Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/269

 11 S. X. OCT. 3, 1914.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

263

replied (p. 352) that he was then living with Sir John at Blackheath.

The late Gleeson White fortunately pub- lished his clever book entitled ' English Illustration, 1855-70 ' (London, 1897), just in time, for I doubt if any one could do it in the present day, so great have been the changes brought about through process reproduction. *

In this book we get information about a period of the art of wood engraving which is practically of the past. When he says, " To annotate the work of Sir John Gilbert . . . .would require for each a volume," White does not underrate what would be necessary. He refers to him as the " ubi- quitous Sir John" (p. 71). He makes no reference to The London Journal, which is not surprising, as he was only a child when Gilbert and Smith were working for it. But he mentions Caasell's Family Paper, for which, I think, Gilbert did comparatively very little. It is, however, well that speci- mens of Gilbert's black-and-white work were not included in White's ' English Illustration,' if they were to be reproduced in the poverty-stricken manner in which many of the others are.

The first article I know of about Gilbert is in The Art Journal^ for 1857 (p. 241). I think we may safely say that this early bio- Bfraphy, like most of The Art Journal at that time, was from the prolific pen of the editor, Samuel Carter Hall, and that he obtained lis information from Gilbert himself. Messrs. Virtue the publishers inform me that there is no record of the writer's name. The Art Journal is the first to give some biographical facts of Gilbert's early life, used without

for Joseph William Gleeson White, who was born 8 March, 1851, unfortunately died at the early age of 47 on 19 Oct., 1898, and, like many of the artists he writes about, had not been able to make any provision for his wife and family (The Studio, 1898, pp. 141 and 189, with portrait). It is a matter for congratulation that a man so full of art knowledge and intimate with the artists of the day took the subject up.
 * Furthermore, it was written only just in time

t With much regret I note that The Art Journal ceased to be published with the issue for February, 1912, the last page being num- bered 104. It kept up its high quality to the end. The Christmas number was issued as usual in 1913 as The Art Annual, under the editorship of Mr. Alfred Yockney, and it is intended to be issued annually. Mr. Yockney wrote a short history of The Art Journal, printed l>y Virtue & Co., in a duodecimo pamphlet of forty pages, published in 1906, with an account of the editors, names of contributors, and numer-

n reproductions.

acknowledgment by various subsequent writers. It says :

" Looking at the numerous diversified and ex- tended channels through which the works of Mr. Gilbert have gone forth to the public, there seems to be sufficient justification for speaking of him as the most widely known artist in the world."

He is " an oil painter, a water-colour painter, and an artist on wood." And if other artists have " extorted the homage of their thousands, he has won the approbation of his tens of thousands." It is as an " artist on wood "" chiefly that reference is made to him at the commencement of this article " :

" He very rarely makes any previous sketch of his subject, but at once proceeds to draw it on the wood, as if it were a matter he had long thought over and studied ; it is perhaps, to this peculiar faculty of extemporizing designs that one sees in them so much originality and freshness- of idea."

This idea of S. C. Hall's is a brilliant one. It is enlarged by J. Beavington Atkinson in The Portfolio, * who says that

" Gilbert is endowed with creative power ; he strikes out into adventurous paths ; he haS an imagination which, if unruly, is original; an invention which, while courting eccentricity, is never guilty of commonplace " ; and that he

" has the faculty of thinking out his subject at the end of his pencil ; he extemporizes on paper as a musician does on the piano : a theme given, he can reduce it to form ; a narrative read, he at once knows how best a picture can be made, His fertility of pictorial invention is inexhaustible. "

The power of extemporizing in drawing appears to me to be an exceedingly rare gift. I never heard of such a thing until I began these notes. It gives us the key to Gilbert's marvellous productiveness. I cannot call to mind the name of any other artist who could extemporize, though the power is common enough among musicians. All the artists I have known have always had to make drafts, and sometimes several trials, before the final one, and devote much time to the study of dresses, &c. RALPH THOMAS.

(To be continued.)

Artists of the Present Day' (1872) from J. L. Roget's ' History of the Old Water-Colour Society/ 1891, vol. ii. p. 303 ; but, tracing it back, I find the article appeared first in The Portfolio (1871), vol. ii. p. 49, where it is entitled ' English Painters of the Present Day.' There is no mention in the 1872 book of the previous publication in The Portfolio. ' English Artists ' must not be con- founded with Atkinson's ' English Painters of the Present Day,' 1871, also a reprint from The Portfolio. Atkinson's death was reported in the papers in 1876, but he did not die until 1886.
 * I got the reference to the book on ' English