International studio (24.1904/1905(1905))

Frederick
Fortunately for us a large number of the pen-
drawings, of which these woodcuts are facsimiles,
still exist, and many are in the possession of a
friend of mine, so that I have been able to compare
the drawing with the engraving, and to realise how
beautifully these blocks were cut in Swain’s work-
shop. It is customary to-day to say that any
adequate reproduction of a pen-drawing must be
made by a photographic process, and to lament
the fact that the original drawings by the artists of
“ the sixties ” perished in the cutting of the blocks,
while their beauties and their character suffered
irreparably at the hands of the engravers, and
Rossetti, for one, made lamentation loud and deep
about this mutilation; but my study of these engrav-
ings and of many of the originals has only resulted
in a deep respect for the skill the cutters displayed,
and a sincere admiration of the way in which
they preserved the style and the characteristics
of each artist, so that at a glance we can
tell Walker’s work from Keene’s, Millais’ from
Lawless’.
But this is by the way. Sandys himself said
that Swain’s rendering of
his drawing of Danae was
perfect, and he was not un-
critical; and others, such
as The Old Chartist (his
own favourite), seem to
me to be equally satisfac-
tory. This fact is possibly
due to the artist’s method
of working on the block
after he had made the
pen-drawing on millboard.
He told me that his
first box-wood block was a
puzzle to him when he
received it, with a request
from Thackeray that he
would supply an illustra-
tion to a story of George
Macdonald’s for the
“Cornhill.” He knew
nothing of the correct
method of preparing it;
it was impossible to work
on its smooth surface with
either pencil or pen, and
he finally drew The Por-
tent line by line with a
brush and Indian ink,
and found the process
so simple and the result

Sandys
so satisfactory that he always thereafter employed
the same method.
Besides these small drawings, a few inches
square, there exist several on a much larger scale
(Judith and Morgan-le-Fay are examples) in which
Sandys used a pen, as he afterwards used chalk,
to produce a finished and elaborate study for a
picture; but it is in the woodcuts in question that
we find him at his very best. Indeed, there is
nothing like them in British art. Each is as much
a masterpiece as an etching by Rembrandt; in
almost everyone we find deep poetic feeling and
lofty emotion allied to a wonderful decorative
charm and an unexcelled mastery of the method.
Turn the portfolio, and we pass from gem to gem.
How unaffected they are, and yet how individual!
What style is there, what serene vigour ! Here is
the grim tragedy of Manoli, here the opulent
“ body’s beauty ” of Danae, here the emotion of
If, here the statuesque grace of Amor Mundi; and
surpassing all these in poignant intensity of tragic
emotion is the superb Rosamund, than which
scarcely a finer black-and-white exists in the art of


“sorrow” (By permission of Herbert Trench, Esq.) BY FREDERICK SANDYS