Studio: international art (6.1896)

Reviews of Recent Publications

has introduced gold and colours to the decora-
tion of his pages, and he has shown us by the
use of suitable text and the dexterous manipu-
lation of ink and press, how consistent in effect
an illustrated tale may become from the first
page to the last. His little book has a still
further interest to us when we remember that it
is entirely printed from engraved wooden blocks.
Can it be that in such works as this the future of
the wood-engraver's art will depend ? Is it to the
" decorated book " rather than the framed picture
or the occasional illustration that the xylographic
artist must turn in order to revive his decaying
art ? It may be so, for it is certain that he has in
such, a large field in which to expend his labour.
With a knowledge of old " block " books, and an
intimate acquaintance with the works of the old
Japanese xylographers, an engraver on wood, who
is at the same time an artist with a true decorative
instinct, need never despair of rescuing his art from
the unfortunate fate with which it appears now to
be threatened.

The Tavern of the Three Virtues. Pictured by fiEC0Nn pRIZE (c0Mp c xxiy ) „Dn>J QUIxnTF „
Daniel Vierge. (London : T. Fisher Unwin.)—
In this translation of a romance by Saint-Juirs, the

interest centres upon the illustrations. Yet with amonS the most interesting performances of nine-
a vivid memory of the immortal Pablo, one is teenth-century art." To begin with, the cloth
conscious of disappointment. Even the admirable binding is meretricious and inelegant, the printing
preface by Mr. Edmund Gosse skirts the subject at of the text peculiarly unsatisfactory, and the general
issue—the sixty drawings of the present book— build of the PaSe as inharmonious and awkward
and prefers to re-estimate the " work of high posi- as the worst Precedent of earlier years of the Vic-
tive value which can never cease to maintain a place torian Period before bookbinding was once again

exalted among the arts. Nor can the printing of
the blocks be said to do justice to them—it needs
no lens of high magnitude to discover that the
impressions on needlessly thick paper are by no
means what they should be. All this depresses
you, so that you refer to the drawings of Pablo—
especially those which were reproduced by Mr.
Pennell in his sumptuous volume on pen-drawing,
only to realise that the Vierge you still revere there
is quite another from the Vierge as he appears
here. Possibly the change of technique—the sub-
stitution of wash effects for the " filagree of line "
—has also a share in the impression. The charac-
terisation, the high humour, and the fantasy of
Vierge are not wanting. Despite all drawbacks,
the great master is apparent in almost every one of
the threescore drawings; and yet, ungracious
though it be to do aught but praise a great artist
who is working against physical disadvantages, you
cannot pile up superlative after superlative in
praise, although the Pont Neuf (p. 63), the
first prize (comp. c xxiv.) "monster" sedan-chair group (p. 15), and the Salon (p. 57),

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