International studio (59.1916)

The Black and W'kite Work of F. FL Townsend

school-room scene according to the novel theory
of less restraint and more freedom in the train-
ing of children. With his faculty of retaining
sympathy with the pranks and joys of the young,
he revels in drawing children, and he is always
happy with them. Isn’t that group of the boy
kicking up the inkstand at the other on the desk,
with the little girl standing by in admiring glee,
simply delicious ? It is this charming and joyous
sympathy in the picturing of children which made
Mr. Townsend’s illustrations to Kipling’s “Brush-
wood Boy” so completely in harmony with the
book. His sympathies and interests are indeed
wide in their range. In the pages of “ Punch ” this
is constantly seen, for one week we may laugh
at some humorous incident of the golf-links, the
cricket-field, or the drill-ground (Mr. Townsend is
an ardent devotee of all three), and the next the
world may thrill at some cartoon instinct with fine
human emotion or keen convincing satire. And
the remarkable extent of his pictorial versatility
is evident in many books of diverse character.
Our reproductions include an illustration to W,
Skeat’s “ Fables and Folk-Tales from an Eastern
Forest,” a volume in which one sees that Towns-
end’s graphic imagination in the depicting of

strange creatures of the wilds is as remarkable
in its suggestive truth as his drawing of the more
familiar animals. An expert fencer himself, Mr.
Townsend is the representative British draughts-
man of the art of swordsmanship, as may be seen
in the extraordinarily spontaneous illustrations to
the English version of Baron de Bazancourt’s
“ Secrets de l’Ep^e.” But a mere mention of some
of the authors whose books he has illustrated
would be enough to show what a wide field his
pencil has covered.
Mr. Townsend, with all his success and popu-
larity, has never lost the spirit and zest of the stu-
dent, and two or three years ago he determined to
learn etching. Sir Frank Short gladly took him
into his engraving school at South Kensington,
and very quickly Mr. Townsend found his way
upon the copper, and produced etchings which
gained his election to the Associateship of the
Royal Society of Painter Etchers. One of these is
reproduced on p. 37—a portrait of charm, though,
as one looks at it, one cannot forget that the etcher
is, first and foremost, an accomplished artist in pen
and ink. That he may yet prove, if he wills it, an
accomplished artist also with the line of the essen-
tial etcher is quite within the bounds of probability.

CUE INCREASING DEPRAVITY OF WOMAN. ANOTHER IMPUDENT CASE OF “KLEPTOMANIA IN BROAD DAYI.1GH I
(By special Permission oj the Proprietors of Punch; drawn -by f. h. TOWNSEND


34