International studio (48.1913)

Exhibition of the Society of Illustrators

is essentially a painter quality. He is a good
illustrator. This statement holds up a rather
tempting bait, for which space, even though the
ability were there, is lacking—a discussion on the
novels of the day, the sort of novels for which Mr.
Kellar is a good illustrator.
Frank Craig displays three of his very well-done
works and Louis Fancher a poster for “ Sumurun”
that is admirable. Locke’s “ Septimus,” as James
Montgomery Flagg, too rapidly, has seen him, is
near Denman Fink’s broadly and simply treated
Mr. Vance. George Harding shows A Wreck on
Florida Reef. Lucius Hitchcock is here, as well as
the Kinneys, J. A. Williams, F. B. Masters—■
whom publishers have assigned to an endless
series of railroad pictures; Ernest Peixetto, Joseph
Pennell, Will Howe Bradley, Wallace Morgan and
May Wilson Preston and Reuterdahl, who belong
rather to the independents of illustrating; Schoon-
over, Harry Townsend, Robert Wildhack and
Arthur Young, who is an artist and a proof that
publishers do not, as it is the fashion to claim,
invariably suppress personal expression. His art
is individual and of truly virulent force.
History has shown that a renaissance in a single
art is likely to be carried through all of them, and
certainly that is true with regard to illustrators
and authors—Dickens found a Cruikshank; De
Maupassant, Steinlin. The two are incontrovert-
ably linked—for the school of Chambers we have
the school of Gibson.
In one corner of the present show are a number
of examples of illustrations in color, the majority
of them by pupils of the late Howard Pyle, who
with Abbey was made the feature of last season’s
show held at the New York Public Library.

Elsewhere one finds the solid drawings of Will
Foster executed with faultless precision; a Hurri-
cane and Laughing Girl, by W. T. Benda, who
sometimes displays a kind of wild force; Hanson
Booth’s The Tramp and a photographic Comrades,
by Worth Brehm.
With this exhibition at the National Arts Club,
that does very successfully round off an effort,
one may not help but suggest that here is a kind
of modern patronage that may well take the place
of that old one so long covered with the dust of
disuse. The club aims to “promote the acquaint-
ance of art lovers and art workers, one with the
other; to stimulate the artistic sense of the Ameri-
can people; to provide proper exhibition facilities
for such spheres of art, especially industrial and
applied arts, as shall not be adequately providedfor,
and to encourage the publication and circulation
of news and information relating to the fine arts.”
I have before me a list of exhibitions that have
graced these galleries since 1899. To show their
diversity I shall mention a few: “The Woman’s
Art Club,” “Works by the Society of Mural
Painters,” “Old and Modern Japanese Prints,”
“Glass in the Arts,” “Artistic and Commercial
Posters,” “Pictures by Old Masters,” “Sculp-
tures by Rodin, Roche and Riviere,” “Rugs and
Embroideries,” “Birds and Beasts in Art.” “The
Drake Collection of Brasses and Objects in
Metal,” “Paintings from the Collection of W. T.
Evans,” “Advertising Art,” “Paintings by Louis
Mark, of Budapest,” “Paintings, Embroideries,
Textiles and Tapestries from the Collection of Em-
erson McMillin,” “Jewelry and Precious Stones,
Modern, Old and Oriental,” “Textiles and Cera-
mics,” and “ Color Prints by S. Arlent Edwards.”


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DRAWING IN TEMPERA FOR A THEATRICAL POSTER

BY LOUIS FANCHER

XLII