International studio (24.1904/1905(1905))

Frederick Sandys

touch with the painter by correspondence, and later
into personal relationship with him; and some of my
pleasantest recollections are of hours spent in his
company, listening to his keen comments on men
and matters, enjoying his fund of good stories of
the great men of his day (Rossetti and Tennyson,
Meredith and Swinburne, Millais and Whistler, he
knew them all), and tempting him to dream aloud
of the pictures he meant to paint—pictures now,
alas! never to be seen of any man. There is in
the members’ book of a certain unique little artistic
club a slight and rapid sketch by Raven Hill which
gives an excellent idea of his features, but I know
of no portrait which conveys to the spectator the
dignity which belonged to his tall figure, or the
aspect of strength and distinction which seemed to
me to be so emphatically characteristic of the man.
And of his grim and delightful humour, of the
quiet, level voice in which he related reminiscences
grave and gay, of the queer admixture of cynicism
and poetry that character-
ised his more intimate
conversation, and of the
fascination of his scholarly
mind and magnetic per-
sonality, there can be no
record but that which re-
mains in the memory of
the few who were privi-
leged to know him. A
man of retiring disposi-
tion, he would never be
lionised; he hated to find
his good stories in print,
and he was apt to feel that
with his life, apart from his
art, the public had no con-
cern,
To turn over the port-
folio in which are stored
the photographs of his
pictures and drawings, and
the signed proof of his
woodcuts, is a perennial
pleasure, so strong, so
varied, and so accompli-
shed are even the least
complete of them. In the
ideal subjects, the artist’s
dreams, what beauty lies;
what emotion in the splen-
did woodcuts and pictures;
what truth and mastery in
the portraits! Another “miranda”

great painter who survived him but a few days,
George Frederick Watts, once said, “ Some artists
see, some feel, some imagine—the greatest do all,”
and Sandys not only saw and imagined, he felt as
well. He was able, too, to visualise his ideals, to
realise his dreams, and to render them with that un-
erring touch, that resolute draughtsmanship, which
is so notable a feature of his work; that masterly
handling to equal which we must go back to the
drawings of Diirer and the panels of the Van Eyck.
The earliest of the three groups into which his
work naturally falls comprises the woodcuts and the
drawings made for them, and it is very interesting
to see that even in the earliest of these—the
illustration to George Macdonald’s story of The
Portent—the artist’s powers seem mature; his
touch is unfaltering, his long, sweeping lines are full
of strength, and the figure is rendered with a fine
feeling for form and contour—is instinct with a
dignity almost sculptural.

BY FREDERICK SANDYS


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