International studio (59.1916)

The Black and White Work of F. H. Townsend

The black and white
WORK OF F. H. TOWNSEND.
BY MALCOLM C. SALAMAN.
Although “ Punch ” is proverbially never as good
as it was, it nevertheless contrives to go on week
by week through the years and the decades amusing
the world, and frequently making it think as well
as laugh ; for still its cartoons can thrill the Empire
and cause the Nations to ponder, still with a pic-
torial joke or satire it can flutter our social dovecotes
and titillate the continents. The fact is, “ Punch ”
has created its own art standard, and year in, year
out, this is maintained by the collective loyalty, as
well as the individual talents, of its artists. It has
been thought, of course, that the great “ Punch ”
artists of the past would be irreplaceable, that
without Charles Keene’s great art the standard must
inevitably be lowered; that without du Maurier
the social satire could never again shoot the flying
folly with the same brilliant effect; that without
John Tenniel the cartoon could no more move the
nation’s heart and conscience. But then, had it
not been earlier said that with John Leech the
humour of “ Punch ” had departed ? With its
happy adaptability to the changing times, however,
“ Punch ” always finds the artists it needs and

deserves; and who shall say that, in the hands of
its present brilliant band of draughtsmen, the
“ Punch ” cartoon is less telling than it was in the
days so dear to the laudator temporis acti, that the
pictorial humour is less laughable, the social satire
less keen, the spirit of gay pleasantry less persuasive?
Among these graphic artists who are keeping up,
with such unfailing humour and vivacity, the repu-
tation of our venerable, yet ever youthful, contem-
porary, Mr. F. H. Townsend has occupied for the
last eleven years a position of peculiar influence and
importance, that of art-editor—a position, moreover,
which is unique in the traditions of the journal.
For it was not till Mr. Townsend was invited to
join the famous “Punch” Table in' 1905, after
having been a regular and popular contributor for
nine years, that it was decided to place the editing
of the pictorial side of the journal in the hands of
a practical artist. Mr. Townsend, therefore, is the
first art-editor of “ Punch,” as distinct from “ the
Editor,” and perhaps the sustained excellence of
draughtsmanship and the refined pictorial humour
which one finds invariably in the pages of “ Punch ”
owe not a little to his sympathetic influence. A
better choice could hardly have been made; for
Mr. Townsend is himself a fine draughtsman, with
a keen vision for the transient effect of physica*


DRAWING FOR “PUNCH” (1896) BY F. H. TOWNSEND
A great-granddaughter of Fielding has revised “ Tom Jones ” xor home perusal (Daily Paper).
If the descendants of other last-century novelists show the same enterprise we shall have nursery scenes as above.
'By special permission 0 the Proprietors of PUNCH,)

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