Frank Reynolds, R.I. | Page 9

of contemporary manners will owe to
Reynolds in the future, for as a sidelight on social habits of the present
day these pictures of the dinner-table will be instructive. The very
triteness of their theme gives them their interest.
[Illustration: "GAZED ON HAROLD" From "Paris and Some
Parisians"]

[Illustration: FROM A PARIS SKETCH-BOOK]
Of late years Reynolds' pen-and-ink drawings have been a familiar
feature of the pages of Punch. His gentle satires therein have been at
the expense of all classes of the community. But his most successful
and best remembered jokes have perhaps been those which depicted the
unconscious humours of Cockney low 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,