Punch, Or The London Charivari | Page 2

cuts which he contributed to Punch during a period of
nearly forty years; and still more in the originals of these, the masterly
pen-and-ink drawings which are now for the first time shown in a
collected form to the Public."
So says Mr. CLAUDE PHILLIPS, in his "Prefatory Note," to the
"Catalogue of a Collection of Drawings of the late CHARLES

KEENE," now on view at the Rooms of the Fine Arts Society, 148,
New Bond Street.
If the British Public possess that "taste for Art" and that "sense of
humour" which some claim for and others deny to it, it (the B.P.) will
throng the comfortable and well-lighted Gallery in New Bond Street,
where hang some hundreds of specimens of the later work of the most
unaffected humorist, and most masterly "Black-and-White" artist of his
time. Walk up, Ladies and Gentlemen, and see--such miracles of
delineation, such witcheries of effect, as were never before put on paper
by simple pen-and-ink!
It is difficult to realise sometimes that it is pen and ink, and that
only--all the delightful display of fresh English landscape and
unsophisticated British humanity, teeming with effects of distance,
hints of atmosphere, and suggestions of colour. Many a much-belauded
brush is but a fumbling and ineffective tool, compared with the
ink-charged crowquill handled by CHARLES KEENE. Look at
"_Grandiloquence_!" (No. 220) There's composition! There's effect!
Stretch of sea, schooner, PAT's petty craft, grandiloquent PAT himself,
a nautical Colossus astride on his own cock-boat, with stable sea-legs
firmly dispread, the swirl of the sea, the swish of the waves, the very
whiff of the wind so vividly suggested!--and all in some few square
inches of "Black-and-White!"
Look, again, at the breadth of treatment, the power of humorous
characterisation, the strong charm of _technique_, the colour, the action,
the marvellous ease and accuracy of street perspective in No. 16 ("_The
Penny Toy!_"). Action? Why, you can see the old lady jump, let alone
the frog! Fix your eye on the frightened dame's foot, and you'll swear it
jerks in time to the leap of the "horrid reptile."
Or at that vivid bit of London "hoarding," and London low life, and
London street-distance in "_'Andicapped!_" (No. 25.) Good as is the
"gaol-bird," is not the wonderfully real "hoarding" almost better?
Who now can draw--or, for that matter, _paint_--such a shopkeeper,
such a shop, such a child customer as those in "_All Alive!_" (No. 41),
where the Little Girl a-tip-toe with a wedge of cheap "Cheddar" at the
counter, comes down upon him of the apron with the crusher, "Oh,
mother's sent back this piece o' cheese, 'cause father says if he wants
any bait when he's goin' a fishin', he can dig 'em up in our garden!"

Are you a fisherman, reader? Then will you feel your angling as well as
your artistic heart warmed by No. 75 ("_The Old Adam_") and No. 6
("_Wet and Dry_"), the former especially! What water, what Scotch
boys, what a "prencipled" (but piscatorial) "Meenister"! Don't you feel
your elbow twitch? Don't you want to snatch the rod from SANDY
McDOUGAL's hand, and land that "fush" yourself, Sawbath or no
Sawbath?
But, bless us, one wants to describe, and praise, and purchase them all!
A KEENE drawing, almost any KEENE drawing, is "a thing of beauty
and a joy for ever" to everyone who has an eye for admirable art and
adorable drollery. And good as is the fun of these drawings, the graphic
force, and breadth, and delicacy, and freshness, and buoyancy, and
breeziness, and masterly ease, and miraculous open-airiness, and
general delightfulness of them, are yet more marked and marvellous.
Time would fail to tell a tithe of their merits. An essay might be penned
on any one of them--but fate forbid it should be, unless a sort of artistic
CHARLES LAMB could take the task in hand. Better far go again to
New Bond Street and pass another happy hour or two with the ruddy
rustics and 'cute cockneys, the Scotch elders and Anglican curates, the
stodgy "Old Gents" and broad-backed, bunchy middle-class matrons,
the paunchy port-swigging-buffers, and hungry but alert street-boys,
the stertorous cabbies, and chatty 'bus-drivers, the "festive" diners-out
and wary waiters, the Volunteers and _vauriens_, the Artists and 'Arries,
the policemen and sportsmen, amidst the incomparable street scenes,
and the equally inimitable lanes, coppices, turnip-fields and stubbles,
green glades and snowbound country roads of wonderful,
ever-delightful, and--for his comrades and the Public
alike--all-too-soon-departed CHARLES KEENE!
Nothing really worthy of his astonishing life-work, of even that part of
it exhibited here, could be written within brief compass, even by the
most appreciative, admiring, and art-loving of his sorrowing friends or
colleagues. Let the British Public go to New Bond Street, and see for
itself, in the very hand-work of this great