious study of human nature. Ignoring, for a moment, the skill and charm of his technique, one feels it to be an accident only that his vehicle of expression is pictorial and not literary. He