Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/143



O speak in adequate terms and with competent knowledge of the technical qualities which have won for Mr. Gibson's work its high and deserved fame would not be in my power, and I am not going to make any attempt at such a task. But lack of the qualifications of a critic of art does not interfere with the pleasure and interest with which one who is from time to time called upon to study somewhat similar aspects of life turns over a portfolio of the drawings in which this artist records his impressions of society and reflects the spirit with which he regards his material.

If you thus direct your mind rather to the thing expressed than to the excellence of the means at the artist's command for expressing it, your first thought, perhaps, will be that you are following one who is undoubtedly a bit of a satirist; his humor is bound to make him that; yet he is a cheerful satirist. Even when he is presenting scenes for which we can expect nothing but a frown from the moralist, he is seldom irredeemably grim; his indignation is liberally tempered with amusement, and is chastened by a recognition that ordinary folk may occupy some of their time in foolish and unbecoming ways and yet not be such very bad fellows after