International studio (24.1904/1905(1905))

Frederick Sandys


placed the many elaborate imaginative subjects and
ideal heads that Sandys executed in the same
medium. Once more let us turn the portfolio, and
as the pageant of fair women passes before us what
loveliness is there, and what power and what variety
in its presentation ! Here is the petulant beauty
of Proud Maisie, and the mystic radiance of Selene;
anon we see the exquisite contours of Tears and
the glorious cascade of the tresses that adorn
Miranda ; while the pallid, voiceless agony of the
Mater Dolorosa is followed by the terror-stricken
Cassandra, crying strident prophecies of woe, and
the lonely Persepho?ie is succeeded by another
drawing as complete and as important, another
dream as stately and as perfect, the exquisite Lethe.
And so the tale of them grows, and Cleopatra and
The Fayre Mayde of Avenel, Portia, and Perdita,
and many another one, bring to us beauty and the
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sense of tears, so often does
the artist seem to have felt the
emotion voiced by Browning,
to have echoed the sigh which
haunts the poet’s question :
“ Dear, dead women, with
such hair, too—what’s
become of all the gold
Used to fall and brush their
bosoms ?”
and echoing it, to have caught
and immortalised the vision
vouchsafed to him of all the
lovely phantoms of the bygone
years, so that again they live
for our wonder and delight.
It is needless here to ex-
patiate on the intrinsic beauty
of these drawings, or on the
fact that the same qualities are
to be found in the very
eailiest as in those of his
maturity. It has recently
been my privilege to see in
thehouse of a friend a simple
black-and-white by Sandys, an
early drawing of Devotion,
which is entirely beautiful in
its rendering of the exquisitely
slender hands, charmingly
tender in its whole motif-, and
in this, as in the latest of all,
he shows himself the thorough
artist that he was. All through
the long series of them we can-
not but recognise the power
with which the artist deals subtly with the transitory
and evanescent expressions of lovely faces—the
perfect draughtsmanship of eyes and lips, the un-
faltering surety and vigour of the touch, the de-
licate treatment of the hair, so lovingly lingered
over, so beautifully drawn in its curves and waves,
and withal so finely treated as a mass, despite the
absolute rendering of every strand and coil.
And it would be futile to insist again upon the
lofty inspiration of these imaginative works, in
which majestic beauty alternates with tender grace,
tragic power with poetic charm, and emotional
intensity with monumental repose. Suffice it to
say that in these drawings, as in the woodcuts and
the oil-paintings, Frederick Sandys reached a level
of sustained and perfect achievement such as few
(and those only of the greatest) of his compeers
have ^attained to, and showed himself possessed of a