DOI Heft:
No.9 (December, 1893)
DOI Artikel:The Birmingham Municipal School of Art, with many illustrations of its students' work, I
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17189#0106
The Birmingham Municipal School of Art
represent adequately one section of
the students' labours, even if it be
not the most essential. That Bir-
mingham favours the style of illus-
tration which, whatever its ancestry
and merits, is recognised at the pre-
sent day as peculiarly English, need
not be urged in its favour, or pro-
claimed as a fault. There is a place
in the wide world of books for illus-
trations by Vierge and Walter Crane;
because we admire the works issued
by the Kelmscott Press, we need
not scorn the vignettes of Daudet's
novels, or the pictures of Trans-
atlantic magazines. That the town
which claims Mr. Burne-Jones as a
native shows a leading to the school
whichacknowledgeshimtheirleader,
is not so easily explained. To do
so we must traverse the proverbial
neglect of a prophet in his own
country, although at the same time
we must own that the Pre-Raphaelites
enjoy peculiar favour in a town from
whose name has been coined the
opprobrious epithet " Brummagen,"
to denote the many qualities which
the apostles of this school now hold
in deepest contempt. Nor is the en-
vironment one to drive its students
from a pen-drawing by sidney heath to romance as an alternative to
crafts. To educate the workman and
in time make him the designer—or, if
he fail to show aptitude, to create at
least the intelligent translator of other
men's ideas—is an aim worth a good
many failures by the way. It is just
because Birmingham, which at present
seems to take the lead in this work,
and other sympathetic rivals are trying
to rise above the dead-level of common-
place that distinguished our State-sup-
ported Schools of Art, that those who
discover many weak points in the whole
system yet hope they see also a gradual
tendency to development on the lines
where progress is most needed. If this
be not too sanguine a view, many years
of disappointed expectation will be
quickly forgotten should such move-
ment continue.
A feature of the Birmingham School
work, that we are enabled to illustrate
very fully, must not on that account be
considered its most important mission.
It is clear that in sculpture, metal-work,
or in most of the applied Arts, as in oil
or water-colour painting, a magazine can
only offer a paraphrase of the works
themselves ; but in book illustration the
actual results can be shown, and for
this reason it is peculiarly tempting to from a pen-drawing by agnes p. manley
94
represent adequately one section of
the students' labours, even if it be
not the most essential. That Bir-
mingham favours the style of illus-
tration which, whatever its ancestry
and merits, is recognised at the pre-
sent day as peculiarly English, need
not be urged in its favour, or pro-
claimed as a fault. There is a place
in the wide world of books for illus-
trations by Vierge and Walter Crane;
because we admire the works issued
by the Kelmscott Press, we need
not scorn the vignettes of Daudet's
novels, or the pictures of Trans-
atlantic magazines. That the town
which claims Mr. Burne-Jones as a
native shows a leading to the school
whichacknowledgeshimtheirleader,
is not so easily explained. To do
so we must traverse the proverbial
neglect of a prophet in his own
country, although at the same time
we must own that the Pre-Raphaelites
enjoy peculiar favour in a town from
whose name has been coined the
opprobrious epithet " Brummagen,"
to denote the many qualities which
the apostles of this school now hold
in deepest contempt. Nor is the en-
vironment one to drive its students
from a pen-drawing by sidney heath to romance as an alternative to
crafts. To educate the workman and
in time make him the designer—or, if
he fail to show aptitude, to create at
least the intelligent translator of other
men's ideas—is an aim worth a good
many failures by the way. It is just
because Birmingham, which at present
seems to take the lead in this work,
and other sympathetic rivals are trying
to rise above the dead-level of common-
place that distinguished our State-sup-
ported Schools of Art, that those who
discover many weak points in the whole
system yet hope they see also a gradual
tendency to development on the lines
where progress is most needed. If this
be not too sanguine a view, many years
of disappointed expectation will be
quickly forgotten should such move-
ment continue.
A feature of the Birmingham School
work, that we are enabled to illustrate
very fully, must not on that account be
considered its most important mission.
It is clear that in sculpture, metal-work,
or in most of the applied Arts, as in oil
or water-colour painting, a magazine can
only offer a paraphrase of the works
themselves ; but in book illustration the
actual results can be shown, and for
this reason it is peculiarly tempting to from a pen-drawing by agnes p. manley
94